An Apple Watch app need to have Complications to be good

I absolutely love my Apple Watch. As I've said many times before, it's one of the best devices I've ever bought. It's the easiness and speed to get to information that makes it so great.

The best Apple Watch apps in my mind are the ones that include the most useful and frequently relevant complications. The watch face itself is the best piece of real estate on the watch. That's park avenue. It's what people will see all the time. The complications that inhabit it are the fastest way for users to launch your app. Having a great complication puts you in a prime position to have users interact frequently with your app while inherently giving them quick, timely updates at a glance. It’s an amazing feature for users, and the most rewarding should you get it right.

So to me a great Apple Watch app need to have complications1 that you can put on your watch face of choice.

I use my Apple Watch for productivity so I use the apps Todoist, Just Press Record and Drafts a lot. And they all have great Complications that makes it easy and fast to use the apps.

I wish more developers would understand this though. I wish for example that the great writing environment app Ulysses had an Apple Watch with a Complication to go with it so I could dictate ideas directly into my Ulysses inbox.

Now I have to do that first with the great note taking app Drafts directly from its Apple Watch complication, and then use a Drafts action to move it to Ulysses.

Would be much better to use a Ulysses Apple Watch complication directly instead.

Via Great Watch Apps are Great Complications — Conrad Stoll

Here is a video explaining what Apple Watch Complications are:

  1. You can add special features—called complications—to some watch faces, so you can instantly check things like stock prices, the weather report, or information from other apps you’ve installed. See video below. ↩︎