u/ke1in

Please, share your experience, have you ever nominated your app for featuring?

Once I wanted to be closer to nature, put my MacBook Pro in a backpack, put myself on a bicycle and headed to the big park. All benches were busy, so I found a place under the tree, which was even better since I could touch the grass. I opened my precious working device and started submerging into work.The process went well even though I was slightly distracted by the bugs in my shoes and birds signing. That was a pleasant sunny day... Not long after that a small bird shitted right in the middle of my screen. I realized that I didn't take any napkin or tissue. So I had to use grass, but unfortunately all the grass around was short and thinly leavened, so it was hard to wipe the nature present. With a gloomy face, avoiding people eyes, I quickly rode home where I used screen spray to clean it, but somehow bird shit is chemically aggressive and it destroyed the anti-glare layer, leaving a big shiny spot. After that when I have an idea of closeness with nature I think that roofs are actually a good invention.

Senior iOS Engineer with 14 years of experience specializing in the full-cycle development of App Store products, from 0 to 1. More than 30 projects. Delivered features that successfully scaled to $2M/month revenue. Expert in Swift, SwiftUI, Concurrency, scalable & clean architecture, CI/CD and Agentic coding: balancing development speed with code quality. Experienced in mentoring junior developers and leading small remote teams. Specialized in Machine Learning integration (CoreML, PyTorch), leveraging an Applied Mathematics background to build advanced computer vision and data-processing features.

Would bring iOS & watchOS expertise to your team or integrate ML features in your product, open for freelance and full-time remote positions.

Linkedin.

Top Rated Plus, 100% Job Success and 3k hours on Upwork, also you could check portfolio there.

I'm a developer with great fond of watchOS. I like the idea of standalone watchOS apps, I sincerely want Apple Watch to be more then just a time + fitness tool. Situation today is much better than it was let's say at watchOS 3 when the watches were simply an appendix to iPhoned. However, event today, developers are limited in their tools. I want to highlight some enhancement requests that I submitted to Apple that aim to improve the ecosystem.

ER: Allow Notes to open Universal Links on watchOS

rdar://FB22599516

*Currently, Universal Links only work in Mail and Messages apps on watchOS. I suggest enabling the Notes app to open Universal Links, similarly to the iOS version of that app. This were discussed on the forums: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/821973

In particular this would be helpful for developers, simplifying the testing of Universal Links.*

Enchancement request: Video Previews in App Store for watchOS

rdar://FB22599432

I demand to add video previews for watchOS apps in the App Store. It would improve user experience and provide better visibility for watchOS-only apps. Currently we, developers, could only add 10 screenshots for watchOS and no video, which holds back watchOS-only apps making them more obscure for the user.

Enchancement request: Add review prompt for watchOS

rdar://FB22557040

There's currently no system-provided way to ask a user for a review on watchOS app. This is especially critical for watchOS-only apps. Both RequestReviewAction and deprecated SKStoreReviewController are available on iOS, macOS, visionOS, but NOT on watchOS.

Suggestion: enable RequestReviewAction on watchOS, to allow developers ask for a review with a default prompt like it's done on iOS.

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As those requests would be implemented, development and distribution of watchOS standalone apps would be improved. And as the result there will be more of them.

What can you do right now?

If you are a developer – Support the requests. Submit your own enhancements. Do not hesitate and act.

If you are a user – Always remember to write a review for the app you like. App makers currently can't prompt you for review in watchOS. When you visit App Store page and leave a review you improve the app visibility thus allowing it to thrive and develop further. Negative honest feedback and suggestions are also very valuable.