WidgetKit complications won't update

Same issue here. Posted this thread https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/735714

Did you figure it out?

I've opened a Feedback Request for this issue: FB12926788. It is currently being investigated by Apple. I will post any updates here.

P.S. I've created a sample project to illustrate the issue with WidgetKit complications.

@Serzhas any response from Apple?

Any update from Apple?

Apple responded that this appears to be a bug on their side, but no ETA for a fix was given. We are keeping our fingers crossed 🤞🤞

Has anyone solved this problem? Can anyone update the widget using a different method?

I have experienced the same. widgets on watchOS won't use latest data in userDefaults. Even though the AW's app itself uses the latest data in userDefaults.

However, from my experience, if I wait for hours (but not more than 24 hours.) the widget uses correct latest data from userDefaults. And subsequent widget rendering will also use latest data in userDefaults.

Can anyone confirm that if you wait for says 4-5 hours or overnight, the widget will read correct data?

My recent research yielded some results.

We've been updating our Watch app, which is WatchKit based, to support watchOS 10 features. We've added new SwiftUI scenes to it, and the app itself works like a charm - no issues whatsoever. However, it appears that WatchKit apps have issues with WidgetKit complications - they won't update (or will have a significant delay) even when the app is in the foreground (such updates do not count towards the daily update quota).

However, this issue is not observed if the Watch app is pure SwiftUI - widgets will update immediately, including Smart Stack widget. Therefore, we are rewriting our Watch app to SwiftUI and getting rid of ClockKit completely (doing this forced us to increase the minimum watchOS version to 9.0 🤷‍♂️).

Hope that will be helpful to someone. 🤓

P.S. All said above doesn't solve the issue with data communication not happening between iPhone and Watch if the Watch app is in the background.

I ran into this same issue as well. If you update your project to migrate to a single WatchKit target, you should be able to force immediate updates again. Be warned though, the migration introduced a bunch of build errors into my project that took a couple hours for me to fix, and there are other bugs that you will run into that are specific to a single target watch app: ClockKit complications will break and need to be reinstalled, and location updates will fail if you delete then reinstall your watch app. Quite a mess.

Hi everyone,

I'm having the same issue. What I found is that if the Watch App is open, or was recently put in background (less than a minute approx), transferCurrentComplicationUserInfo works fine. Otherwise, Complications are never updated, BUT once I open the Watch App again, ALL calls previously made to transferCurrentComplicationUserInfo are sequentially received in func session(_ session: WCSession, didReceiveUserInfo userInfo: [String: Any] = [:]), and therefore Complications are updated. So the issue (at least in my case) seems to be that transferCurrentComplicationUserInfo doesn't wake up ExtensionDelegate.

Is there anything new from Apple, or anyone who has managed to fix it without migrating to the SwiftUI lifecycle?

Extra data:

• I made sure that the quota of 50 is not exhausted when I test.
• This is the ExtensionDelegate (summarized):

class ExtensionDelegate: NSObject, WKExtensionDelegate, WCSessionDelegate {
	let session = WCSession.default

	override init() {
		super.init()
	    if WCSession.isSupported() {
	      session.delegate = self
	      session.activate()
	    }
	}

 	func session(_ session: WCSession, didReceiveUserInfo userInfo: [String: Any] = [:]) {
    	WatchWidgetSessionHandler.shared.processComplicationUserInfo(userInfo)
  	}
} 

• This is the code from the iOS side(summarized):

class WatchAppDataManager: NSObject, WCSessionDelegate {
   override init() {
    super.init()
     let session = WCSession.default
     session.delegate = self
     session.activate()
   }

  func sendDataToWidget(for kinds: [WatchWidgetKind]) async {
    guard
      WCSession.default.activationState == .activated,
      WCSession.default.isComplicationEnabled
    else {
      return
    }

    let widgetsData = dataProvider.getData(for: kinds)
    if !widgetsData.isEmpty {
      WCSession.default.transferCurrentComplicationUserInfo(widgetsData)
    }
  }
}

Has there been any update on this? Does it now work?

Are there any resolution for the issue?

Unfortunately, no. I've checked my WKComplications sample app on watchOS 11 - still doesn't work.

P.S. on watchOS 11 it does work on simulator, however, still doesn't work on real device (doesn't work at all on watchOS 10).

I hope this gets fixed soon. I'm still experiencing the same issue with the Watch complication update.

Off-topic, but I'm facing an issue with sharing UserDefaults data between iOS and watchOS (including the complication).

I also hope WidgetKit receives improvements soon. Looking forward to any updates.

Off-topic, but I'm facing an issue with sharing UserDefaults data between iOS and watchOS (including the complication).

You cannot use shared UserDefaults cross-device, it only works cross-extension on the same device, e.g. for sharing data between main app and Widgets extension.

To share data between iPhone and Watch you must use WatchConnectivity. Check out my WKComplications example on GitHub for working example.

Has anyone explored different approaches? such as:

•	iCloud Key-Value?
•	Sharing the network layer between iPhone and Watch?

The second approach could involve using push notifications on the WatchOS side to wake the watch app, reload the widget (watch extension), and fetch a new timeline from an API using reloadTimeline

The system will decide on its own when or if it will accept your reload request (and at a given time). You can use Console.app to monitor processes related to reloading to see if there is a reason at the system level why your Widget isn't reloading. I would start with the Widget process on your Watch (the name of the target) to see why the updates aren't happening. The system logs can be very helpful and even provide information as to whether you've exceeded your daily budget.

Rico
WWDR - Software Engineer