The widget is the app
Most Tapsy users never open the app. The first time I saw this in TestFlight feedback it read like a problem. By the second week I realised it was the product working as intended.
A counter you have to “open” is a counter you have to remember. A counter that sits on the home screen is a counter you tap once and forget. The data captures itself.
Designing for the tile
The widget API on iOS is a quiet little system. You get a fixed canvas, a small write budget, and a timeline you mostly don’t control. None of that is where you want to put a complicated UI. So Tapsy didn’t.
The tile shows three things and three things only:
- The name of the counter.
- The current value.
- A tiny last-updated stamp.
Everything else — renaming, recoloring, exporting — lives inside the app, and the app exists for those rare moments where you really do need it.