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Mircea
Mircea

Reputation: 925

How to turn off automatic install of Apple Watch extension?

We are looking at adding an Apple Watch extension for our current iOS app. One of the requirements is that the watch extension not to be automatically installed on the user's watch upon update of the iOS app. For security reasons we would like to ask the user to specifically enable the extension to be on the watch.

I know there is a setting to enable/disable individual watch extensions, but I don't know if and how can be programmatically changed. The third answer on this thread leads me to think that it is possible https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7026092 but extensive googling didn't give me any clear answer.

Thanks!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 299

Answers (1)

Aleksander
Aleksander

Reputation: 2813

This is beyond your control. Only the user can choose whether to automatically install new WatchKit apps on their Watch automatically or not, and I personally think this is the best solution.

It seems to me like you should reconsider why it's necessary for your app to force the user to manually install the WatchKit app through the iOS app. This shouldn't be necessary.

However if it is, Apple will definitely update WatchKit at WWDC now and they might introduce the option to let the parent app decide whether to automatically install the WatchKit app or not. These are just pure speculations though, and you can follow WWDC here.

If not, you can always employ some sort of workaround. For example set up a shared app group and shared user defaults. When the main app launches you can ask whether to activate the WatchKit app, and set a bool in the shared user defaults. When the WatchKit app launches, check this bool and if the user hasn't said yes yet, simply cover up the interface with a label that tells the user to go to the main app first.

Upvotes: 2

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