Can't I make a home screen widget for Evernote (Tasks) on iOS?

[DanishDuckling 4]

Right now, I am using Things (3) for my to-dos on iOS due to it's possibility to create a home screen widget with today's tasks (see attachement).

It works well but since I am using Evernote for everything else I'd like to have my to-todos in the new Task section of Evernote as well. 

But to make this move I REALLY need the home screen widget for Tasks but that doesn't seem possible. When I try to create new widgets nothing related to Evernote pops up in the list of apps. 

Is it really impossible to create home screen widgets in iOS for Evernote (and Tasks)? I really hope that I am missing something obvious here.

[PinkElephant 8,072]

Currently no EN widget, no long press menu option, not even multitasking support on devices like the iPad.

EN has focussed on a mobile app that feels and works the same on all mobile platforms. Drilling deep into options of individual platforms was out of scope, it seems.

Ah, I forgot: No Apple Watch support …

[ehrt74 240]

Evernote has an open API, so if you can code and can jump through the hoops Apple imposes you could write your own widget.

[PinkElephant 8,072]

That’s maybe taking the DYI concept a little too far for most of us earthlings !

[DanishDuckling 4]

Thank you guys for the replies.

To me, it's a disaster that an Evernote widget does not exist. Is it really that hard to make happen? Anyway, I guess I will have to stick with Things 3 for to-dos.

[agsteele 2,942]

The recent blog post from EN CEO, Ian Small, says that mobile widgets are coming...

https://evernote.com/blog/ceo-update-january-2022/

[buckethead 218]

This is something that we’ve asked for since the tasks beta. I think in order for this to be successful on iOS though, EN tasks need to update in the background. Right now you need to open the EN app and wait a little bit for tasks to sync. Otherwise the widget is going to show tasks you might have completed on another device. I mean I still get notifications on my iPhone for tasks I completed hours ago on my iPad or Mac……..

 

The recent blog post by @Ian Smallmentions mobile widgets are coming. @Jack LynchAlso mentions in a video interview that getting tasks into EN quicker and easieris on the way also - don’t remember exactly how he phrased it though. 

[ehrt74 240]

Updating widgets or apps in the background is a solved problem. Speaking of Android, the way to do this is to use the Google infrastructure to send a message to an Android phone telling it to wake up a process and deal with a push notification. I imagine iOS devices have something similar. (Of course this means that Apple knows exactly what apps are being used on your iphone just like the Google infrastructure knows exactly what app is being told to wake up on an Android phone.)

-- off-topic stuff -- 

This is also the reason why "degoogling" an Android phone is difficult. We expect modern phones to be connected to a resilient push-notification infrastructure (we want to get our instant messaging notifications quickly without the phone's battery dying after 2 hours due to ten different apps polling ten different servers every 5 seconds). 

Any attempt to "degoogle" a consumer Android device requires building this infrastructure---a stupendously expensive endeavor, and convincing software companies writers to also support your infrastructure with their backend services.

[PinkElephant 8,072]

There are 2 things we need to keep apart here: Push notifications and full background activity.

Updating a widget would be such a push notification - usually the content possible on widgets is limited, and by these limits the amount of background activity is small. To tell a task has been completed on another device is probably below 1.000 bytes.

A full background activity in iOS is usually not allowed, or better only on very few use cases. Since the sudden shutdown they had a while ago, Apple is doing a lot to protect the device batteries. So an activity like downloading tons of data for later offline use will IMHO not be permitted - I am pretty sure about this.

Luckily it makes not much sense to de-Apple an Apple device. And it practically is impossible, no way to install an open OS like one can try with an Android device.

[buckethead 218]

On 1/15/2022 at 6:17 PM, PinkElephant said:

A full background activity in iOS is usually not allowed, or better only on very few use cases

It would be great if EN could sync only tasks in the background, not all notes. I don’t know iOS development at all, so no idea if it’s possible or not.
 

Right now every time I open up a different device I need to wait 10-20 seconds for tasks to sync. This feel like forever when just waiting…… Also allowing tasks to sync in the background would help prevent notifications for completed tasks - for example I complete a task on my Mac, but get notified on my iPhone that I need to complete it an at its due time or reminder time later. That should not happen. 

[PinkElephant 8,072]

AFAIK this is no feasible method (but I could be wrong). Services that update on the fly usually get push messages from the server.