Shipped the Android home screen widget! 3 weeks, 2 rejections, 1 very late night

It is LIVE! You can tick a habit from the home screen without opening the app.

What I learned:

• Widgets cannot run code whenever they want. Android decides. Android does not care about your streak.
• First rejection: the screenshot showed a notification bar with a competitor's icon in it. Really.
• Second rejection: "metadata". No further details. I changed one word and it passed.

7 day retention for people who add the widget: 71%. Without it: 44%.

Congratulations. The "metadata" rejection is a rite of passage. I have had it four times and I still do not know what it means.

71 against 44 is big, but careful: people who bother to add a widget were already your keenest users. Can you prompt half of new users to add it and see whether it moves the others?

Ooh, yes. Doing that as the next test!

For the update timing: use an exact alarm only for the midnight rollover and let everything else be lazy. You will save battery and stay out of the "excessive wakeups" report.

Did you build it native or through Flutter? I am about to start mine and dreading it.

Native for the widget, Flutter for the app, a tiny bridge between. I will send you the bridge code, it is 60 lines!

Ticking this off the Ship or Shame list with great pleasure.