Use case scenario: Drafts as a gratitude repository // Want to have an auto-updating widget

Scripting
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Hello all!

First time year, yet I’ve been using Drafts since my high school days. Lately, I’ve been using it to write down random notes of things I’m grateful for as life goes on.

What I would really love is to have a widget on my home screen. I know Drafts has some pretty :fire:
awesome widget options, but none that auto-update from what I can tell to show random notes from a specific tag for example.

Does anyone have a script or perhaps a Shortcut setup that can allow the widget to update periodically to show different notes throughout the day from a specific tag or folder?

Thank you :smile:

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If only widget update were more frequent / reliable…

… I could imagine surfacing a short list of drafts in a widget, based on work context. And switching work context with automation.

Unfortunately, we really can’t rely on widgets to update in a timely fashion.

Even “grab a coffee and come back 5 minutes later and the widget now shows what you want” would be much better than what we have now.

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I used WidgetPack (and Shortcuts) to demo showing random lines from a draft. That could be modified to show content from a random draft.

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How frequently / reliably would that update?

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Widget update frequency is covered in the Apple developer documentation. I think many people have an expectation of more control, but really it is functioning a bit like a background refresh. The system controls much of it based on system resources available and ensuring that widgets don’t chew through the device battery while you are not using the device, or when you access the device to do something and suddenly all resources go to widget updates rather than say opening the email app which is what you actually accessed the device to do.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/widgetkit/keeping-a-widget-up-to-date

Reliability, should be pretty high. I don’t use this exact setup myself, but iOS, Shortcuts, Drafts, and the Widget Pack app have all been reliable enough for me that I wouldn’t think twice about using them if I did want to do this myself.

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Agreed, but I thought the use case called for a timely surfacing of a list of drafts - as part of a context switch. I’ve not seen anything yet that suggests this is feasible.

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Timely wouldn’t mean frequently, but the only frequency I see in the original post is for it to occur multiple times a day.

Have I missed something else about the frequency in the question?

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I don’t think you have. Given I’ve seen some widgets fail to update for over a day - and I’m thinking as an example of OmniFocus Forecast - I don’t see widgets as currently fit for the “contextual computing” purpose.

Granted, that probably isn’t their purpose right now. I’d like to think it could be in iOS / iPad OS 15. But there I go wishcasting again. :slight_smile: