Hi All,
Just stopping by to say we released our 1.0.2 update Tuesday Eve UK time.
The main changes are around notifications, we've spent a lot of time making them more robust and reliable and would love feedback, good or bad with the new update.
I've got some more changes in 1.0.3 for notifications, but that's a 3-4 weeks away.
1.0.2 also includes some haptic feedback on the main screen for iPhone 7 users. Not sure if anyone uses the haptic at all?
Also, I thought it would be good to post some information about what may cause notifications to not get through.
First, Weather Gods approach to notifications is a little different to most other apps, in that we try to make them a slightly more personal experiences, taking into account unit settings, 24 hour clock - soon they will be localised as well
To achieve this we use a master heartbeat which is sent to the app every 15 minutes, triggering Weather Gods to run notification generation.
Things which can stop this from running - and which unfortunately are out of our control:
- force quitting the app; Apple takes this as a sign that the user is not enjoying the app and therefore notifications are no longer appropriate.
- low battery or low power mode; the device decides you can't spare the battery to run a background weather check and therefore it is cancelled until the device decides that the battery has sufficient charge again
- no network or poor network connection; Weather Gods has a limited amount of time given to it by the device to check the weather. if the network is poor then we 'overstay our welcome' and the device will terminate us :(
- software update or a reset of the device. sometimes a power off / on as well
- background refresh switched off globally or switched off for Weather Gods.
All of the above (except background refresh switched off) can be quickly resolved by re-launching Weather Gods and we will carry on where we left off.
One more thing to clarify - it's safe to press the 'home' button on Weather Gods and put us into the background - we'll continue to receive the heartbeat as normal.
If anyone is having any problems with Weather Gods notifications then please don't hesitate to get in contact - we've put extra debug information in the feedback email to help us resolve these issues.
The extra debug information includes the :
- the name of the location for which the notification applies - we don't send any current location GPS information in the email
- schedule time; morning, evening or as it happens
- schedule type; rain, wind, storm, sunrise, summary etc
Fingers crossed that notifications should now be much improved!
Thanks
Scott
Comments
notification improve.
hi, thank you for working on this update. how ever, a few question to ask.
1. when you said, force quit the app, you mean, close it down using the app switcher on the phone? does it mean, to get most up to date notification, it is better to let weather gods running all the time insted of quit using app switcher? that will take out a considerable amount of battery. any way to solve it in the future?
2. i have mark down 5 places for notifications, but most of the time i am only getting 2 or 3 places even with the summery report. is that to be aspected?
keep up good work there. enjoying the app so far.
chee Chau.
Notifications
Hi Chau
Thanks for the feedback.
Yes, force quit means to close it down from the app switcher. Apple recommend that apps are no longer force quit as it uses more battery to relaunch from fresh.
1. It's fine to leave WG running in the background. It runs for a couple of seconds every 15 minutes so shouldn't impact the battery.
2. Notifications will only be generated if the weather event occurs, so it depends on your notifications.
More than happy to check if there are any notification problems. If you send me the feedback email from the app then we can figure out which are active and any which should be active but aren't.
I am shortly off to bed but will reply first thing in the morning (UK time)
Cheers
Scott