Glances
A glance is a card on the device's home strip, like a watch face. While it shows, it owns the buttons and the microphone.
The device's home is a strip of cards you scroll through sideways. Each card is a glance, and a glance shows one useful thing at a glance — the time and the weather, a running timer, what is playing, the last message. Think of a watch face, or a widget on a home screen.
A glance does one thing a widget does not. While it is showing, it owns the buttons and the microphone. The top button might play and pause on the card that is showing what is playing, then start a timer on the next card over. Scroll to a different glance and the same button means something else.
The home strip
- The buttons and the microphone answer to this card while it shows.
- The top button plays and pauses here.
What a glance owns
A glance owns the buttons and the microphone while it is showing.
This is what makes the strip more than a carousel. The same button dictates on one card and plays a track on the next; the microphone can be off on one card and listening on another. Scroll to a different glance and the controls change with it — nothing is reflashed, nothing global is touched.
So a glance carries more than a picture. It also holds its own controls:
- Its buttons. Every button-and-gesture on the card — a tap, a double-tap, a hold — can point at something to do.
- Its microphone. Off, push-to-talk, continuous, or both — continuous listening with a hold-to-talk on top.
- Its extra pages. A glance can carry more pages, up to six, that you scroll down to. The card is what you see first; the pages are there when you want the detail.
All of it applies only while that glance is on screen. That is the whole idea. See Bindings for what a button can be pointed at.
Two ways to make one
There are two kinds of glance, and the difference is who did the design.
Two ways to make a glance
- Pick a template and drop a widget into each slot.
- An empty slot stays empty until you fill it.
- You point the buttons at what you want.
- The app ships the whole card, already laid out.
- The app keeps the buttons and the microphone.
- You change the options it offers, and where it sits.
Assembled is the watch-complication idea. You pick a template — a single hero, a hero with two cells under it, or a grid of four cells with a bar — and drop a widget into each slot. Each slot wants a widget of its own kind: a cell takes a cell, the hero takes a hero. A slot you have not filled is drawn as an empty slot on the device, and you point the buttons wherever you like.
Tailored is the other end. An app ships the whole card already designed — its layout, its words, its buttons — declares which options you are allowed to change, and keeps the buttons for itself. You still decide whether it is on the strip and where it sits, and you set the options the app offers.
Why the device shows both the same way
The device draws every glance the same way — it does not know or care whether you assembled a card or an app shipped it whole. That difference lives in the companion's editor, which decides what you are allowed to change. On an assembled card you own the template, the slots and the buttons. On a tailored one the app owns them, so the editor offers you only the options the app declared — while you still choose whether the card is on the strip, and where.
You arrange the strip
The strip lives on the device. It holds up to eight glances, and they stay there with nothing connected. You add, remove and reorder them in the companion on your Mac; the device takes the change and redraws. See Arrange your glances to build one, and Apps for where a tailored glance comes from.