Debit & Credit 5.6: Lock-Screen Widgets and Roadmap
One of the biggest things that were added in iOS 16 is the lock-screen widgets. In Debit & Credit there are three types of lock-screen widgets:
- Budgets — available as a circular and a rectangular widget. Allows you to quickly track the progress of your budget. When possible, the widget icon changes depending on your budget categories (e.g. knife and fork icon for a budget that has the“Restaurants & Cafes” category)
- Scheduled Transactions — available as a rectangular widget. Displays information about the next scheduled transaction.
- App Launcher (available in version 5.6.1)— used to quickly open the app. Useful when you want to start creating a new transaction right from the lock screen.
The same widgets are available on Apple Watch as complications.
What’s Next?
I have never been a fan of publishing a roadmap or making big commitments about the future development of the app, however, now it is time for an exception.
Debit & Credit was launched back in 2014 which is a long time ago. While I am very happy with the way how the app looks and works now, it is time to modernize the foundation of the app.
It is going to be a long and slow process involving different components changing under the hood. If everything goes according to the plan, you will see only minor differences in the app in terms of its design and work. You might ask, why bother spending so much development time if there is no apparent benefit to the user?
Sometimes as a developer you need to take steps to make sure that you are prepared for the future and not lagging behind. Because one day the old foundation might not allow the app to implement new features.
What I can promise is that I will not take the “macOS Ventura System Settings” approach. I will not make the app worse in any way just to make a switch to something new. If the new thing is not ready, I will not use it in Debit & Credit. That I can promise.
The first step in the roadmap is to use the new reports visual engine (Swift Charts). Visually reports will look pretty much the same as they do now, however, the app will be asking iOS (or macOS) to draw charts instead of drawing them itself. I am already working on that.
Once that new piece is tested and released without any issues, I will also upgrade the internal engine that is calculating reports in the app. This will allow me to address a couple of small bugs in reporting that I have on my list.
Once reports are done, the next step will be upgrading financial plans in the same manner. They are built on top of reports, so they will need to also use the new reports engine and I also want to add a table view mode for reports on the iPad.
Other parts of the app will follow but for the next year, I will focus on reports and financial plans. Thank you for reading this and choosing Debit & Credit! 😊
