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Wallflower 3.2 – The Laundry List Release
There’s a huge backlog of features that didn’t make it into Wallflower 3.0. In these situations I like to do what I call a “Laundry List Release”: a release with a ton of little things that didn’t make the cut, because the big releases concentrate on the bigger features. That’s what 3.2 is. I’m also planning 3.3 and 3.4 right now, which will be feature releases, and I’m collecting ideas for 4.0, the next major release. Here’s what’s new in 3.2:
iPhone Duo support. I’m really happy with how well Wallflower works on the iPhone Duo. I built it in the Simulator only, without the real device, and without having seen many examples of how others (and Apple) do it. For that, it turned out very well. Now that I have the real device, I’m having all kinds of new ideas about how interaction works on this platform. Did I mention I’m collecting ideas for 4.0? ;-)
You can lock the app to one dashboard. Together with Guided Access, that’s super handy, for example in guest rooms.
Rooms and zones can be managed right in Wallflower. Zones are especially interesting: A room can be part of several zones at the same time, like “Upstairs” and “Bedrooms”. You can pick a zone as the source of an automatic dashboard, so it’s ready without much extra setup. And zones are a HomeKit feature, so they sync throughout your whole HomeKit setup, even across accounts.
Blocked or tampered devices: HomeKit can report devices as blocked or tampered with, like a motorized door with something in its way, or a smoke detector that someone has tampered with. Wallflower now reports these the way it reports low batteries or unreachable devices.
Speaking of doors: Motorized ones are now supported, garage doors finally get their own tile, and motorized windows are supported too, which is especially useful for roof windows. Velux makes them, so if you have something like that, please try it out and let me know if it works!
There’s also a lot more support for valves and irrigation, and, yes, even shower heads. For example, Eve Aqua should report its state much more reliably: Add it to the dashboard, and once the water flows, you’ll see the time remaining. More complex irrigation systems with multiple valves are supported, too. And so are shower heads with flow and temperature control, though I’d be interested if anyone is even using those… If you have one of those, tell me how it works for you!
Fans with control of speed, slats and rotation are fully supported.
Security-related actions can now require Face ID, Touch ID or a password. That’s for door locks, motorized doors, alarm systems, etc.
Carbon monoxide sensors are supported.
So are humidifiers and dehumidifiers.
Thermostats and air conditioners have improved interfaces and support more of their features.
And there’s much more. Oh, almost forgot: A fan favorite is back. I feel confident enough creating custom SF Symbols to bring back a way to request symbols for devices you own but can’t find in the list. That’s a Wallflower 1.0 feature making a comeback. It was dropped because the new SF Symbols format is a lot harder to create than the PDFs the symbols were based on in the old days. 2019 was an easier time.
Hossa, this took a long time. Originally submitted late September, the Mac release of You Get A Code barely made it to the App Store in October. It’s out now, and you can get all features on your Mac, too!
Of course the primary platform for YGAC is iOS. That’s what you have with you, and it’s where you show the codes. But everything syncs with iCloud, and having a real Mac to get an overview of what’s redeemed, is something I wanted to have.
And since Wallflower has to be Catalyst (HomeKit and Matter are only available there), this was an opportunity to finally make an AppKit based app again.
This is version 1.0 and the foundation to more, so if you have any suggestions or wishes, feel free to send me a mail.
You Get A Code!
It started as a small internal tool for managing offer codes. These codes enable developers to set any price they want for their apps, different from the App Store: Free versions for Friends & Family or Press, discounted versions, or codes that offer different trials, like 2 months for half the price etc.
A code can be something you set like LAUNCHWEEK and can be redeemed by whoever knows it - or it can be a list of one-time codes, with up to a million per app and quarter. Everybody I know either uses cumbersome Excel lists to manage these codes, or doesn’t bother with them at all, because they are too complicated to keep track of.
This is where You Get A Code comes in. It gets the codes directly from App Store Connect, and with that also gets the price information and the expiry date. It fetches the apps name and icon from the same source, and from all this builds a redeemable ticket that looks like it belongs to your app.
You can invalidate single use codes with a cool little scissor slider, because handing out your work should be fun. It also keeps track when, where, and, if you make a note, to whom you handed out the code. All synced via your iCloud account. No server, no tracking, no-one to trust but yourself.
And there’s plenty other features, too: Widgets of all forms and sizes, with animated scissors too! Writing reusable codes to an NFC-tag. Sending a bunch of codes to another user without App Store Connect, so they can hand out codes, too.
It’s a fun app and a playground for me, too. Pricing is simple: One entry is free, unlimited entries costs a one-time fee and is yours forever. No subscription - not because I think they’re bad, but because they don’t apply here. This is a small utility app you’ll use irregularly. It’s on iPhone, iPad, iPhone Duo. It will soon have a Mac app that is currently waiting for review. And I have tons of ideas on what else to do. If you have any, too, I’m eager to hear them!
iOS 18 is back
The question I get the most is about compatibility. Wallflower is perfect for that old iPad that isn’t updated anymore and would otherwise spend its time in the drawer. After all, the project started with those devices in mind, back in 2019, and it supported iOS 9, the first iOS version with HomeKit, up until Wallflower 2 was released in 2024.
Today’s release of Wallflower 3.1 is about compatibility: In addition supporting 9 additional languages, to the new iOS 27 and iOS 26, it re-adds iOS 18 support. That just wasn’t ready in time for the 3.0 release. This makes Wallflower 3 compatible with devices that were sold as far back as 2018.
“Hey, Wallflower 2 supported iOS 17. And what’s with iOS 9 to 16? That’s what Wallflower 1 supported.”
But for the new release, I drew the line at iOS 18 for mainly two reasons: First, I wanted to support more devices by building a more flexible interface that suits iPads and iPhones in their various sizes, and second, I wanted reliability and rock-solid support where the users actually are.
Previous versions supported iPads in landscape and had a much harder time adapting to iPads in portrait mode and iPhones. Supporting multitasking or new sizes like the just-announced iPhone Duo wouldn’t be achievable with the way Wallflower 2 was set up either. To make the new version easily adaptable to a lot more devices and add freely customizable dashboards, it had to rely on features that were only introduced in iOS 18, and are not possible to port back to older versions without major drawbacks. One example of these is SwiftUIs Container Views that let the app dynamically change what’s on screen between the time it’s specified and the time it’s drawn.
Second, with iOS 18 it’s much easier to build future-proof support of new device types, Matter, and other HomeKit advancements. At the same time, there simply weren’t many iOS 17 users left in Wallflower 2. My theory is that Apple cut out the “New Home Architecture” in iOS 26, which left users below iOS 16.4 without access to an upgraded HomeKit Home— and that brought many users to upgrade to newer devices— even the ones not affected. And with Matter that’s going to be even more; using that platform simply isn’t fun on very old operating systems.
In any case, one thing remains true for all past and present users that have a compatible HomeKit home: The old versions of Wallflower stay available, and the purchases remain valid throughout all versions of the app. The new version needs iOS 18. But the app is available for all versions down to iOS 9.