Apple introduced in and since then they are making a big difference in the world of iOS App Development. Lets get started with some extensions related terminology first. App Extensions iOS 8 Terminology What’s an App Extension? An app extension lets you extend custom functionality and content beyond your app and make it available to users while they’re interacting with other apps or the system. It is used for some specific task. It is not an independent app. Extension Point An extension is tied to a particular area of the system refered to as the extension point. Each extension can have atmost 1 extension point. : Example T_oday Extension_ is tied to Notification Center can appear only in Share Extension UIActivityViewController. Containing App The app for which the extension is created. Host App The app from which the extension is launched You can get clarity of the terminology in the upcoming sections. Have patience..🙂 Extension Lifecycle User chooses the app extension from the host app. System initiates the app extension. Extension displays its view within the context of host app. User performs the required task in app extension and dismisses it. User returns to the previous context in the host app. Shortly after the app extension performs its task, the system terminates the extension. Example: In the above screenshot, : Facebook Share Extension App Extension : Facebook Containing App : Photos App Host App How App Extension Communicates Direct communication between app extension and host app. System uses interprocess communication for communication between host app and extension. There is a request from the host app and a response from the extension. No communication between containing app and host app. Indirect communication between app extension and containing app. : 1. — to share code 2. — to share data. Example, Shared Resources Framework App Group Today Extension (Widget) Widgets extensions. These are simple view controllers with some additional functionality and hence their lifecycle works normally as for other view controllers. are Notification Center Performance is most important: Use cached data. Move expensive operations to . background Design a simple UI. Today Extensions in iOS 10 Initially Today Extension was introduced in iOS 8. Later in iOS 10, some significant changes were made to it. In , needed to be handled explicitly by the developers. It was a tedious task since it required constraint and layout handling to adjust the widget’s height according to the content. But in , Apple provided APIs to handle such functionality without taking much pain. Example: iOS 8 and iOS 9 Show More/Show Less iOS 10 How to? Here I’ll provide you the basic constructs that you require to implement a in . At the end of this article you can find a link to the Today Extension iOS 10 Sample. App Group — Share data with the Containing App As stated earlier, you cannot directly share data between your extension and its containing app. To share data, you need to use . App Group Even though an app extension bundle is nested within its containing app’s bundle, the running app extension and containing app have no direct access to each other’s containers. To enable data sharing, use Xcode or the Developer portal to enable app groups for the containing app and its contained app extensions. Next, register the app group in the portal and specify the app group to use in the containing app. You cannot use to share data between and the . standard UserDefaults App Extension Containing App Use one for data that is only for . Use for data that you want to share between . Just don’t persist the same data in both of them. Avoid data redundancy. Use both of them according to the context. standard Containing App suiteName Extension and Containing App NCWidgetDisplayMode There exist 2 modes in which you can display data in your widget. These modes are categorized under as and NCWidgetDisplayMode compact expanded. has a of and Compact mode fixed height 110 is used for according to your content. Expanded mode variable height buttons are shown in the widget’s top right corner according to the i.e. in compact mode, show more is visible and in expanded mode, show less is visible. Show More or Show Less widget’s active display mode signifies the largest display mode supported by your app. widgetLargestAvailableDisplayMode When set to your app will only support compact mode i.e. show more/show less functionality will no longer be supported and your widget will have a fixed height of 110. compact, When set to the app will support both compact and expanded mode and show more/show less functionality will work accordingly. expanded, Handling Height according to Display Mode protocol provides a method that handles the size of the widget in and mode. NCWidgetProviding delegate widgetActiveDisplayModeDidChange(_: maxSize:) compact expanded of the widget remains same according to the device you are using. There is no provision provided to change it. Width of the widget can be changed according to the . Height active display mode In expanded mode, the maximum height that you can provide to a widget cannot be more than the visible space provided to widgets in the Notification Center. Note: Updating Widget To help your widget look up to date, the system occasionally captures snapshots of your widget’s view. When the widget becomes visible again, the most recent snapshot is displayed until the system replaces it with a live version of the view. : widgetPerformUpdate called when widget is updated in background. called before widget snapshot is taken. Opening Containing App from Today Extension You can open your containing app from the extension using open(_ URL:, completionHandler:) You also need to define in the of your containing app. YOUR_URL_SCHEME URL Types When the containing app is opened from extension, you can get the handle in method. AppDelegate’s application(_ : url: sourceApplication: annotation: ) Show/Hide Widget from Containing App In case you need to show or hide the extension depending to the content you want to show, you can do it from your containing app. Framework — Share code with the Containing App You cannot directly share the code between your extension and its containing app. To share data, you need to use . Framework You can create an embedded framework to share code between your app extension and its containing app. Make sure your embedded framework does not contain APIs unavailable to app extensions. If you have a custom framework that does contain such APIs, you can safely link to it from your containing app but cannot share that code with the app’s contained extensions. The App Store rejects any app extension that links to such frameworks or that otherwise uses unavailable APIs. To configure an app extension target to use an embedded framework, set the target’s “Require Only App-Extension-Safe API” build setting to Yes. Unable to Load — Most common issue faced in Today Extension Unable to load in mostly appears when: Today Extension You extension due to some reason. crash It takes more memory than what is provided by the system. (Memory Limit : max 16MB approx.) Debug your app extension to find out the exact problem. Refer to Xcode’s for Memory and CPU utilization. Debug Gauge Things to remember: Avoid using . scroll views Doesn’t support keyboard entry. Must be . light weight Extension that launches too slowly is terminated by the system. Low memory limits — (max 16 MB approx.) Some APIs unavailable to App Extension — sharedApplication object, camera, microphone, receive data using airdrop. Sample Widget _Today-Widget - iOS 10 and iOS 8/iOS 9 Today's Extension (Widget)_github.com pgpt10/Today-Widget Promotions Don’t forget to read my other articles: Everything you’ve always wanted to know about notifications in iOS Drag It & Drop It in Collection & Table — iOS 11 Color it with GRADIENTS — iOS Everything about Codable in Swift 4 UICollectionViewCell selection made easy..!! Feel free to leave comments in case you have any doubts.
