We have now added the ability for app developers to show their apps as they intended it to be shown, without any limitations on time. The Tidbyt will now honor the full animation length of each app and will not cut off and switch to a new app midway through, if it has been implemented by the developer. This has been especially troublesome for news, quotes, trivia and some of our popular sports apps where 15 seconds is not enough to show all the information from the app.
The ability to define how long an individual app should be displayed has been one of our most requested features and we believe that this is a good first step at addressing that. For app developers, this is controlled by adding a single boolean flag to the Root widget. More details on how this works can be found on our developer website tidbyt.dev
With this announcement, we are also happy to share that a lot of the apps where this feature has been needed have now migrated over to start using it.
The sports apps by @cmarkham20 (or Lunchbox8484 in the Tidbyt app) have fully migrated over to use this. He has also given full control to the user to define how long each screen should be displayed. Read more about it in his post here
A few other apps that has now added this new feature include
ESPN News by rs7q5
Word Of The Day by greg-n
Jokes API by rs7q5
Aa Daily Reflect by jvivona
The Guardian News by jvivona
NASCAR Next Race by jvivona
Count Up Clockby jvivona
News by Tidbyt
And more…
We are excited to see how you all will use this and as always, help us improve the Tidbyt experience by providing feedback!
I had some follow up questions I hope you can address:
(1) Can this boolean flag shorten the app’s display time or only lengthen it?
(2) Can this (changing the app’s duration) be done for apps we add ourselves through the API (via Pixlet Push) as well as for those made available via the Community? I’ve added some of my own apps to my own Tidbyt’s rotation, and I’d want them to have a custom run time (and to complete their own animations), but as of now, this doesn’t seem to be happening and the 20-second animation is still getting cut off after 15 seconds.
(3) Can or will there be a way to make Tidbyt’s built-in apps last for different amounts of time? Some apps, for example, show static information for 15 seconds which is far longer than they need to be seen to communicate the information, and being able to change that time would be a wonderful customization feature. A way for this to be user-customizable on an app by app level is still a desired feature.
It will not shorten it. If the animation is shorter than the app speed, it will loop the animation as many times it can fit to display it in it’s entirety in the configured app cycle speed. E.g. a 4 second animation will be shown 3 times (12s) in the default 15s app cycle speed.
Apps that are pushed via the API will not honor the new flag, sorry.
This is TBD, and we would like to better understand the needs for that. What are some examples of apps that you would like to have a on shorter app cycle?
In reverse order, Re #3, This is true for me and I make no pretense that others would see it the same way: I have in mind static apps like the clock app. I can discern the time and temperature in the first 5-7 seconds, and then it seems like a a really long time before the next app shows. Same is true for weather. This also applies to some user-created apps like sunrise/sunset times, world clock, and similar apps where there is a limited amount of information that remains static on the screen. (I wouldn’t however want to speed up the app cycle as a whole, however, because this then cuts short other apps that need more time.)
Re #2: That’s too bad. Any chance this change can be made now or in the future? The Apps I’ve been working on are not ones that I imagine the community would have much use for, but having time flexibility would make a big difference. Incidentally, until early last week, there was a bit more flexibility for lengthening API-based Apps. Until the honor-flag change was made, API-push Animations that lasted between 7.5 seconds and 26 seconds all played in their entirety one full time and then the next app cycled in. This allowed a lot better flexibility. However, in making the change that honored the show-animation-in-full boolean for the community apps, API-push apps that lasted over 15 seconds are now cut off at the 15-second mark. My first preference would be to have API-push apps work just as community apps now do, but if that’s really not possible, at least going back to 26 seconds would be helpful. Any thoughts/prospects on this would be helpful.
Does this mean we can now build a “count down” app?
The use case I would love to cover is building a “timer” for my kids.
Quite often they want to do an activity that we want to time box. Having the Tidbyt display the remaining time (without rotating to other Scenes) is our ideal scenario.
you did not need show full animation for counting down, your bigger issue was likely pinning the app. Which is now possible too, but I think there is also a countdown app already too. So you would also have a starting point too.
so the app won’t remove itself, but you could have it perpetually pinned and if you coded the clock such that if time expired you use return [] then it would not show up in the rotation… So it would sort of be like removing itself… if that makes sense.
you could also schedule the app too, but in order for you to have the clock restart it would have to be reset. But this seems irrelevant and just having it not show up in rotation seems to make way more sense.
Edit: you could probably add a config to the countdown clock app already there so if the event has passed then it just hides the clock instead of saying the event is here or has passed. I haven’t used that app, so not sure. sure the original author would be up for it.
Same here! I had some API-pushed scrolling animations with the timing just right, but no more. I now have to produce a 13s .gif to have it shown for 15s. Very odd.
