Caffeine++ and Siri

Caffeine++ 2.6 brings compatibility with iOS 17 and watchOS 10.

iOS 17 gives us amazing changes which put third-party apps on the same playing field as first-party apps. I am very happy about iOS 17 changes, and how they can be used with C++. I am already using Siri and the new widget myself and it helps.

I have found out that you can build your interactive widgets using the built-in Shortcuts app. Here’s the Shorctus widget demonstrating all Caffeinee++ actions.

These are very powerful improvements:

• You can execute each command right from the widget.
• You can execute the same commands with Siri
• I have tested commands on iPhone and Apple Watch, but it should also work with HomePod
• Rename any shortcut and it will be your Siri phrase
• You no longer need to say the third-party app name when using Siri
• On iPhone, and, hopefully, HomePod, you can use natural language to provide the date and time for the “Log with the date” command

Here’s an example executing the “Log with date” Siri command on Apple Watch.

Bonus – app synonyms

In addition, I added “C++” as an app synonym. This allows running the “open” command using Siri. For instance, you can say “Open C++” and you know what happens.

Developer notes

While my focus for this update was fixing regressions caused by changes in WidgetKit, I have, also spent a significant amount of time studying App Intents framework. The amount of possibilities this framework offers made my head spin. The amount of changes delivered in the last 2 years is huge. I can speculate that this framework will play a huge role in visionOS. It is already integrated with all Apple-made devices, tvOS been the only exception.

As a consequence of dropping support for older iOS and watchOS versions, I have removed twice the lines of code than added. 🚀