Shwidget

Do you have a KPI or other value, which is updated automatically in Google Sheets, and you would like to follow that value without constantly opening Sheets app to check if the value has changed or not? Download Shwidget then!

Shwidget is an app that displays any Google Sheet cell value in an iOS Widget. Values are updated totally automatically via iOS own Widget update system. Widgets can be on Home Screen with multiple sizes and also on lock screen.

Shwidget does not send your data anywhere and it does not require user account or anything other nasty.

SETTING THINGS UP

This is easy. All you need is the ID of the sheet, you want to fetch the data and then the Cell ID’s, where the data is on that spreadsheet. Optionally, you can add a title for each value, which is shown in the widget too. Set the permissions to the Sheets to “accessible by aynone with the link” and set the permission to read-only. After setting these up in the app, the iOS Widget update system takes care of updating automatically.

PRO TIPS

The Sheet ID can be found in the URL address of the Google Sheets table. The ID is the long string with random characters between dashes. Do not include dashes.

EXAMPLE:

- This is the link to our example Google Sheets spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CMvaCWBAsrAftZjT5nXlntTUsnmkkZDlxMkXhAd_sBs/ 
- The Sheet ID you are looking for, is the long string of random characters without the slashes: 1CMvaCWBAsrAftZjT5nXlntTUsnmkkZDlxMkXhAd_sBs
- Copy that and paste it into the Shwidget app’s first text input field. DO NOT paste the whole URL, but snip out the long ID string only.

NOTE: The general access permission of the spreadsheet must be set to “Aynone with the link”, so that Shwidget app can access it. So in Google Sheets, open the Sheets Sharing option, set the “General Access” to “Anyone with the link” and set the role to Viewer. It can be something else than Viewer, but for Shwidget you don’t have to grant more access.

TIP OF THE TIPS: If you don’t want to make your “Mothership of all Sheets” Spreadsheet anyhow accessible other than you, you can create a new, like a proxy spreadsheet, and then use IMPORTRANGE function in the proxy spreadsheet to fetch the data from you Mothership Sheets.

Example setup: You can test the functionality with the sheet ID above. Use the ID: 1CMvaCWBAsrAftZjT5nXlntTUsnmkkZDlxMkXhAd_sBs and for cell ID eg. D1,D2,D3 or E1,E2,E3,E4,E5,E6,E7 or F9, F10 or F14. And open the Sheets above to see what the values should be. :)

There is now three values to be fetched, but we will add more values, if you want to. Please send us suggestions and feedback, that is valuable and anticipated – good or bad! :) You can reach us via email at: mikko_at_appsipaja.fi

NOTE! Please note that the iOS Widget background updating system is not 100% real-time and instant, but it uses an update budget to save your battery life etc. But in practise, the automatic updating works very well, and if you need to check the real real data for every second, you will open the Sheets app and check it there and hit refresh or whatever is your trick here.

Cheers,
Mikko