Thank you for your feedback. I have personally argued for months with some Apple engineers about the deprecation of the Today Widgets and their disappearance on every app update, explained them multiple times how good they are and how many users are using them (including me). The final conclusion from their side was that seeing the widgets at all is the actual bug… That’s why we have started to migrate all previous functionality to the new widgets. Later they introduced buttons (I think with iOS 16) which gives us the ability to implement the relays control. Scenes, groups and rollers are also planed.
Why the old widgets work better than the new ones? There’s one major difference between them - the old widgets are refreshed EVERY time you open the today view. This way you are always seeing the actual state of the device. Because the new widgets could be placed wherever you want they aren’t updated every time you see them (probably for battery efficiency). They could be updated only after user interaction - pressing a button or opening the app, or when the iOS decides based on algorithms about the frequency of interactions, last time you have been to this screen etc.. That’s why we have added the refresh button on top of the widgets. Unfortunately the refresh is out of our control. It’s the same with the widgets size. It’s predefined by the iOS.
Personally I’m using the widgets on a daily basis and, believe me, we’re doing everything possible to make the new widgets experience closer to the old ones.
Thank you for the support, any suggestions are greatly welcomed!