Fin 4.0 is available starting today.
Two major new features I want to point out here. The first is running a timer on multiple iOS devices. Connect your iPhone and iPad, for instance, and start a single timer on both. This is great for when you have a speaker on stage, and an audio-visual table in the back of the room or off stage. You can start the stage timer remotely. Or sometimes you just want to see your timer from multiple positions on stage. Now you can do that with multiple iPads.
Technically, you can connect up to seven devices at once, but I recommend no more than three.
The second major feature is local notifications on Apple Watch. For those who have been using Fin for a while, you know that the Apple Watch app would only tap you on the wrist if the timer were in the background on your iPhone. This is obviously not ideal if you’re on stage and you want to see your timer, yet still get tapped for warning and end times. Later I’ll go into more details about the challenges I faced getting the local notifications to work, and the limitations that still exist in my implementation (fingers crossed for some help from iOS 11) but for most use cases, the local notifications should work very well. Just launch the app on your watch at some point while the timer is running, or start the timer with your watch, and then forget it. Go back to your watch face; lower your wrist. Carry on with your day. You should get notified at warning times and when the timer has elapsed, even while the iPhone app is still in the foreground.
If you only want to be tapped at certain warning times, or only for the end timer, you can set those preferences on the settings screen.
In addition to these new features, I also did a lot of rearchitecting around the app, improving the experience on iPad, tweaking the preset editing process, and more. If you are a Fin user, I’d love to know what you think of the update. There is a Leave Feedback link on the What’s New page, which is available on the information screen.
You can also leave me a rating or review, which would really help.
