Widgets, Siri and the Apple Watch
The widgets, Siri, the Watch app and its complications are free. Family messages on the Watch need Hamdam Plus, as they do on the phone.
Most of what Hamdam does outside the app needs nothing turned on. The Siri phrases register themselves, and the widgets are waiting in the gallery.
The widgets are drawn on one card, the same night sky as the app, so they read as one family on your Home Screen.
The Watch no longer shows whatever the phone last wrote down for it. It carries the whole verse catalogue, works out your membership itself, reads your family, and can record a voice. It is still the companion to Hamdam on the iPhone it is paired with.
Step by step
For a widget, touch and hold the Home Screen, tap the plus, and search for Hamdam.
Verse of Day, Reflection Streak, Today Overview, Today's Plan, Persian Date and Persian Month are the six on offer. Verse of Day, Reflection Streak and Persian Date also come in Lock Screen sizes.
For Siri, just ask. "Get my Hamdam verse", "Start a Hamdam reflection", "What's my Hamdam streak", "What is my Hamdam plan today" and "Start a breath in Hamdam" all work with no setup.
Start a breath is also a control you can add to Control Centre on your iPhone or iPad.
The Watch app comes with Hamdam. If it is not on your Watch, open the Watch app on your iPhone and install Hamdam from there.
On the Watch, the Roots page has a button for recording a voice. The Watch keeps the recording, and your iPhone writes down the words the next time Hamdam runs there.
For a watch face, the Hamdam complications are your streak, the calendar, the next part of today's plan, and what happened on this day. Today's verse, On this day and Start a breath are Control Centre controls on the Watch.
Worth knowing
- The verse and streak phrases answer without opening the app, because the widgets and Siri read a small shared store the app keeps up to date.
- For a reader with no Persian connection, the verse widgets show the day's line from Hamdam rather than a poem, the same as Today does.
- The Siri phrases are in English, because Siri matches them against your device's language rather than the language you chose in Hamdam.
- Ask about my family is in the Shortcuts app under Hamdam, and can go on the Action button. It has no spoken phrase of its own.
- Hamdam also registers a Focus filter, so a Focus mode can quieten it without you turning its notifications off entirely.
- The Watch asks the App Store itself whether you have Hamdam Plus, rather than waiting to be told by the phone, and you can subscribe from the Watch's own settings page.
- With Hamdam Plus and a family, the Watch's Roots page also shows your family messages. The Watch reads them; replies are written on your iPhone or iPad.
- The faal on the Watch is offered only to a reader connected to Persian poetry, the same rule the phone follows.
- Your reflections can also be found from Search on your iPhone or iPad, and there is a setting to stop that if you would rather they were not.