UPMOAT BLOG

Native iOS,
without the fog.

Technical notes and product thinking from Upmoat — separate from the studio site, written around specific questions instead of a content calendar.

Can a step counter live in the Dynamic Island?

What Live Activities can show, when they update, and how StepIsland uses the surface.

A quieter motivation model built around progress, worlds and companionship rather than ranking.

A practical separation between on-device health data, product accounts and website analytics.

Compact, expanded and Lock Screen surfaces explained in plain language.

Why there is no guaranteed per-second refresh rate, and what a step app should design around instead.

HealthKit update behavior, observer queries and why step data is not a raw sensor stream.

Use each iPhone surface for the job it is actually designed to do.

Both devices can write step samples, but they are separate sources inside HealthKit.

The minimum read access a simple step-counting app needs — and what it does not need.