Why won’t the Batteries widget update in real-time on macOS Big Sur and later?

Apple designed a new system for widgets back in iOS 14, called WidgetKit. This is the system that allows widgets to be put in your Home Screen on iOS. In order to preserve battery life, WidgetKit won’t let apps update their widgets whenever they want to, so how often they update is limited by the operating system.

The same system was ported over to macOS with Big Sur, and stayed pretty much unchanged in macOS Monterey and Ventura. Apple kept the same restrictions on macOS as the ones on iOS, which means that AirBuddy is unable to update its Batteries widget as often as would be required to ensure that device information is always up to date.

On iOS, Apple implemented their own Batteries widget without using WidgetKit, which bypasses these limitations, but this is not an option for third-party developers such as myself.

Version 2.6 of AirBuddy introduced some changes that attempt to work around these limitations, so make sure your app is up to date in order for widgets to work more reliably.

If you see errors in the widgets after updating the app or macOS, try selecting "Clear Widget Cache" in AirBuddy settings under "Advanced".