Apple Watch

[Brian Quinn]

I can’t get my forms to show on Apple Watch.
After much searching I found where to switch on ‘show on watch’ for individual forms on my iPhone but they don’t actually show on watch!
The only form that shows on the watch is ‘to do’ which doesn’t actually exist on my iPhone!
Help please!

[Brendan]

Hi Brian,

Which version of Tap Forms are you using? Version 5.0.4 had some fixes in it to help with making the forms show up.

Make sure you’ve specified which document displays on the watch. You can have only one document displaying on the watch at a time. The one with the little watch icon in the bottom-right corner is the one that will display on the watch.

[Chris Ward]

Having upgraded to Watch OS 3, I’m afraid it is far from clear what you are supposed to do to get Tap Forms on your watch, in which app you are supposed to do it, and on what device.

I have TF installed on my watch, and “Show App on Apple Watch” enabled.
I have TF working fine on my mac and iPhone; but on my watch all I get when I load TF is the word “Forms” in blue in the top left, and a blank screen; with no indication that anything is loading.

How do you specify which form you want show on the watch?
Is this in Tap Forms on your iPhone? Where is the feature?

[Brendan]

Hi Chris,

It’s in Tap Forms. There are two places where you specify what to show on the Apple Watch.

1. The Document Info screen has a “Display on Apple Watch” switch that you need to turn on for the document that you want to have access to on the Watch.

2. On the Edit Form screen, there’s a “Show on Watch” switch you need to turn on to have your forms display on the watch.

See attachments.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Mike McKay]

I seem to be having the same problem – V5.07. I have it enabled on both the document and the form, but it doesn’t show up on the watch. I’ve enabled a different document and form and it does not show up either. Seems to work fine on TF 4. Running watch OS 3.04. I have restarted the watch, my phone and tried the open from the watch without TF in ‘memory’. All I get is the ‘Forms’ and time when I open it up. I have also taken TF off the watch and re-installed.

Running out of ideas.

Thanks,
Mike

[Brendan]

Try having Tap Forms running on the watch at the same time you toggle the Show on Watch switch on the iPhone.

[Tom Banks]

Tap Forms 5.1. I can’t get TF to appear on the Apple Watch, other than to show the word ‘Forms’. I believe I have followed all the steps and suggestions in the preceding posts: 1) the watch setting is to show TF; the document info is set to show on the watch; 3) the edit form is set to show on watch; 4) TF was running on the watch when I toggled the switches. Nevertheless, the watch app just shows the word ‘Forms’. Is there something I missed? Thanks, Tom.

[Brendan]

Hi Thomas,

Hmm… No, that’s pretty much all you need to do. I would suggest perhaps force-quitting Tap Forms on the watch and then re-launch it.

To force-quit an app on the Apple Watch, bring it forward, then hold down the flat button on the side. When the power off stuff shows, hold down the digital crown on the side. It should go back to the home screen.

Launch Tap Forms on your iPhone and open your document that’s set to show on the watch. Then toggle one of the “Show on Watch” switches.

[Tom Banks]

Hi Brendan,

Thanks for your quick help. That suggestion worked for me…sort of. The watch seems to work with TF documents I have created (which have only one form per document), but not with ones I imported from Bento (some of which have several forms in one document). In the latter case, if I set an imported form to appear on the watch, the watch instead shows me the screen giving directions to set up.

Maybe related, maybe not, is that the top TF directory on the iPhone sometimes shows duplicate documents that I did not deliberately ask for. For example, if I create a document named “Agenda”, I may soon also see a document appear named “Agenda copy 1”. The copy may have no form visible inside of it, and if I set the original to appear on my watch, the watch icon may appear on the icon of the copy instead. I have tried deleting these copies from iCloud, but they reappear for reasons I can’t map out.

Thanks,
Tom

[Brendan]

Ya, I think Tap Forms is getting confused by all the copies. Tap Forms uniquely identifies a document based on its internal Document ID (which you can see on the Document Info screen). You shouldn’t have a copy of the same document on the same device or things like this can happen. So make sure that every document has a unique Document ID (by removing the copies) and you should be good to go.

[Tom Banks]

Thanks. I’m not surprised that such copies cause problems. But I don’t understand where they come from or what causes them. I don’t know of any action I’m taking that is meant to create them. For what it’s worth, these documents are on iCloud and are accessed by my iPhone, iPad, and Mac — all running the most current OS. I have deleted the copies, but they sometimes come back.

[Brendan]

If you use the Send Document function that will cause a copy to be put on a device if there’s already a document with that name there.

The documents can come back if you delete it from a device, but not also from iCloud. Tap Forms just checks to see if there’s any documents in iCloud that it doesn’t have yet and it downloads placeholder versions of them. You’ll know it’s a placeholder document because it has a little cloud icon on it with a down arrow in it. When you open that, iCloud will then begin to sync its contents.

[Tom Banks]

This is very helpful, and once again I much appreciate the speediness of your help, even on a weekend.

Tom

[Andrew Douch]

I realise the watch only shows 20 items at a time. When I scroll to the bottom of those 20 entries, there is a blue bar that says “Load 20 more…” Pressing this seems to load the same 20 items after the 20 that were there. In other words I end up with a list of 40 items, but there are really two lists of the same 20. The 21st item in the database on my phone cannot be loaded. Am I doing something wrong here, or is this a bug?

[Mark Rial]

What worked for me was make all the settings in TF on the iPhone … that is turn on for the file and the individual form and THEN uninstall TF on the watch using the iPhone watch app and re-intall TF using the iPhone watch app.

[Author]

Posts