Developer David Smith spent six years building a custom SwiftUI map rendering engine for Pedometer++ on watchOS, shipping a final design in version 8.
Key Takeaways
MapKit on watchOS lacks configurability: always dark mode, limited overlays, and blank tiles for many wilderness areas like Scottish trails.
A fully custom SwiftUI tile-based map engine was required because watchOS only supports SwiftUI for apps and widgets.
Cartographer Andy Allen was commissioned to build a custom basemap optimized for Liquid Glass layering in watchOS 26, including a dark mode variant.
Final UX: map as top page of a vertical stack with overlaid metrics top-left, requiring a tap to enter browse/pan mode to avoid swipe conflicts.
Server-side tile generation was the first approach, validated the concept but couldn’t work offline or update fast enough for navigation.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters broadly agree Apple’s own Maps on watchOS is inadequate for wilderness use, particularly Watch Ultra which markets to outdoor adventurers, with no GPX import and poor topographic coverage.
The App Store pricing page for Pedometer++ is confusing, showing many price points from 1 to 45 euros; this is caused by Apple’s price testing UI that accumulates A/B price variants developers cannot cleanly remove.
Apple Maps on watchOS has a usability bug where the workout prompt interrupts navigation mid-ride, a problem Apple employees presumably encounter themselves.
Notable Comments
@apt-apt-apt-apt: Custom basemap is static image tiles, not dynamically rendered; affects rotation behavior and requires separate downloads per zoom level.
