Chapter 3
WatchKit User Interfaces

Our HelloWatch example from the prior chapter worked, but it’s not winning an Apple Design Award anytime soon. We need more than just a button and a label in our WatchKit apps. We’re in luck, because WatchKit offers a bevy of built-in user interface components. These UI components, called interface objects in WatchKit, inherit from the WKInterfaceObject class, similar to UIView in iOS. WatchKit has a unique layout system more akin to HTML tables than iOS views. Let’s take a quick tour of interface objects and how they’re used; then we’ll explore how they differ from UIView and its subclasses. By the end of this chapter, you’ll have a better understanding of what UI components are available to you in WatchKit, as well as how to position them onscreen in WatchKit’s UI paradigm. Finally, you’ll get started on TapALap, the main sample app we’ll be writing throughout the rest of this book.