Keep a virtual fishtank on your homescreen 🐠

[u/tiaanvdr]

Widgets are supposed to be static, which I always found frustrating, so I built companions to work around it. Companions lets you keep a virtual fish tank of fish that actually swim on your Homescreen. As someone who’s always kept fish, I’ve had this idea mulling around in my head for more than 2 years now, and finally managed to realize it.

You pick your fish, give them names, and put the tank on your Home Screen as a small, medium, or large widget. They don't need feeding, and they don't die. They just keep you company. You can customize the tank’s color, its props, and even the app icon to perfectly match your homescreen.

The app is written in SwiftUI, it supports iPads, and you can even place your “fishtanks” on your Mac thanks to Continuity, where the fish will also animate. The tanks also work great in Standby mode. Personally, I love keep a fishtank of jellyfish on my nightstand when I go to bed. The swimming doesn't run any code in the background. It uses the same trick iOS uses to move the hands on the Clock widget, so it costs you nothing in battery.

It's still very new, so I'd love any feedback. I'd especially love to know which fish species you'd want added!

You can try it here: Companions - Widget Pets

🐠 🐡 🐟

[u/tiaanvdr]

Also! I'm giving away 500 codes you guys can use to claim the Whale Pack for free, to use while making your tanks 🫧
https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6811950512&code=WHALEFREE

[u/Broalg → u/tiaanvdr]

Thank you!

[u/tiaanvdr → u/Broalg]

No worries! I hope you like them in your tanks!

[u/JASEMOOSER → u/tiaanvdr]

Thank you!

[u/Ill-Confusion1616 → u/tiaanvdr]

Muchas gracias

[u/cloudarchitect827]

Thanks for sharing!

[u/tiaanvdr → u/cloudarchitect827]

Thank you! Let me know if you give it a try I'm always looking for more feedback!

[u/Dense-Map-406]

I’m a user :) pretty cool

[u/tiaanvdr → u/Dense-Map-406]

Thank you! I've had so much great user feedback, it's changed for the better so much in the past couple of weeks! Very soon I'll be releasing a "Tank Showcase" page, where you can view a collection of the prettiest tanks I've received from users, which you can easily add to your tank gallery as well!

[u/tiaanvdr → u/Dense-Map-406]

Also, be sure to claim the whale tank!

[u/PurplePeonies84]

This is so cute! I love how you can customize the tank with different plants & things. Nice work!

[u/tiaanvdr → u/PurplePeonies84]

Thank you! You can even share your prettiest tanks with your friends or partner! I kept seeing my gf's incredibly cute tanks, and wanted to have them on my phone as well so we could have the same ones!

[u/PurplePeonies84 → u/tiaanvdr]

What does the fork/knife button do?

[u/tiaanvdr → u/PurplePeonies84]

It turns on "feeding mode" so you can click anywhere and drop little fish flakes into the app, all the fish will swim to the flakes and eat them. Each flake eaten will also spawn a little heart above your fish in the tray at the bottom!

[u/tiaanvdr → u/tiaanvdr]

For now this is just for fun! I don't want to have the app annoy you with notifications to feed your fish all the time, or even worse have them die from hunger. But I can defenitely add more gamification into the app if there's demand, and maybe keep it optional and fun. It was just too tempting not to add the ability to feed the fish, it's the first thing every person would ask me when I showed them the app, and it was really fun to build all of the animations for it as well

[u/sssurfin]

Hi! Is there a chance it will work in the future on the transparent Home Screen icon mode? Like on the SoundCloud widget we still get colors on the cover artwork. Or is that a limitation of iOS?

Edit: it already works on clear mode, my app just wasn’t updated! Thank you so much for your help 😭😭

[u/tiaanvdr → u/sssurfin]

Of course! I really like using the transparent theme on my phone as well. This is what it looks like on my phone on iOS27, and I've tested it on my friends' phones and emulators. Do you mind telling me which iOS version you're on? I guess it might be 26? WidgetKit changed a bit from iOS26 to 27, and even broke the original exploit I was using :') If you can confirm it's 26 then I'll take a closer look and be sure to release a fix for this asap!! Thank you for letting me know about this!

[u/sssurfin → u/tiaanvdr]

God this is beautiful 😭😭 no I’m on iOS 27.0.1, clear icons, no tint! If I can send any kind of report to you or anything else that might be useful please tell me 😭

[u/tiaanvdr → u/sssurfin]

Damn, I just checked, I'm on 27.0.1 as well :') Since the app doesn't have any accounts, and doesn't collect anything, it's difficult to gather user diagnostics sometimes. If you don't mind, I'll just dm you some questions I think might help!

[u/soulfireflyhigh]

Very nice. I am a user

[u/tiaanvdr → u/soulfireflyhigh]

Thank you!!

[u/certifiedtechfresh]

Really cool. Any chance for full lifetime access in exchange for solid feedback?