Possible workaround for getting notifications on the pebble watch with iOS 8

[BrettDS]

I've been using the iOS 8 beta since it first became available a bit more than two weeks ago. As you're probably already aware, iOS 8 and the pebble don't seem to get along well. The bluetooth LE connection seems to drop shortly after it connects and when that happens notifications no longer appear on the watch.

I was hoping things would be resolved in beta 2, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. As I was sitting here tonight really missing that functionality and considering whether I wanted to wait another two weeks or so for beta 3 to see if that resolved the issue or possibly roll back to iOS 7.1.1 it occurred to me that originally the pebble didn't have a bluetooth LE connection.

So, just for fun I went into my bluetooth settings, clicked on the LE device and told my phone to forget the device. I also clicked on the non-LE pebble bluetooth connection and flipped the switch to enable notifications. I also deleted the pebble app just for good measure to make sure it doesn't try to re-establish that LE connection, but I'm not sure if that was really necessary or not.

Finally, I went into Settings|Notifications and did the good old finger dance. Low and behold notifications started working for all the apps I 'finger danced' (I only did a select few... there are probably about 10 apps that I get 90% of my notifications from)

We'll see if it continues to work, but it's been close to an hour now and that's already longer than I've had notifications working with iOS 8 before. I certainly don't relish going back to the finger dance days, but it's definitely a better option for me than rolling back to iOS 7.1.1 or not getting notifications at all.

 

[Abazigal]

Maybe the problem is on Pebble's side, and it is them who will need to remedy this with a software update? A software update that can't come until ios8 is officially released?

I know when I played around with ios7 last year, it screwed up a few apps, and these problems persisted even after I downgraded to ios6.

 

[BrettDS]

Maybe the problem is on Pebble's side, and it is them who will need to remedy this with a software update? A software update that can't come until ios8 is officially released?

I know when I played around with ios7 last year, it screwed up a few apps, and these problems persisted even after I downgraded to ios6.

It's possible that it's a pebble issue, but right now my vote is still an apple issue. There are definitely other issues with the bluetooth stack on iOS 8. But in either case, hopefully this will work well enough to keep me happy until someone fixes it

 

[TitsLegendary]

What is the "finger dance"? Is that just toggling notifications off and then back on?

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Maybe the problem is on Pebble's side, and it is them who will need to remedy this with a software update? A software update that can't come until ios8 is officially released?

I know when I played around with ios7 last year, it screwed up a few apps, and these problems persisted even after I downgraded to ios6.

They can update the software to make it work before 8 is released. Google did it with Chrome yesterday. Even says "compatibility with future OS releases" or something like that.

 

[BrettDS]

What is the "finger dance"? Is that just toggling notifications off and then back on?

Yes... Toggling notifications on and off for each app that you want notifications for.

They can update the software to make it work before 8 is released. Google did it with Chrome yesterday. Even says "compatibility with future OS releases" or something like that.

As long as they can use the current SDK then they can update and fix things, but apps that use the new SDK can't be released until the OS is officially released. That said, I'm not convinced that the issues are pebbles problem. I think it's an issue with the bluetooth stack and apple will need to fix it. But either way, this works to get notifications until someone fixes the problem