The Road to iPad Support

I know some of you have been waiting for iPad support. A few of you cared enough to actually reach out and ask, which I appreciate. So I figured I owed you an explanation.

The short version: things came up, and I don't really have a better excuse than that. It's still coming. If that's all you wanted to know, you can probably stop reading here.

For those curious about what actually happened, here's the context.

I've felt the frustration myself. You pick up your iPad and it's dead because you forgot to charge it. Unlike an iPhone that's basically always in your pocket, iPads sit around. You use them when you need them, and then you don't think about them until you need them again. By then, the battery's drained and you're waiting for it to charge before you can actually do anything.

It's a real problem, and I wanted to solve it.

Earlier this year, I actually started building this. I managed to create a prototype that worked, at least for notifications. You could get alerts when your iPad battery dropped to certain levels, which felt like the core value.

But once I validated that it could work, some issues became obvious.

First, there's the reliability problem. iPad faces the same constraints as iPhone: Apple limits background tasks, which means battery readings only happen every 15 to 20 minutes. I knew this going in, but seeing it in practice reminded me how limiting it feels. Whatever reliability issues exist on iPhone would be inherited by iPad. Same underlying technology, same constraints.

The bigger problem, though, was the app itself.

Unplugged was designed entirely around Apple Watch. That was always the plan. iPad support came from user interest and my curiosity about whether it could even work. Not from some grand vision I'd architected from the start.

When I tried to add iPad support, I had to strip out everything related to Watch. Visually, I managed to hide that stuff. But there was also a lot of code where things were tightly coupled in ways I hadn't anticipated. If I'd thought about iPad from the beginning, it probably wouldn't have been a problem. But I didn't, and it was.

After removing all the Watch-related UI, I looked at what was left. It was basically just a settings screen. That's it. If you didn't want notifications, there was no actual reason to open the app at all.

That made me stop and think: what do I do about this?

Right around this time, Apple announced iOS 26. The new design language caught my attention, and I realized the app needed a visual overhaul anyway. On top of that, I was getting complaints about existing features: sync issues, Live Activities not being actually live, the usual stuff.

I made a choice: focus on the redesign and stability first. Ship version 3.0 with the visual refresh. Address the complaints people were having about features that already existed. Make the core experience better before adding another device to support.

iPad got pushed back.

I'm not trying to make excuses. I'm just trying to give context. Things went in a direction I didn't expect, but looking back, it makes sense.

Since then, I've managed to ship quite a bit. The redesign. Improved notifications. Better Live Activities. Charging animations that actually make the "app needs to be open" limitation feel like a feature. Thermal state monitoring so you can see if your device is overheating and what to do about it.

Right now, I'm working on battery history and predictions: when your device will be fully charged, when you might run out of battery. Features that are genuinely useful regardless of whether you have an Apple Watch.

And here's the thing: now if I strip out all the Watch stuff, the app doesn't look empty anymore. There's actually something to deliver. Someone who just uses an iPad would have a reason to open the app beyond configuring a notification threshold.

That problem is mostly solved.

I don't want to make promises because you never know, but I think we're close to actually continuing that work.

There are a few things that need to happen first. I want to finish the battery history and prediction features. After that, there's going to be a month where I'm fully focused on stability. Just fixing things, ironing out the reliability issues that still pop up for some users. Anything I fix now benefits iPad later. The moment I add another device, it multiplies the surface area for bugs. It's just me, so I want the foundation to be solid before I expand.

I also need to revisit accessibility. That started as a core value of the app, and I'll be honest, I've neglected it since the redesign. Screen reader support, Dynamic Type, all of that needs attention. And again, that work carries over to iPad.

After all that, I don't really see a reason not to work on it. The prototype from earlier this year is still there. I'll need to remember what I did and how I did it, but I think I can figure that out. It's really just about spending the time on it.

I hope this gives you a sense of where things stand. I know some of you have been waiting, and I appreciate your patience.

If you're one of those people who really wants iPad support, please let me know. If interest is there, it helps me prioritize. And if other things end up mattering more to people, that's useful information too.

I can only do one thing at a time. But this is definitely on my mind.

Written by Christian Skorobogatow