Rest timer in gym mode has no iOS notification — feedback is barely noticeable

[jackofspadezz1-cell]

Use case

Use Case

As someone who uses wger to track workouts at the gym, I want to be notified
when my rest timer ends even if my phone is locked or I have switched to
another app, the same way a normal phone timer works. Currently if I lock
my phone during my rest period nothing happens and I miss the alert entirely.

Proposal

Current Behavior

When the rest timer hits zero in gym mode:

• There is a very faint vibration (barely noticeable)
• There may be a small click sound
• Nothing happens at all if the phone is locked or you have switched apps
• There is no notification that appears on the lock screen or in the
  notification center
• wger currently has no integration with the iOS notification system —
  it does not appear in iPhone notification settings and cannot send
  alerts to the lock screen or notification center like other apps do

Expected Behavior

When the rest timer hits zero:

• A proper iOS notification should appear even if the phone is locked
  or the app is in the background, the same way the built-in iPhone
  timer works
• The haptic feedback when the app is in the foreground should be
  stronger and more noticeable, and the timer should behave like a
  standard iOS app — appearing in iPhone notification settings,
  sending alerts to the lock screen, and working normally in the
  background the same way any other iOS timer or reminder app does

Additional Context

Additional Context

I want to be fully transparent that I am not a developer and everything
below was figured out with the help of Claude (an AI assistant). I may
have details wrong and I am not certain how much of this is accurate or
applicable — please treat it as a rough starting point rather than a
precise technical analysis.

After going back and forth with Claude about why the timer notification
felt so weak on my iPhone, Claude suggested looking at the compiled app
binary to see how notifications were actually implemented. I uploaded the
Runner.app from the latest release and Claude parsed the binary strings
to look for notification-related code.

From what Claude found:

• The timer appears to use HapticFeedback.vibrate() which is described
  as Flutter's weakest haptic option. Claude suggested that changing it
  to HapticFeedback.heavyImpact() in the timer code would make it much
  stronger and might be a small change.
• There did not appear to be any use of iOS's UNUserNotificationCenter
  system for scheduling a local notification when the timer starts. This
  is apparently what would be needed for a notification to appear on the
  lock screen when the app is in the background.
• The notification toggle in gym mode settings appears to only control
  the in-app sound and vibration, not any kind of real iOS notification.

Again I want to stress I am not a developer and Claude itself cautioned
that not all of this may be accurate or straightforward to implement.
But the core experience problem is real — the rest timer notification
is too easy to miss and does not work at all when the phone is locked.

[rolandgeider]

hey! Changing the HapticFeedback would be trivial, but I'm not sure about having a "proper" notification that also works in the background. Perhaps somebody wants to investigate this?

[GalaxyPhoenix716]

Hey, I would love to contribute to and solve this issue. Can i take on this?

[rolandgeider]

Hi @GalaxyPhoenix716 , sure! You can start looking into this, but before you start implementing that, tell us a bit what would be needed, if we need to write too much logic, this might be overkill for such a "small" feature

[GalaxyPhoenix716]

Hi @GalaxyPhoenix716 , sure! You can start looking into this, but before you start implementing that, tell us a bit what would be needed, if we need to write too much logic, this might be overkill for such a "small" feature

I have to check the code first to know how much implementation is required. But by the usecase he mentioned, i guess we will have to work with the native code. If i find some package that can do this work for us that would make it a lot easier. I'll read the code and tell you the exact implementation required.