Your DigitalOcean status on the Home Screen and Lock Screen
An iPhone widget is a glanceable view on the Home Screen or Lock Screen that shows a snapshot an app has written; for DigitalOcean status, the usual alternatives are email, Slack or a browser tab on the status page. Duskwatch is an independent iPhone app for DigitalOcean, in development; it puts what is ok, degraded or down on the Home Screen, Lock Screen and Control Center, and your droplets, apps, databases and uptime checks in Spotlight, without the widgets ever holding your sign-in.
Updated
On the Home Screen
Three widgets answer three questions. The status widget answers "is anything wrong in this team?" The resource widget answers "how is this one thing?" for a droplet, app, database or uptime check you pick. The spend widget answers "what has this month cost so far?"
| Surface | What it shows | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Status widget | The team's overall state and how fresh it is | 2 need attention · updated 1 min ago |
| Resource widget | One resource's status word and its most serious finding; for a droplet, a small CPU chart | web-01 · Active |
| Spend widget | Month to date, the estimate and your budget | Month to date $126 · Within budget |
| Lock Screen | Status, or spend against your budget as a gauge | All clear · 7 up |
| Control Center control | The last known status; a tap opens the app | 1 needs attention |
Status is always a word and a symbol, never colour alone, so "degraded" reads as degraded in any appearance and with VoiceOver.
Lock Screen and Control Center
The Lock Screen is where you look first in the morning, so it carries either the team status or spend against your budget. The Control Center control, on iOS 18 and later, shows the last known status, such as "All clear" or "2 need attention", and opens the app at the overview when you tap it. Signed out, it says "Open to sign in" instead of guessing.
Find a resource from Spotlight
Type "web-01" in Spotlight and the droplet appears with its kind, status word and team initials; a tap opens its screen in the app. The on-device index holds only what that row needs: the name, the kind, the status as of the last update and the team's initials. IP addresses, hosts, regions, tags and findings never go into it.
web-01
Droplet · Active · AP
Why widgets never hold your token
Widgets run in a separate process that iOS starts and stops on its own schedule. Giving that process your DigitalOcean sign-in would mean a second place that can read it, and a second place that might try to refresh it. So the app writes a small snapshot to a shared container each time it updates, and every widget, the control and the Spotlight index read only that snapshot. They make no network requests and never touch the Keychain.
Access tokens issued to public OAuth clients, such as phone apps, expire after one hour.
A refresh token can be used exactly once to create a new access token, and using it invalidates the access token it was issued with.
The DigitalOcean API allows 5,000 requests an hour and 250 a minute.
DigitalOcean API reference: rate-limit headers (external link), verified
Those facts are the design. With single-use refresh tokens, two processes refreshing at once can sign you out; with a shared rate limit, every widget polling on its own would eat into the budget your app needs at 2 a.m. More on how the sign-in is kept on the sign-in page.
How fresh it is, and what happens when it is not
Home Screen widgets say how old their snapshot is, as in "updated 1 min ago". When the snapshot is too old to trust, the widget stops claiming good news: it shows "Last check 02:10" instead of "All clear", because an old all-clear is worse than none. Open the app and the snapshot refreshes. For news that cannot wait for a glance, push alerts come from the alert server instead.
Monitoring resource alerts reach you by email, Slack, or both.
DigitalOcean docs: manage alert policies (external link), verified
What Duskwatch doesn't do here
- No widget holds, reads or refreshes your DigitalOcean sign-in.
- No actions from a widget or the control: a tap opens the app, and actions happen there behind Face ID.
- No live charts on the Home Screen beyond the snapshot the app last wrote.
- No IP addresses, hosts or regions on widgets or in Spotlight.
Questions
Is there an iPhone widget for my DigitalOcean resources?
Yes. Duskwatch has a status widget, a widget for one droplet, app, database or uptime check, a spend widget, and Lock Screen versions of status and spend.
Do widgets hold my token?
No. Widgets show a snapshot the app writes to a shared container; they make no network requests and never read the Keychain.
How fresh is the widget?
It shows its age, such as "updated 1 min ago". When the snapshot is too old, it shows the time of the last check instead of "All clear".
What does the Control Center button do?
It shows your team's last known status, such as "All clear" or "2 need attention", and opens the app at the overview when you tap it. It needs iOS 18 or later.
Can I search my resources in Spotlight?
Yes, for droplets, apps, databases and uptime checks. Type a name such as web-01 and tap the result to open it in the app. The index holds only the name, kind, status word and team initials.