Hi,
Is there any a possibility to creat a plugin for Arc, so other apps on iOS can use data from Arc?
I’m asking because I use ManicTime a lot (great tool as Arc👍), why I’d like to see interaction between the two- moreover ManicTime using location info from Arc.
What possibilities are currently available, and which may be created?
Best Regards,
Bjarne
Hi @BDein!
The way this is traditionally done is by providing an API for third party apps/services to use to access the data. But to do that, the data has to live on a server in the cloud. Which is something that Arc intentionally doesn’t do, for privacy/security reasons. So that route is essentially closed off to us.
The other way it’s sometimes done is to provide an API directly on the device/phone, for third party apps to connect to. This is the most viable solution if the data lives only on-device, not in the cloud. An example of this is Apple’s Health app, which provides the HealthKit service for third party apps to use (Arc Timeline uses HealthKit to fetch various bits of data from the Health app).
The problem with that route though is that … well, we’re not allowed to. Providing an on-device API like that is limited to Apple only. Third party apps like Arc simply can’t do it. So that route is closed off to us too 
That leaves us with the only remaining option being … well, to give up the privacy/security of storing the data only on-device. For example a Settings toggle could be added, which would upload your data to a cloud server, so that it could be accessible via an API for third party apps to use.
I have looked at this option in the past. There was an open standard in development, for doing this kind of thing using optionally personal/private cloud servers, which would have at least provided some extra level of control over your data, instead of handing it all off to the control of some big corporation (eg Google Timeline data being all stored with and controlled by Google).
But that open standard turned out to be quite immature, and really not ready yet. And the amount of work involved in adding that kind of functionality would be … big. A pretty major endeavour. So I basically shelved it until I saw another opportunity to try again later, hopefully with some more mature technology.
I’d still love to make it happen one day! It would be the ideal. But yeah, for now the easy/common approaches are closed off to us, and the alternative isn’t ready (and/or an absurdly large amount of work to make happen). I definitely haven’t given up hope. But I don’t expect to see it becoming possible/easy any time soon
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the great feedback- though not solving my needs 
