I built Dashlet since I often found myself building different web dashboards for all sorts of data (custom page views monitoring, app downloads, info from my home sensors) and I quickly got tired of always having to navigate to a page in Safari and reenter credentials to access them.

I wanted to just simply be able to see it on my phone, when scrolling around it - in almost realtime.

I've built bespoke apps (just for myself) in the past, that mapped a specific custom API for that purpose, but it was a hassle anytime I changed something in the response or added some new API for myself.

So, Dashlet is an answer to that - it can handle any JSON (or XML, or even image) endpoints and has a nice interactive way of picking which values out of it should be displayed in which type of widget. So, if something has an API but no app (or no widget), Dashlet lets you point it at an HTTPS endpoint, visually map fields from JSON/XML/images, and create native Home Screen (also lock screen and Apple Watch) widgets without writing code.

Some examples:

- Home Assistant sensors (works fine with `http` endpoints on local network)

- Solar production

- Public webcams

- RSS feeds

- Server dashboards (I use it for this mostly, as I have custom simple unique visits analytics set up, and I enjoy having relatively recent data show up on my lock screen)

Everything is read-only, on-device and without any backend between the app and the data. It currently supports basic+bearer endpoint authentication + custom headers. Any secrets are kept securely in the keychain and all the fetching happens by the device (either by the widgets themselves or as part of a background refresh).

This is the landing page - https://getdashlet.app

And here's some of the examples of how it can be used - https://docs.getdashlet.app

Hope anybody else finds it useful and can even think of ways to wire it up that I haven't thought of yet, and I'd really appreciate feedback.

Show HN: Build native iOS widgets from any HTTPS endpoint