iPhone Home screen widgets have taken the world by storm! Starting with iOS 14, you can now customize your iPhone Home screen with multiple widgets. But how do you do it? Let’s take a look.
Widgetsmith
Widgetsmith is a custom widget builder that includes customizable templates for different kinds of widgets. You can build your own calendar, reminder, world clock, photo, text, or weather widget.
Widgetsmith allows you to change the fonts, colors, and layouts, so you can truly make the Home screen your own.
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Sticky Widgets
Sticky Widgets transfers those little pink and yellow Post-its from your desk to your iPhone’s Home screen. You can add a widget in small, medium, or large, and then add some text to it right from the Home screen. Just tap a widget to edit the text.
The app has a classic yellow background and a felt-tip marker font. However, there are many different options for changing the background or font style.
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Widgeridoo
Widgeridoo is an advanced, block-based widget builder for iPhone. While Widgetsmith gives you customizable templates, Widgeridoo allows you to customize and control the entire widget.
You get a grid-based system, in which you can add or remove rows and columns. You can also add different data types to each block to create one widget that shows multiple data types.
Clear Spaces
While you can create widgets with a transparent background in the Scriptable app to add empty spaces to your iPhone Home screen, there’s an easier way: Clear Spaces!
In this app, you can create small or medium-size widgets with the same background as your iPhone’s wallpaper. Then, you just add the widget, tell the app where to position it on the Home screen, and it takes care of the rest!
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Reminders
The Reminders app for iPhone makes a pretty good basic task manager. You can easily record and share tasks with friends and family. If you want to keep track of tasks without opening the app, just add the Reminders widget to the Home screen. The medium and large sizes even show multiple tasks.
You can choose to see reminders from a list or filter. The Reminders widget falls short when it comes to information density, though. If you want to see more reminders on-screen, try the TickTick or Todoist apps.
Alternatively, you can use the Widgetsmith app to create a Reminders widget. Then, you can customize it to give your Home screen a unique aesthetic.
Fantastical
Fantastical is, hands down, the best calendar app for iPhone and iPad. Plus, you can use its basic features, including its stellar collection of widgets, for free! Fantastical has widgets for upcoming appointments and tasks, a calendar view, and more. There’s also a large widget that combines all of that.
If you don’t want to use a third-party app, though, try the built-in Calendars app widget.
Photos
A Photos widget shows random photos from your library and the “For You” section in the Photos app, as well as any you take during the day. It can be a great way to relive memories without using a photo as your wallpaper.
The biggest problem with the Photos widget is you can’t control which photo shows up, when. However, you can use the Widgetsmith app to create a widget that shows a single photo, or several from a particular album.
RELATED: How to Add Photos to Your iPhone Home Screen
Music
The new widgets for iOS 14 don’t support interaction. However, you can get a Music widget that shows which song is currently playing, albums you’ve recently played, and any playlists you have on Apple Music.
If you use the Spotify app, you can get the same widgets for that. It even has a cool feature that automatically changes the widget background to the album art.
If you’d rather just have a small widget for Apple Music or Spotify that shows the song that’s currently playing, check out TuneTrack.
To get an interactive Apple Music widget, you’ll have to use a third-party app, like Soor. It gives you access to the entire Apple Music library, along with all your playlists. It also has interactive widgets that allow you to play, pause, and change tracks.
Shortcuts
The Shortcuts app has three different widgets you can use to trigger shortcuts right from the Home screen. The small widget shows one shortcut, the medium shows four, and the large shows eight.
There’s also a very good reason to use the Shortcuts widget over Home screen icons. Whenever you trigger a shortcut via the Shortcuts widget, it works in the background, without opening the Shortcuts app. You can type text or make selections in the compact menu that appears at the top of the Home screen.
RELATED: How to Organize Shortcuts in Folders on iPhone and iPad
News
Want to read the latest news or articles from your favorite websites right on the iPhone Home screen? You can, thanks to the Apple News widget.
You can also get the latest articles from websites via RSS readers, like Lire, Reeder 5, and Elytra. All three have stellar Home screen widgets that regularly update in the background.
How to Add Widgets to the Home Screen
Adding a widget from any of the apps we covered above is quite easy. First, just tap and hold an empty area of the Home screen to activate the editing mode.
Next, tap the plus sign (+) at the top left.
You’ll then see a list of suggested widgets and apps that support them. Tap one to see all the available widgets. You can also swipe left or right to preview all widgets.
Tap “Add Widget” to add it to the Home screen.
Tap and hold a widget, and then move it around the screen with your finger. You can repeat this process to add more, or even stack widgets on top of each other.
When your widget is where you want it, tap “Done” to save your Home screen layout.
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