Though widgets on iPhone arrived way back in iOS 8 (WWDC 2014), they had been quite limited in terms of functionality. They remained tied at the Today View screen and hardly offered any customization. Courtesy the introduction of iOS 14, widgets have become elegant and offer plenty of customization for a more personalized experience. If they have also caught your eyes, now is the perfect time to master the best tips to customize widgets in iOS 14 so that you can use them like a pro.
To ensure you can easily explore a ton of widgets and choose the ones that can go along nicely with your needs, iOS 14 comes with a Widgets Gallery. Though right now only a handful of apps offer widgets, I expect more apps to jump on the bandwagon once the latest iteration of iOS officially rolls out this fall.
Snapshots of the Topics Covered Below
- Access All the Available Widgets on your iOS 14 Device
- Add a Widget to Home Screen
- Edit a Home Screen Widget
- Remove a Widget from Home Screen
- Add Stack Widgets on your iPhone Home Screen
- Add Smart Stack Widget on your iPhone Home Screen
- Tips to Customize Stack Widgets
- Remove a Specific App Widget from a Stack
- Delete Stack Widgets
- Place Widgets from Today View on the Home Screen
- Edit Today View Widgets in iOS 14
- Design a Home Screen with Just Widgets
- Frequently Asked Questions
1. Access All the Available Widgets on your iOS 14 Device
- First off, touch and hold the home screen in a blank space until the apps start wiggling.
Once you have found a nice widget, you can easily put it on the home screen to take a glance at the needed information without having to go through the roundabout way.
There is also a quick way to edit a widget. So, if you ever want to make some adjustments in a widget, you can do so with ease.
4. Remove a Widget from Home Screen
If you no longer want to use a widget, you can get rid of it right away.
5. Add Stack Widgets on your iPhone Home Screen
If you love to use a variety of widgets, chances are pretty high that your home screen might already have begun to look flooded with widgets. What if you want to keep them all but without making the home screen appear cluttered. Well, this is where the stack widgets come into play.
Note: If you already have multiple widgets on your home screen, you can drag a widget and drop it on another one to create a stack.
If the stack has won you over, I guess you would find the Smart Stack even more helpful. What makes it super handy is the on-device intelligence that shows up a specific widget based on various things like time, location, and preference.
Customization plays a vital role in enhancing user-experience. And even in this regard, Smart Stack has looked quite good to me.
Re-Arrange Smart Stack Widgets
Stack Widget consists of several widgets including Weather, Podcasts, Photos, and more. If you ever don’t want to use a specific one, you can easily remove it.
Deleting a stack widget is same as deleting normal widgets. All you need to do is long-press on the unwanted stack and hit Remove Stack in the contextual menu. Tap on Remove again in the popup to confirm. You can use this same method to get rid of Smart Stack as well.
Along with Smart Stack widget, Siri Suggestions widget has attracted me the most. With the help of on-device intelligence, it offers very helpful widget suggestions to keep you in sync.
Apple also allows you to quickly move widgets from the Today View area to home screen. If you already have a widget in your Today View area, you can simply hold and drag that widget to your home screen to add it.
Unlike before the edit button, which allows you to edit widgets, on the Today View screen is hidden in iOS 14. And it took me some digging to discover that edit button. And I guess, I’m not alone who might be wondering where it has gone.
- Simply touch and hold the empty home screen on your iPhone. Then, swipe left from the right edge of the screen to access Today View and tap on Edit button at the bottom.
One of the coolest things about iOS 14 widgets is that you can design your home screen with just widgets. Yeah, you got it right! If you have some useful widgets and you want to view them on a separate screen, it could be a better implementation. To do so, drag all your favorite widgets a home screen.
How do You Make an App a Widget on the iPhone?
Developers create widgets for their apps to let users access certain information and perform quick actions without having to take the long route. As of now, iOS doesn’t offer a tool to turn an iPhone app into a widget for users.
You should consider iOS widgets as the small parts of the corresponding apps. They are designed to make it pretty simple access to certain information. Currently, widgets are there just to show information. You can tap on a widget to launch an app or a specific section of app, but you cannot perform actions from widgets alone. This is the biggest drawback of iOS widgets right now.
As mentioned above, widgets make it incredibly straightforward to access specific information. For instance, if you like to keep a track of the weather information of your city, you can use a weather widget to monitor weather right from the home screen of your device.
Yeah, they do – but not as much as a full-fledged app. So, if you are super conscious about the battery life of your device, you should avoid using too many home screen widgets.
How do I Use a Widget?
Using a widget on the iPhone had never been so easy and fun. All you need to do is dive into the App Gallery and then choose the widget that seems in line with your preference. Then, drag it at the preferred spot on the home screen.
So, these are the cool tips and tricks to make the most of the widgets in iOS 14. Though Apple has taken several years to offer customizable widgets, the long wait seems to be worth it. And I expect them to get even better with time. Recently, we have been exploring the latest iteration of iOS and covered many notable hacks like –
Catch up with these posts, if you have missed out on them. Also, share your valuable thoughts on the new iOS 14 update with us.
