How To Use The New iPhone Home Screen Widgets In iOS 14

iPhone Home Screen widgets in iOS 14

iPhone Home Screen widgets in iOS 14.

The new iPhone Home Screen widgets are probably the most important new feature coming in iOS 14. This surly marks the biggest UI change in the history of iOS. The iPhone detaches from its classic Home Screen grid view that could host only square apps and folders. Now you can add widgets in various shapes and sizes to get a better glance of the data provided by your favorite apps!

There are two standard shapes for the iOS 14 widgets. A square that takes up the space of four classic app icons grouped in the 2 x 2 format, and a rectangle that comes in the 4 x 2 format. Some apps like Podcasts and Music also include a large square option that takes up a 4 x 4 app icon format.
These new iPhone widgets together with another new feature called App Library, aim to make the iOS Home Screen more functional and better organized. Let’s have a closer look!

How To Add Widgets To iPhone Home Screen

how to add a widget to iPhone home screen 1. Long-press anywhere on the Home Screen to enter the app “jiggle mode”. You can also long-press and app icon and use the ‘Edit Home Screen’ option.
Fact: In iOS 14 the ‘x’ for deleting apps from the Home screen is replaced with the ‘-‘ icon.
2. Tap the ‘+’ icon, available in the top-left corner of the screen. This brings up the available widgets screen.
3. Use the ‘Search Widgets’ field or simply scroll to reach the widget that you want to add.
4. Tap on the widget that you want to add.
5. Swipe to choose the size and shape and hit Add Widget when ready.
Tip: You can reposition your widget by dragging & dropping it to a new location on the Home Screen.
6. Tap Done, available in the top-right corner of the screen, when ready.

Fact: iPhone Home Screen widgets can be added to any app screen primary, secondary, tertiary and so on. Unlike iOS 14, in the early beta test stages of iPadOS 14 you can only add widgets to the Today View sidebar.

List With iPhone Home Screen Widgets In iOS 14

iPhone Home Screen widgets available in iOS 14 At the time of writing iOS 14 is in its early beta testing stages. Public release is announced for this fall. That’s why currently only native apps have widgets that are compatible with the new Home Screen layout.
The available widgets are: Batteries, Calendar, Fitness, Maps, Music, Notes, Photos, Podcasts, Reminders, Screen Time, Shortcuts, Siri Suggestions, Weather and Smart Stack.
Fact: Apple does allow third party apps to code widgets for the iOS Home Screen. We expect most of the apps that currently provide widgets for the Today View to update with support for the Home Screen.

2 Ways To Add A Smart Stack Widget

2 ways to add Smart Stack widget to iPhone A special widget type found in iOS 14 is the Smart Stack widget. This widget is able to host multiple widgets of the same size stocked on top of each other. You can swipe the widget content up or down to browse between glances.
iOS 14 is also able to use time of day and other machine learning data to display the most likely needed widget from the stack.
How To: 1. You can directly add a Smart Stack widget by selecting it using the tutorial described above. Choose the size and the smart widget is added.
2. Create your own Smart Stack manually. Drag & drop same sized widgets one on top of the other.

How To Edit An iPhone Smart Stack Widget

how to edit iPhone Smart Stack widget 1. Long-press a Smart Stack widget.
2. Select Edit Stack.
3. Drag & drop apps to set the desired display order.
4. Swipe-left on the app name to delete the card.
Tip: When enable Smart Rotate allows iOS to automatically display an app’s widget based on machine learning. If you want to have the same card described by default and manually switch for the other widgets, disable this feature.

How To Use iPhone Home Screen Widgets

how to browse Smart Stack widget on iPhone – The most basic function of an iPhone Home Screen widget is to provide info at a glance. Just bring up the Home Screen and read the data provided by the widget.
– Tap the widget for quick access to the app in question.
– Swipe up or down on a Smart Stack widget to unveil glances from other apps. Smart Stack widgets are accompanied by vertical dots occasionally displayed on the right side of the widget, to hint that there are other glances available.
Tip: You can drag & drop widgets from the Today View to the Home Screen and the other way around.

How To Delete iPhone Home Screen Widgets

how to remove iPhone Home Screen widgets Removing widgets is straightforward and can be done in multiple ways:
1. Long-Press Widget to unveil quick actions menu. Tap on ‘Remove Widget’ and you’re done.
2. Long-Press anywhere on the Home Screen to bring up the Edit menu. Tap the ‘-‘ icon, available in the top-left corner of the widget to erase it.
3. Long-Press Smart Stack widget and tap ‘Remove Stack’ to delete it. You can also choose ‘Edit Stack’ the delete just specific cards from the stack.

What do you think about the new iPhone Home Screen widgets? Which one do you use the most? Let us know in the comments section available below.

Related: iOS 14 also brings native picture-in-picture video playback for iPhone, a new Sound Recognition Accessibility feature and much more.