Of all the features coming to macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS this fall, I’m perhaps the most excited about widget. No seriously. Widgets!
Yes, of course, widgets have been around forever. Apple overhauled the widget experience with iOS 14 three years ago, giving us a new widget model, home screen widgets, and smart stacks. On the iPad they were relegated to a sidebar, but iPadOS 15 fixed that a year later, allowing us to place widgets anywhere on the home screen. In macOS Big Sur, we could put iPhone-ish widgets in the notification shade on the right side of the screen.
But with the operating system updates coming this fall, Apple is making some welcome changes that will put widgets at the forefront of the Apple ecosystem. It’s gonna be the Widgetpocalypse, and that’s what I’m here for.
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All of Apple’s platforms, with the possible exception of tvOS, have had widgets for years – watchOS only really had them in the Siri watch face, and they were pretty limited.
With watchOS 10, a swipe up or roll of the digital crown brings up a list of widgets that display important information from your Apple Watch apps without needing to open the app. It’s a much better solution than trying to fit critical information into a small complication. You’ll get little interactive cards in this stack of widgets when there are background operations – you can pause or resume timers or music playback, for example.
Even in the first developer beta, I love using my Apple Watch this way. I can’t wait for the developers to deliver updated Apple Watch apps with cool new widgets for this stack.
Widgets on iOS and iPadOS? This is old news! Except now they can be interactive, which makes me a thousand times more likely to use a widget than before. Yes, I want to take a look at the weather without jumping into an app, but I don’t care if I see my shopping list on my home screen. But tell me I can check off my shopping list items directly from the widget and that changes All. I never wanted an Apple Music widget on my home screen, but that was before I could play music directly from it.
But it’s the macOS angle that really takes widgets to the next level. The widgets available today in the notification center are sort of skeletons. With macOS Sonoma, you can put them right on your home screen, And they are interactive, And you can place widgets from your iPhone on your Mac and even interact with them. They will work as long as your iPhone is nearby or on the same network.
I immediately created a second virtual desktop and filled it with large widgets. It’s the return of Dashboard, only better!
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No matter what Apple device you use, the changes to widgets this fall can completely change the way you use it for the better. Interactive widgets on iOS and iPadOS mean they don’t just give you information at a glance, they let you perform basic common actions without opening apps. It’s a big problem. It’s one of those things that Android has always had, but in a less organized and attractive way, and iPhone enthusiasts have been asking for it since the big widget redesign of 2020.
On Apple Watch, widgets are at the heart of the whole new interface. The whole point of a watch is to have information visible, and the complications just didn’t offer enough space and flexibility (not to mention your average user still doesn’t seem to know how to alter and change them, or cannot be disturbed). A smart stack of widgets is a great way to make Apple Watch apps useful again, and this move could potentially revitalize the Watch app ecosystem that’s kind of in place right now.
But it’s macOS that brings it all together. This Mac is where we get stuff do. And a small, off-screen notification center filled with non-interactive widgets made them a little useless. The ability to put them on your desk, along with the interactivity, means an empty desk can quickly be transformed into the nerve center of your Apple ecosystem. The ability to use your iPhone widgets is just awesome – another way to use your iPhone without picking it up.
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And let’s not forget the new StandBy mode for iPhone. Charge your iPhone in landscape mode and you’ll have access to a new clock and calendar view and, yes, widgets. Sleep mode is just a thing on iPhone for now, but you just know it’s coming to iPad and maybe even Mac in a year or two. And it will make widgets even more appealing to app developers.
It may be difficult to see this at the moment, as third-party apps need to be updated to support interactive widgets, and new apps that target new operating systems won’t be available in app stores until then. autumn. But take note of my words: By this time next year, our Apple devices will be charge with widgets, and we’re going to love it.
