Recently,Slack, the world’s number one reason why people never stop working, releasednew widgetsfor your iPhone’s Lock and Home Screens. After reading about this update, I thought it had been a while since I saw anyone explain what widgets are and how to add them.
Widgets are tiny panels of information on your iPhone, either on yourHome ScreenorLock Screen. However, I’ll focus on the Home Screen ones for this piece as they’re far more informative. The general purpose of widgets is to show you timely information from a specific app so you may stay up to date without necessarily launching or opening it. For example, Apple’s Fitness app’s widget shows the progress you’re making towards your daily activity rings,CARROT weather’sshows the current temperature along with a passive-aggressive comment, andSlack’scan show your current status or catch-up summary.
All this data appears within your app grid as a 2x2, 2x4, or 4x4 block, with developers creating widgets of specific sizes based on the information they want to convey.
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How to add widgets to your Home Screen
It’s simple and can make all the difference
To add widgets to your iPhone Home Screen:
You can also drag a widget onto yourHome Screenrather than using the buttons in the UI.
When adding widgets, you’re able to create a Smart Stack by dragging two or more widgets on top of one another. Using Smart Stacks, you can rotate between piles of widgets either automatically with Smart Rotate or manually.
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How to edit a widget
Customization at your fingertips
To edit a widget to customize the data it shows:
Keep in mind that not all widgets, such asFitness, are customizable. For those apps, Edit Widget will not appear when long-pressing.
By default, Smart Stacks rotate automatically and can add additional apps based on Siri-suggested apps. This isn’t always appreciated. To adjust a Smart Stack, long-press it and tap Edit Stack. From there, you can tap Smart Rotate and Widget Suggestions to turn one or both options off.
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How to delete a widget
Declutter your digital space
When the time comes to delete a widget, you can do so by:
Following the steps above also lets you delete an entire Smart Stack. If you’d like to delete a single widget from your Smart Stack, long-press on it > TapEdit Stack> Tap the minus icon in the top left corner of the widget you’d like to remove > TapRemove.
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