Apple is reportedly developing a smart display that would act as a smart home hub, and details of the upcoming product’s widget gallery appear in code buried in the latest macOS beta.
The discovery paints a clearer picture of how Apple’s first true smart display might work. It also gives us an idea of how the widget gallery might pull content straight from your iPhone, mixing Apple’s own apps with third-party widgets.
Apple Sports app stepped up its game in two ways Tuesday, Apple said — with an update bringing customizable widgets to iPhone, iPad and Mac users, and an expansion to eight new countries in Europe.
And the timing should work well for many sports fans. The enhancements arrive just as NFL and college football kicks into high gear stateside and soccer season rolls on in Europe, site of the expansion.
While Apple CarPlay 2’s expected 2024 release still hasn’t happened, newly leaked images Tuesday show a familiar widget-based interface that mirrors experiences across iOS, iPadOS and macOS devices.
The leaker is considered reliable. If the images prove genuine, they suggest a sensible drive by the iPhone giant to provide a seamless experience across the Apple ecosystem, even on the road.
Customizing the widgets Smart Stack on your Apple Watch is a great way provide easy access to the apps you use most. If you have a Tim Cook-esque Apple Watch face full of complications, you can rely on widgets instead. You just need to edit the widgets in your Apple Watch’s Smart Stack to provide the same quick access to your most-used apps and activities.
Today, I’ll show you how to make the most of your Smart Stack of widgets on Apple Watch.
In a world with about 10,000 weather apps — that’s an actual estimate, not a huge exaggeration — how do you choose the best free weather app for iPhone or iPad that you can trust and that includes the features you want most? It’s not easy. But a mix of full-featured free weather apps (most with premium versions) and specialty apps can cover all the bases for you.
We’ll go over some of the best weather apps below, whether you just want to avoid getting wet or if you’re a total weather freak who can’t get enough data, visual or otherwise.
Backup Status is a simple app that puts a Time Machine widget on your Mac desktop (or stows it away in your Notification Center). If you don’t want the Time Machine icon cluttering up your menu bar, this is a straightforward alternative.
Time Machine, of course, is Apple’s software that makes continuous backups of your files to a separate part of your disk, an external hard drive or network-attached storage. Everyone should use Time Machine.
And, after you set it up, you should try Backup Status, the fun little app that lets you easily monitor your Time Machine backups.
A long-requested feature is finally coming to iOS 17: interactive widgets. With these, you can control apps on the device directly from the convenience of the home screen.
iOS 17 is still in beta so not everyone has access to the new feature yet. I do, so here is what it’s like to use it on an iPhone (and iPad, too.)
If the Weather widget on your iPhone says, “No weather available,” you’re in good company. Apple reports that its weather service has been having a problem since Monday.
It’s affecting some but not all users.
Update: Apple says the problems were resolved early Wednesday morning.
Apple could finally make widgets interactive in iOS 16, allowing you to control music playback, toggle your flashlight, adjust display brightness, and lots more right from your Home screen.
The new widgets are codenamed “InfoShack” internally, according to a sketchy new rumor that promises more details are on the way.
Apple Support premiered on Wednesday a video with helpful iPhone tips. Sit back, take a few minutes and learn something new you can do with your handset.
With ten tips — plus bonus ones — there’s sure to be something here you didn’t know.
With Home Widget, it’s now possible to control your HomeKit accessories directly from your iPhone’s Home screen. Turn on and off lights or even run automated scenes with the quick push of a button. With the new app, you can make a bunch of HomeKit widgets to meet your needs.
I put Home Widget to the test in my smart house. I’m generally pleased with its usability.
The new version 5.74 of Google Maps for iOS adds two straightforward, useful and intuitive widgets for you to try with your iPhone. You can use them in the Today View or on the Home Screen.
iOS and iPadOS 15 give app developers the ability to hide sensitive information in lock screen widgets until a device has been unlocked.
The change is part of an upgrade to the WidgetKit framework, first introduced in iOS and iPadOS 14 last year, and will be particularly useful for things like banking and budgeting apps.
After a decade with an iPhone, I didn’t expect anything could come along to transform the way I use my phone. iOS 14 widgets proved me wrong. They have me interacting with the handset in a way I never have before.
If Spotify remains your main streaming music listening platform, there’s some good news: the streaming giant has finally released an iOS 14 widget that lets you quickly access recently played artists, podcasts, and albums in a single tap.
There are both small and medium-sized versions of the widget. The smaller of these shows your most recently listened to item. Meanwhile, the medium-sized widget offers a more luxurious, five most recent items array.
While Home screen widgets came to iPad first, the release of iOS 14 offered iPhone users much more flexibility in widget placement. A concept designer showed what iPadOS 15 could look like with the same flexibility.
iOS 14 is finally out and packed full of awesome new features that make being an iPhone user even greater. We’ve got real Home screen widgets, a useful new App Drawer, Picture in Picture, and more!
If you were able to avoid the iOS 14 beta and all these things are still brand-new to you, you might be wondering how some of them work. Well, don’t worry — Cult of Mac has how-to guides on all of them.
Find out how to use some of the best new features in iOS 14 right here.
iOS 14 will ship with a bunch of built-in widgets that put helpful information on your Home screen (with many more coming from third-party developers this fall), and most are customizable in some way.
Here’s how you can edit widgets so that they display the information that’s most relevant to you.
For many iPhone users, the biggest and most exciting change in iOS 14 is the addition of Home screen widgets. It’s a feature we’ve been waiting years to get — and a feature Android has offered since the very beginning. But there’s something you should know before you start using them this fall.
iOS 14 Home screen widgets aren’t quite as powerful as you might think they are.
Apple is finally giving us the ability to add widgets to iPhone’s Home screen with iOS 14 this fall. In the interests of cleanliness, it is even allowing those widgets to be stacked so that they don’t cause too much clutter.
Here’s how it works.
Apple gave the world its first look at iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 at WWDC 2020 on Monday. And while these are still closely linked, one of the signature features added to the iPhone version, the App Library, isn’t making the jump to the iPad version.
And placement of Home screen widgets is very limited for tablet users.
New images leaked online seems to confirm rumors that iOS 14 will offer Home screen widgets similar to the ones found on Android. These widgets could potentially provide useful pieces of information to suit each user.
The same image also appears to confirm that the iPhone 12’s notch will hang around for another year. However, although it may get a bit smaller than previous iterations.
In iPadOS, the old Today View has shuffled over a little, and now lives right on the Home screen. You can pin widgets there, and they will be permanently shown on the left edge of the Home screen (in landscape, at least — in portrait they will act more like a temporary Slide Over panel).
This changes how we use widgets. Instead of being temporary, quick-info panels, or shortcuts for app functions, widgets are now always visible, and always available to tap. A weather widget can be checked with a single glance, for instance. Ditto countdown timers. And — best of all — Shortcuts can be triggered with a single tap.
Let’s take a look at some great widgets for the iPadOS Home screen.
The first public beta of iOS 13 is finally available to public testers.
Apple launched iOS 13 public beta 1 and iPadOS public beta 1 this morning. The software gives everyone the opportunity to try out all the new features, like the system-wide Dark Mode that looks absolutely beautiful. However, you might not want to take the jump quite yet.
It’s not just old folks or people with bad eyesight that like big text on their iPhones and iPads. Maybe it’s late and you’re getting sleepy. Or perhaps you have your iPad propped up on the desk during the day and would appreciate larger text because it’s quite a bit farther away than when you hand-hold it. Or maybe you’ll try this tip and realise that zooming text is as useful as zooming photos.
iOS has long allowed you to zoom text, but it was buried deep in the Accessibility section of Settings, making it hard to adjust on the fly. Ever since iOS 11, though, you’ve been able to zoom text as easily as adjusting the screen brightness. Let’s take a look.