Apple has put a significant amount of effort into widgets over the past few years. They first appeared in Today View (iOS 12 and iPadOS 13) but became significantly more interesting once Apple allowed them to appear elsewhere. They first migrated to the iPhone Home Screen (iOS 14), then the iPad Home Screen (iPadOS 15) and the Mac’s Notification Center (macOS 12 Monterey), followed by the iPhone Lock Screen (iOS 16). This year, widgets made it to the iPad Lock Screen (iPadOS 17), the Mac desktop (macOS 14 Sonoma), and the Apple Watch Smart Stack (watchOS 10).
But are widgets game-changing for you? I like the idea, but the only one that has stuck on my Home Screen is CARROT Weather’s daily and weekly forecast, but I use it mostly as a big button for opening the app. Similarly, Lock Screen widgets are too light to read easily, so the primary utility I’ve found for the CARROT Weather forecast there is as a button for opening the associated app. Maybe I’m weird, though, and others love their widgets. Or at least on some platforms. (For the purposes of this poll, complications on the Apple Watch are a different beast.)
Let’s see if we can figure out how important widgets have become to the Apple experience with these poll questions. Let us know what widgets you find particularly helpful (and why) in the comments—perhaps those not using widgets just need real-world examples. My apologies for having so many separate questions, but there was no way to analyze the responses coherently otherwise.
Note that slightly means that you have installed only one or two widgets and don’t rely on them on a regular basis and heavily means that you use more widgets and consider them an important aspect of your everyday use.
iPhone Home Screen: Which best describes your Home Screen widget use on the iPhone?
Home Screen widgets aren’t available on my iPhone (pre-iOS 14)
I didn’t know about Home Screen widgets on the iPhone
I don’t use Home Screen widgets on the iPhone
I use Home Screen widgets slightly on the iPhone
I use Home Screen widgets heavily on the iPhone
0voters
iPhone Lock Screen: Which best describes your Lock Screen widget use on the iPhone?
Lock Screen widgets aren’t available on my iPhone (pre-iOS 16)
I didn’t know about Lock Screen widgets on the iPhone
I don’t use Lock Screen widgets on the iPhone
I use Lock Screen widgets slightly on the iPhone
I use Lock Screen widgets heavily on the iPhone
0voters
iPhone Today View: Which best describes your Today View widget use on the iPhone?
Today View widgets aren’t available on my iPhone (pre-iOS 12)
I didn’t know about Today View widgets on the iPhone
I don’t use Today View widgets on the iPhone
I use Today View widgets slightly on the iPhone
I use Today View widgets heavily on the iPhone
0voters
iPad Home Screen: Which best describes your Home Screen widget use on the iPad?
Home Screen widgets aren’t available on my iPad (pre-iPadOS 15)
I didn’t know about Home Screen widgets on the iPad
I don’t use Home Screen widgets on the iPad
I use Home Screen widgets slightly on the iPad
I use Home Screen widgets heavily on the iPad
0voters
iPad Lock Screen: Which best describes your Lock Screen widget use on the iPad?
Lock Screen widgets aren’t available on my iPad (pre-iPadOS 17)
I didn’t know about Lock Screen widgets on the iPad
I don’t use Lock Screen widgets on the iPad
I use Lock Screen widgets slightly on the iPad
I use Lock Screen widgets heavily on the iPad
0voters
iPad Today View: Which best describes your Today View widget use on the iPad?
Today View widgets aren’t available on my iPad (pre-iPadOS 13)
I didn’t know about Today View widgets on the iPad
I don’t use Today View widgets on the iPad
I use Today View widgets slightly on the iPad
I use Today View widgets heavily on the iPad
0voters
Mac Home Screen: Which best describes your Home Screen widget use on the Mac?
Home Screen widgets aren’t available on my Mac (pre-macOS 14 Sonoma)
I didn’t know about Home Screen widgets on the Mac
I don’t use Home Screen widgets on the Mac
I use Home Screen widgets slightly on the Mac
I use Home Screen widgets heavily on the Mac
0voters
Mac Notification Center: Which best describes your Notification Center widget use on the Mac?
Notification Center widgets aren’t available on my Mac (pre-macOS 12 Monterey)
I didn’t know about Notification Center widgets on the Mac
I don’t use Notification Center widgets on the Mac
I use Notification Center widgets slightly on the Mac
I use Notification Center widgets heavily on the Mac
0voters
Apple Watch Smart Stack: Which best describes your Smart Stack widget use on the Apple Watch?
Smart Stack widgets aren’t available on my Apple Watch (pre-watchOS 10)
I didn’t know about Smart Stack widgets on the Apple Watch
I don’t use Smart Stack widgets on the Apple Watch
I use Smart Stack widgets slightly on the Apple Watch
I use Smart Stack widgets heavily on the Apple Watch
Like you, I find the widget text on the lock screen far too small to use on iPhone. Apple probably wants lots of free space for displaying a gazillion notifications, but since I prefer to absolutely minimize notifications ijn the first place that to me is just a loss. The only widget I use on springboard is Weather (2x2 tile) and like you, I mostly use it as a big button to the app.
On the iPhone I do like the widgets that are hidden away but accessed via right swipe from first springboard page. What are those called? There I can actually read the text so I really use them. I have calendar item list, charge states, and international clocks. Not more because I want to see everything at a glance without having to scroll.
On Mac I only use the widgets hidden away (accessible via click on menu bar clock). What are those called again? There I have weather, international clocks, and charge state. I couldn’t stand desktop widgets. Don’t need any distractions from the app(s) I’m working in.
I actually miss the old Dashboard. Not because I preferred the widgets. Just because to me hitting F3 (or whatever it was) was the easier target than having to mouse up to hit my menu bar clock. Plus Dashboard let me use my entire screen and put widgets wherever I please. No more of that these days.
I’m really ‘meh’ about widgets. I have the weather widget on my Mac desktop. I’m not interested in the Lockscreen stuff. I would like to DISable the accidental triggering of the camera from the lockscreen.
But I do have one strong opinion: Whoever came up with the keyboard gesture for editing the lockscreen should be hung, drawn and quartered! That is way too easy to accidentally trigger, and wife was in tears when she couldn’t figure out how to get her lock screen image back (of our much missed previous dog, lost to cancer…). We finally figured it out, but it was NOT obvious at all!
They are now the same as home screen widgets, but that is the Today view.
I have a battery widget at the top left of the desktop. It’s almost always visible to me and a lot more readable than the menu bar icon.
On my iPhone lock screen I have one widget - a custom widget from Carrot weather with the current temp and the precipitation percentage. I really don’t look at that widget much - I usually have the same info on my watch.
On my iPad I have a few today view widgets which I hardly use, but I have a large weather widget and a battery widget on my first home page. I have no lock screen widgets on my iPad.
On my phone I have a Windy widget which shows temp and wind in 3 hour increments, but it’s pretty useless because it’s too small to read. Seemed like a good idea at the time, for me to see at a glance the best time to go out biking.
I also added an Air Quality index that showed up in early summer, and that did come in handy because we had a lot of issues with wildfire smoke blowing into our area this year. I don’t recognize the logo on it.
Then I have the Fitness ring which I will probably remove because it’s inaccurate enough to drive me crazy. Maybe that will give me room for a bigger weather thing.
I can’t really speak to the computer as I don’t use the Mini enough to have them setup. But in the old Dashboard days, I used Stocks, Weather, Calendar and a separate Radar which stopped working a long time ago. Even as far back as Sierra there is something in the upper right which pops out a menu but I rarely go in there unless I need to quickly turn off Night Shift
I’ve documented my struggles with Widgets on macOS elsewhere, but to summarize: love the idea, hate the placement restrictions.
I have two 27" monitors, and use the Calendar, Stocks, Clocks, and Weather widgets. I have lots of other windows open semi-permanently, but I’ve left the lower-left corner of the left hand monitor, and the upper-right corner of the right hand monitor available for these widgets. However, due to placement restrictions (which vary from one release of Sonoma to another) the widgets are 1) completely hidden, 2) completely visible, or (currently, on 14.1.2) partially visible. Widget placement (at least for the monitor arrangement I have) definitely needs work.
[Edit: These issues may have been caused by a corrupt preferences file. See my latest post in the above-referenced thread.]
On the phone, the original non-interactive widgets were completely useless to me and often duplicated things I was able see immediately on my watch via complications.The more recent iPhone widgets (which are interactive) just take up too much space on my home screen and I would rather launch the associated app.
Back in the day, I tried the old widgets (Dashboard?) on my Mac and hated them. Even though I now use Stage Manager with two displays, widgets still take up too much space to justify their limited use - again, I just launch the app
I have refused to install WatchOS 10 due to the rather poor experiences reported by others. Widgets on the Watch seem to duplicate complications. For example, the weather complication I use shows the minimum, maximum and current temperature for my current location. Usually, this is all I need. A widget would probably duplicate this or show some other parameters which can be best obtained by launching the app.
I suppose, with a yearly update cycle, Apple needs to add some new feature to distinguish the new system. Widgets have been their choice for the last few years and are in my opinion a not very useful addition to the three already quite mature operating systems.
I’ve stated elsewhere how I use Mac widgets. I wish the poll hadn’t driven us to extremes; my use is moderate on all platforms except the watch. Ordering my use, it’s Watch>iPhone>Mac>iPad.
On the Watch, although I previously heavily used complications and the Dock and now use neither (yea Snoopy watch face!), I was able to use the Smart Stack (combined with writing a few simple Shortcuts) to replace the lost functionality. Apple erred in not providing a smooth transition to this setup (and a way to revert if you couldn’t or didn’t want to do it immediately). Unlike most Apple upgrades, the Watch 10 upgrade forced users to change how they used the device, with little aid in guiding a transition. It took me a week or so to get things right, so I understand the anger of folks who were happy with what they had and didn’t see a need or have the time to understand how the changes might be better.
Note that WatchOS 10.2 will provide the option to revert to the old way of changing faces so that if you use multiple faces, switching will be easy (and if you don’t want it to be easy, you can stay with the new behavior).
Sorrry about that—I tried for the trifecta of not at all, some, and a lot. I just couldn’t see any way to capture more specificity than that without adding confusion. If it helps, I’d say that “slightly” is probably the moderate answer, but that if you use the Smart Stack to take over from complications, that might qualify as “heavily.” Personally, I do use complications heavily.
Yes, that’s how I answered as I use multiple widgets in place of opening apps on the watch (and, with Snoopy, I have no place for complications).
For the other, there are a few widgets that either
Provide information that I want frequently without me needing to open an underlaying app (e.g. battery status information about devices paired with the iPhone, Stocks in the Mac Notification Center) or
Provide an easier access to frequently used app than clicking the icon or using Siri/Spotlight to find and open it (e.g. Apple Weather everywhere).
Well, I’m a little chagrined to discover that all those widgets I’ve been using on iPad and iPhone for the past couple of years (and it’s a lot!) are called Today View Widgets. I was going to respond that I never heard of them, until I went and looked up that specific phrase.
So now that that’s out of the way, a slice of my iPhone’s “Today” view:
The only widget I really use on the iPhone, iPad and Watch is the Apple Weather widget. I have played occasionally with other widgets and dropped all of them as not very useful, now I generally do not bother trying widgets for other apps.
iPhone Home Screen: Which best describes your Home Screen widget use on the iPhone?
iPad Home Screen: Which best describes your Home Screen widget use on the iPad?
Mac Home Screen: Which best describes your Home Screen widget use on the Mac?
Apple Watch Smart Stack: Which best describes your Smart Stack widget use on the Apple Watch?