Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. Guides
  4. Products

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

The best iPhone widget apps for making your home screen your own

Jackie Dove
By

We can divide the concept of iPhone widgets (large icons that show auto-refreshed, real-time data from apps) into before iOS 14 and after iOS 14. That’s because, beginning with iOS 14, widgets were transformed in both form and function and added to the home screen. The newer genre of widgets provides information and direct access to popular iPhone functions — such as the weather and time — at a glance and can give you fast access to news, TV shows, picture albums, and more. Widgets can also use AI to show you items you’re most likely to seek at various times of the day.

Widgets can profoundly alter the way you use your iPhone by letting you dispense with meticulously constructed home screen folders, and changing their appearance presents expanded opportunities for functionality and organization. This has inspired some users to use widgets to customize and personalize the look of their home screen. Not surprisingly, there are numerous apps that help you accomplish this visual creativity. Here are some of the best iPhone apps for customizing widgets.

Recommended Videos

iWidget Pro

iWidget Pro for iPhone screens.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

iWidget Pro customizes your home screen like a pro using various widget templates that let you make the most of your home screen. There are three widget sizes: small, medium, and large. Different layouts and designs are available for each to perfectly suit your background. The application includes detailed instructions on how to create and configure widgets.

Related

Apple App Store

Widgetsmith (free)

Widgetsmith app for iOS.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Widgetsmith offers a broad collection of customizable widgets covering date, weather, astronomy, and everything in between. Each adjusts to fit your taste and can be dynamically scheduled to appear on your home screen via rules you set. So, you can view the weather in the morning, your calendar during the day, and perhaps the Activity ring progress later in the evening. The app’s collection of tools includes a weather app, time zone converter, and calendar. Recent updates include seasonal collections with theme packs for a fresh look. The weather tool has been completely overhauled so that whenever you tap on a weather widget you’ll see a rich, graphical forecast of the location with hourly, daily, and radar weather data. A new set of fonts gives you a variety of new style options.

App Store

Widgeridoo (free)

Widgeridoo widget app for iOS.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Widgeridoo lets you combine various blocks into widgets, such as calendar events, birthdays, text and images, date and countdown health data from your Health app, website data, battery percentage, and clocks. Use the app to combine blocks of information into a single widget in the size you prefer. An update offers a single widget on your home screen showing various widgets based on time and day.

App Store

My Widgets (free)

Pixel Widgets sample screens.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

My Widgets offers access to information and actions on your phone, allowing you to add widgets according to your preferences. You can add a calendar to display the current month plus your busy days, or you can add photos of family and friends, a horoscope, an online photo of the day, audio notes, or world clocks. You can view and edit text notes and reminders, while the Decision widget lets you randomly choose a single item from among choices. You can now open the URL of a widget in an app’s internal web browser rather than Safari. You can also display images in full screen and crop a photo during import.

App Store

Color Widgets (free)

Color Widgets for iOS.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

With Color Widgets, which lets you customize and style your home screen, you can start with a selection of pre-made designs, or you can make your own. There are hundreds of design options to create useful widgets, and you can even edit the widget’s font, theme color, or background color.

App Store

Widget Wizard ($2)

Widget Wizard for iPhone.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Widget Wizard hooks into your Health app to track up to 35 health stats that you can combine with customized calendars and render in various color combinations, fonts, and backgrounds to create your own original theme. You can also use widgets to add data such as water intake or distance walked. The Agenda widget combines calendar events and reminders, letting you see countdowns to those items, as well as clock and battery percentage. Combo widgets let you choose the data you want to include in a single widget. Widget Wizard now displays weather alerts for the U.S., Canada, and the EU.

Apple App Store

Pixel Widgets ($1)

Pixel Widgets screen time.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Give your home screen a distinctive retro look with Pixel Widgets, either by using the app’s signature widget designs or by customizing your widget set with more than 150 color themes and fonts. You get hundreds of widget designs to choose from, including configurations of time and date or year in progress. Just choose a ready-made design or customize one, tap on your widget, select Set Widget, and you’re done.

App Store

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Jackie Dove
Jackie Dove
Contributor
Jackie is an obsessive, insomniac tech writer and editor in northern California. A wildlife advocate, cat fan, and photo app…
One of our favorite Android phones just got its own iMessage app
Nothing Chats app on a. phone.

Nothing is trying to bridge the great blue/green bubble divide for Android users of iMessage. This is not a personal crusade to shatter walls and open windows, as much as Nothing CEO Carl Pei would want you to believe that. Instead, Nothing is piggybacking on tech created by New York-based startup Sunbird. 
Technically, the Sunbird app can be installed on any Android phone and it features a blue bubble for all iMessage text exchanges involving an Android phone. No more green bubble shame that could get you kicked out of groups for disrupting the harmony or even slim your dating chances. That’s how bad it is! 
Nothing is adopting the Sunbird tech and bundling it as its very own app under the name Nothing Chats. But here’s the fun part. The app only works on the Nothing Phone 2 and not the Nothing Phone 1. And this life-altering boon will only be bestowed upon users in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., or the EU bloc.

The app is currently in the beta phase, which means some iMessage features will be broken or absent. Once the app is downloaded on your Nothing Phone 2, you can create a new account or sign up with your Apple ID to get going with blue bubble texts. 
Just in case you’re concerned, all messages will be end-to-end encrypted, and the app doesn’t collect any personal information, such as the users’ geographic location or the texts exchanged. Right now, Sunbird and Nothing have not detailed the iMessage features and those that are broken. 
We made iMessage for Android...
The Washington Post tried an early version of the Nothing Chats app and notes that the blue bubble system works just fine. Texts between an Android device and an iPhone are neatly arranged in a thread, and multimedia exchange is also allowed at full quality. 
However, message editing is apparently not available, and a double-tap gesture for responding with a quick emoji doesn’t work either. We don’t know when these features will be added. Nothing's Sunbird-based app will expand to other territories soon. 
Sunbird, however, offers a handful of other tricks aside from serving the iMessage blue bubble on Android. It also brings all your other messaging apps, such as WhatsApp and Instagram, in one place. This isn’t an original formula, as Beeper offers the same convenience.

Read more
The iPhone’s futuristic satellite tech isn’t coming to Android any time soon
The Google Pixel 8's screen.

It could take a while before Android phones allow satellite connectivity to assist users in emergency scenarios, thanks in no part to Qualcomm canceling its ambitious Snapdragon Satellite plans. Apple introduced satellite SOS support last year with the iPhone 14 series, with the intention of helping people when they are out of cellular or broadband coverage range.

The feature allows you to text emergency responders, share locations, and request roadside assistance. But not long after, hope emerged for Android phones. Earlier this year, Qualcomm announced Snapdragon Satellite, with the goal of aping Apple’s initiative for Android phones.

Read more
iPhone update fixes troublesome bug that broke NFC features for some users
A person holding the Apple iPhone 15 Plus and Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Apple’s latest iPhone update has addressed an irksome bug that caused Apple Pay and other NFC features on iPhone 15 handsets to stop working after charging the device using BMW’s in-car wireless chargers.

Yes, it’s a somewhat peculiar problem, and troublesome, too, especially considering that it could also affect the proper operation of the BMW’s digital car key. But the good news is that Apple’s release of iOS 17.1.1 on Tuesday finally resolves it.

Read more