With Apple’s iOS 14 update and continuing into iOS 17 devices came a new much-awaited feature for iPhone users: the ability to customize and personalize the phone’s home and lock screens, organizing them around a unified theme and color schemes.
Apple also gave widgets a fresh new look with different size options and an improved design that shows more information at a glance. While the iPhone has a collection of native widgets, several third-party apps provide an easy way to customize and edit widgets at will.
This article will help you find the best widget ideas for your iPhone’s home screen in 2024 and show you how to create and add custom widgets.
Table of contents
20 aesthetic home screen widget ideas for iPhone
In this section, we will share some of the best home screen widget ideas for your iPhone. Our selection is based both on the excellent functionality of these widgets on iOS 14 and later and their pleasant aesthetics when added to the phone’s screen.
Widgetsmith
💲 Price: Free | Premium: $1.99 monthly
Widgetsmith has a great collection of customizable widgets and is one of the most popular apps for your iPhone’s home screen. For example, you can dynamically schedule your custom widgets to show weather information in the morning and display the calendar during the workday. If you have an Apple Watch, you can also add the handy activity ring progress when doing exercise in the evening, and it seamlessly integrates with Apple Health.
🔽 Download Widgetsmith on the App Store
Notion
💲 Price: Free | Personal Pro Monthly: $4.99
Notion is one of the best productivity apps you can find out there and one of the most intuitive to use. It has recently integrated AI to save time and effort in daily tasks. Collaborate in real time, add media, organize your information and plans, and sync everything between devices. Having Notion on your iPhone’s home screen is one of the best widget ideas we can think of when it comes to productivity and will make you easily access any workspace or information of your choosing.
🔽 Download Notion on the App Store
ScreenKit
💲 Price: Free | All App Icons & Widgets: $9.99
ScreenKit features over 5000 beautifully designed icons and more than 500 aesthetic themes and widgets. The app lets you design your iPhone home screen to your liking. Get the best widget ideas for your iPhone available in several categories, including a clock, countdown, battery, date, and calendar. It also features an icon change option to create custom app icons.
🔽 Download ScreenKit on the App Store
Launcher
💲 Price: Free | Pro Version: $2.99
Launcher is one of the most versatile widgets for the iPhone. It’s fully customizable and lets you quickly launch your favorite apps. You can also fine-tune it to call, message, email, access your favorite websites, and even kickstart FaceTime video calls on the Lock Screen or Dynamic Island.
The app has the option to customize blur-simulated transparent background images and the ability to download them. You can also close the app after running specific launchers like music launchers, background web launchers, and built-in launchers.
🔽 Download Launcher on the App Store
Shortcuts
💲 Price: Free
As the name implies, the Shortcuts app is helpful for creating quick access to your favorite apps. With over 300 built-in actions that connect Contacts, Music, Photos, Reminders, Safari, and Health, among others, you can use it to create widgets that connect with your apps right on your iPhone’s home screen, including Siri commands.
🔽 Download Shortcuts on the App Store
Smart Stack
Widget stacks are groups of widgets that can be easily flipped through on your iOS home screen and are natively included in the iPhone’s operating system. Think about it as a widget of widgets. The strongest point of Smart Stack is the ability to show information depending on your iPhone usage. For instance, it can display podcasts when you wish to catch up with them and show reminders of what you have pending on your device.
It comes preinstalled
Streaks
💲 Price: $4.99
Do you want to form a habit? Streaks is an Apple Design Award Winner integrated with Apple Health that can help you make long-lasting habits. You can create up to twelve tasks and complete them on a daily basis, such as practicing a language, walking the dog, eating healthily, or going to the gym.
The widget offers aesthetic app icons to include as a handy widget on your iPhone’s home screen to quickly see your progress in a circle. It also works with Macs and Apple Watch.
🔽 Download Streaks on the App Store
Battery Widget & Color Widgets
💲 Price: Free | Weekly Subscription: $3.99
If you want to keep a tab on essential information like the battery, storage, screen brightness, and memory, Battery Widget & Color Widgets is one of the most relevant widgets. It is fully customizable and lets you track hardware information easily and in real time, like memory usage, Wi-Fi and cellular data, and network connection status.
🔽 Download Battery Widget & Color Widgets on the App Store
Fantastical Calendar
💲 Price: Free | Flexibits Premium: $6.99
This is one of the most beautiful widgets to show appointments and events scheduled throughout your day. The Fantastical Calendar widget can also show tasks and quickly take a look at upcoming events. Customize widgets to show the current date, add Zoom calls, your event lists for the day, or a monthly calendar. You will also be able to combine widgets like the Event List and monthly calendars. The app is also available for Apple Watch and iPads.
🔽 Download Fantastical Calendar on the App Store
Fitness
💲 Price: Free
Along with the calendar and weather widgets preinstalled in iOS, Fitness is one of the best widget ideas for your iPhone, especially for those who put health and exercise at the top. A single widget can do more than you think to help you achieve your fitness goals since it will show you how many calories are left to burn in the day or how much more time you need to accomplish your goals. Using the Fitness widget, you won’t need to dive into the Health app to figure out how well you perform.
🔽 Fitness comes preinstalled, but you can find it on the App Store
Color Widgets
💲 Price: Free | Pro: $2.99
Color Widgets lets you customize your iPhone’s home screen with various widgets and beautiful color themes. Each widget can be edited to detail, such as with the time and the date, battery, and apps like Weather, Music, Calendar, and Reminders. Inspire yourself with custom app icons and get a wide variety of themes to match your liking. The Pro widget option offers even more capabilities to improve the user interface and think about new screen customization ideas.
🔽 Download Color Widgets on the App Store
Hey Weather
💲 Price: Free | 1 Month Subscription: $9.99
A user favorite, the Hey Weather app incorporates stylish widgets that you can add weather information to your home screen. It provides several customization options with several colors, icons, and styles to choose from. Choose the next hour’s, tomorrow’s, or next week’s weather, and monitor up to 10 cities at the same time.
🔽 Download Hey Weather on the App Store
Bears Countdown
💲 Price: Free | Bears Unlimited: $3.99
Do you want an app that reminds you of everything? Bears Countdown is a beautiful app with some cute widgets and hand-drawn artwork that will notify you of important dates. You can also write notes for each event and points for important work deadlines.
🔽 Download Bears Countdown on the App Store
Apple News
💲 Price: Free | Apple News+ subscription: $9.99 per month
The Apple News widget is a great choice for those who like to stay up-to-date with the world’s current events. You can access hundreds of premium publications with one subscription to Apple News+. The app will also curate and personalize the stories to provide relevant and reliable news, including local news and in-depth sports coverage. The widgets will let you see the app’s popular and featured articles at a glance.
🔽 Download Apple News on the App Store
Notes
💲 Price: Free
Notes is a well-known built-in app for notewriting that includes images, checklists, scanned documents, handwritten notes, and sketches. It synchronizes with iCloud to keep every note accessible from any Apple device. You can customize the widget to show notes from a specific notebook and easily access them from the screen of your choice.
🔽 Download Notes on the App Store
Widget Wizard
💲 Price: Free | Widget Wizard Pro: $3.99
Widget Wizard may not be the most popular app for creating widgets. However, if you need to get helpful and aesthetic widget ideas for your iPhone’s home screen, this is an excellent choice. You can use it to track your fitness goals, add a weather, agenda, calendar, clock, and reminders widget, and customize them in-depth. In addition, it’s multilingual, and you can completely create your theme with it.
🔽 Download Widget Wizard on the App Store
Clock Widget: Custom Clock App
💲 Price: Free | Weekly Clock Widget: $1.99
Clock Widget lets you add and personalize beautiful and colorful digital clock widgets on your iPhone’s home screen. There are plenty of layout designs, backgrounds, and text colors to choose from, along with the possibility to add your own photos as a clock background.
🔽 Download Clock Widget: Custom Clock App on the App Store
Smart Battery Widget
💲 Price: Free
Tired of the iOS battery widget and its limitations? In that case, Smart Battery Widget can help you. The widgets shown are stylish and beautiful and will give you precise information about your battery usage and how much you have left depending on your activities, such as watching videos or playing games. You can also check storage and network data, including volume and speeds.
🔽 Download Smart Battery Widget on the App Store
Sports Alert
💲 Price: Free | Remove Ads for 1 month: $0.99
A must-have app for sports fans and those following NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and more. Get real-time scores easily with various widgets you can add to your iPhone’s home screen. You can even get live stat updates in your icon badge and know sports data points without opening the app, and get notified instantly after an important event happens, such as goals, touchdowns, and runs.
🔽 Download Sports Alert on the App Store
💲 Price: Free
Often overlooked, the popular messaging service WhatsApp offers its own widgets to quickly and directly speak to the people you communicate the most with. It integrates seamlessly with the icons of your other apps, and is one of the most useful widgets you can have on your iPhone’s home screen.
🔽 Download WhatsApp on the App Store
How to add a widget to your iPhone’s home screen
Follow these easy steps to add a widget to your iPhone’s home screen:
- Touch and hold an empty area on your screen until your apps jiggle and show minus symbols (-).
- Tap the Plus sign (+) in the upper-left corner.
- Tap on the widget you want to add. Swipe left and right to choose its size and shape.
- Tap Add Widget.
- Once you’ve added the widget, tap anywhere on the home screen to leave the edit mode.
When you tap a widget for the first time, you may be asked to adjust its features. To move the widget around or to a different screen, press it for a while until it starts shaking, and then move it where you want to place it.
The Smart Stack, as we’ve seen before, will also give you popular widget ideas for your iPhone, like Notes that you use frequently, Memories from the Photos app, Calendar events, or the local weather. Everything you need to know can be added as widgets to your home and lock screens.
How to create a custom widget in iOS
You need custom widgets to edit your app icons. Apps like Widgetsmith and Color Widgets are some of the most popular options. You can use these apps to create and customize your widgets. Choose what information they will display, fonts, colors, borders, and more. Once you’ve created your widgets, they can be added to your home screen.
- Tap and hold an empty area of your home screen until your apps jiggle.
- Tap the Plus sign (+) in the upper left part of the screen to add a widget.
- Select the Widgetsmith, Color Widgets app, or any editable widgets app of your choice.
- Select the size of the widget.
- Tap Add Widget.
- Place the widget on the home screen, and while still in jiggle mode, tap it to change its options.
- Tap Done in the upper right part to exit.
There are limits to what you can do with custom widgets. Nonetheless, the capabilities of these apps continue to increase with recent updates.
Takeaway
With iOS 14, Apple allowed users to customize the layout of the iPhone’s home screen to some extent. Instead of just repositioning icons, you can remove them thanks to the new App Library. Then, fill the home screen with something other than just apps using the new widgets.
Moreover, iOS 16 revamped the lock screen to add widgets, and you can now add interactive widgets on iOS 17 devices.
We hope you have enjoyed these top widget ideas for your iPhone! If you are looking for a new smartphone, head on to RefurbMe and browse our deals on refurbished iPhones compatible with iOS 17 below.
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