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How to Add and Edit Widgets on Your iPhone

There's so much you can do with the modern iPhone, sometimes it's overwhelming to go through it all. That's especially true if you're new to using one of these modern smartphones. 

For instance, on any late-model iPhone, there's a panoply of apps and utilities that you can use - and then there are widgets.

What Is a Widget?

A widget, simply speaking, is a utility or small, simple app that you can have on your phone to help you accomplish basic tasks. There are many different types of widgets that you can put on your phone. For example, some widgets are branded, that is, connected to using a particular company’s product or service, and others are more utility-based, like a timer, or a calendar or scheduler, or a specialized calculator.

Some people talk about widgets on iPhone designs as “application-lite”, in that they’re the smaller, simpler cousins to more extensive applications that might have their own platform builds.

By contrast, widgets are usually pretty simple, and have only one or two main screens. You can add widgets to your phone, interact with them and customize them to your satisfaction.

How to Add Widgets

When you're adding widgets to your phone, there are certain places you can add them. You can add them on your home screen that you access when the phone is unlocked. You can also add them on the lock screen, so that you can use them without unlocking your phone. In addition, there's something called ‘today view’ that you can use to house your widgets. In general, you can tap 'add widget' to get a widget onto your phone.  

How to Add Widgets on Your Home Screen

To add widgets on your home screen, press and hold the screen to make all of the apps shake or shiver (when you see apps jiggle, you know you're at the right step in the process). Then use the following steps:

How to Add Widgets to the Lock Screen

To edit, tap 'edit stack'.

To add a widget to the today view, or edit the widget, press and hold, select edit, and select settings.

iPhone Widgets: Benefits and Disadvantages

There are a number of advantages to adding widgets on your phone, whether you have them on the lock screen or the home screen, or in today view.

One is convenience. When you want these utilities at your fingertips, adding and customizing widgets makes your phone functions more accessible to you. For example, if you're using something like a calculator on a daily basis, you don't want to go hunting for it each time on the home screen wherever it landed when you installed it. Think of a widget, along with app icons, as sort of a shortcut for your smartphone ‘desktop’. When you customize widgets to your widget stack, you're making them more targeted to what you want to do with them. 

Customization is another major benefit here. This goes along with the above point on convenience. Each smartphone user is different, and has different things that they want to access regularly. Customization allows you to get more out of your device.

Another related benefit is access to information. You might be looking for info from a fitness tracker, or something simple like a watch or a notification widget, or more interactive widgets. Putting these into widget stacks means they are more accessible for you when you need to find them. (Then, when you don't want to use one anymore, you can tap 'remove widget' to get the screen less cluttered.)

Some institutions like schools and health networks even have their own widgets, too.

Disadvantages of Widgets

There are also a few disadvantages to having too many widgets on your phone. One is battery life – as your applications are open and active, they tend to sap battery power, and they can do it fairly quickly for some devices. That’s why it’s important to get a phone with good battery health and longer battery life.

Another one is clutter on the screen – you don't want your desktop view of your smartphone to be too jumbled and disorganized. So too many custom widgets can sort of detract from your desired state in that way.

Where to Find Widgets

Of course, you can find a new widget through the search process on your home screen. However, there are other places to source the right widgets for your smartphone, too.

On iPhones iOS 15 and newer, there is something called ‘widget suggestions’ that automatically gives you widgets that you may want. Apps appear automatically in your smart stack, based on your past activity. It's just one of many features working from AI and machine learning systems that can predict what you're going to want as a user.

You can also go to websites like Reddit – if you're into figuring out what other people are saying, this is one of the more intuitive sites where you’re going to get clear and unvarnished opinions from other people. They may have widget suggestions that will resonate with you for personal reasons.

In addition, there's a whole host of articles online from places like PCMag and various text sites, with long lists of widgets that may be in your wheelhouse or top of mind for you as you search.

Widgets for Widgets

There are also many different kinds of widgets to choose from, for example, utilities like: 

There are widgets for communication, widgets for organization, and widgets for various kinds of personal and professional tasks. There are widgets for night sky exploration, the interpretation of bird calls, and much more. 

There are even widgets for - customizing widgets! 

Widgetsmith is a popular widget that allows for this kind of customization of the smartphone interface. It can also help to manage the use of widgets over time - making each one accessible when it is most needed. 

Finding the right widgets and customizing them to your phone screens makes your phone more uniquely "yours" and adds to the convenience of having a nice modern phone. 

Sell and Recycle Your Used Phone With ecoATM

Want to upgrade to a newer smartphone model so you can customize your widgets and make your lock and home screen more special? You can bring your used phone to one of 6,000 conveniently located ecoATM kiosks around the country. We may offer you cash in return for selling and recycling your smartphone with us.

You could get paid in as little as 10 minutes and feel good knowing you made the decision to keep your old phone out of a landfill. ecoATM kiosks are a trustworthy alternative to selling a used device to a stranger.

Find an ecoATM kiosk in your area today!

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