Widgets

Widgets are great ... if you actually use them. A quick swipe right on the lock screen will reveal the Today view and its widgets, and it's very easy to accidentally open. Plus, others can see your widgets without any authentication. You could manually remove every widget, but ...more

There are a lot of things that make iOS great, but lock screen widgets are not among them. If you want more information on your lock screen other than the date, time, and notifications without having to swipe to a sidebar of widgets, you'd normally look toward Android. However ...more

Apple definitely wasn't first to the widget game, but any iPhone running iOS 8 or higher can add widgets to their Today View found via a swipe down from the top of the screen when on the home screen or in any app. There's even access to widgets on the lock screen via the same ...more

Chief among iOS 14's excellent new features is the overhauled home screen. Now, you can add customizable widgets that live alongside your traditional apps, and both first-party and third-party apps can take advantage of it. Talk about an upgrade. They even work in the Today Vi ...more

Stock Android has come with lock screen widget support for a couple of years now, ever since the days of the first Ice Cream Sandwich build. But for some reason, Samsung decided to remove this feature in the Galaxy S5. Developer elesbb has stepped in with an Xposed Module to ...more

Although widgets were finally introduced in iOS 8, they weren't exactly the widgets we were expecting, i.e., the ones seen on Android home screens. Don't get me wrong, they're still very useful in the Notification Center, since they can be accessed with a quick pull-down from ...more

Your iPhone's new home screen widgets are awesome — until they're not. Photos, in particular, is a big disappointment. It gives you a taste of having your favorite photos appear alongside your apps but ruins it by changing the photo randomly every hour without your input. Whil ...more

The stock weather widget preloaded on your Samsung Galaxy S4 is really great, but there's one thing that's missing—options. The weather widget shows just the right amount of information at a glance, and it's not too shabby looking either, but for us softModders, it'd be really ...more

Home Screen widgets come in various sizes on iOS 14 and later, and which size you choose will depend on how much content or data you actually want to see. But what happens when you pick the wrong widget size? In a perfect world, you would just edit the current widget's setting ...more

Aside from identifying songs with Shazam and using the "Hey Siri" feature while driving, Apple's personal assistant isn't something I regularly use on my iPhone. For general searches or queries, I just use a simple Google search. Granted, it isn't as seamless as holding down ...more

I won't mince words: the Notes widget in iOS 14 is bad. But you're not stuck with it if you want sticky notes on your home screen. Although I enjoy iOS 14's updated widgets overall, its Notes implementation was poorly thought out. I was hoping for a large sticky note on my ho ...more

In recent years, Apple has made it much easier to customize the Home Screen on your iPhone or iPad, and some of the newer tools are perfect for neat freaks. Nonetheless, a tidy Home Screen can still feel cluttered when iOS and iPadOS force widgets, apps, and folders to have na ...more

When it comes to theming your Android device, it's the little things that matter most. Whether you're tweaking your navigation buttons or changing the color of system menus, no theme is complete until even the smallest element matches the rest of your color palette. As a stap ...more

Being fixated on all of the great additions to Android 5.0 Lollipop, it can be a little difficult to take notice in the features that went missing. For instance, lock screen widgets. It's speculated that the lack of practical use for lock screen widgets and the implementation ...more

The Pixel 2 has finally arrived. Google unveiled their newest flagship phones on October 4th, and there's quite a few changes in store. For one thing, most of Google's official renders have already showed us something new: The Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL will have a Google Search b ...more

Ever since iOS 8, you could add widgets on your iPhone using the "Edit" menu on the Today view page, but there's an easier and faster way to get widgets set up for viewing via a right swipe on the lock screen, a swipe right from the first home screen page, and a swipe down fro ...more

The majority of Android devices have built-in sensors underneath the hood that measure motion, position, and several environmental parameters that provide data needed to monitor your movements and adjust accordingly. When the Samsung Galaxy S4 came out, they included for the ...more

Now that the Samsung Galaxy S4 is becoming increasingly available, we're going to begin seeing many more of its software features leak out. While we wait for major software leaks and updates for things like the GS4 camera and the next iteration of Jelly Bean (Android 4.2), so ...more

For people that like to get things done, Android's home screen widgets are almost indispensable. Rather than packing your launcher with a bunch of icons, you can utilize widgets to get quick information in a beautiful package or provide one-tap access to a particular functiona ...more

Probably the most favorite custom ROM among softModders is CyanogenMod, a theme-friendly take on stock Android that not only makes it easier to customize your device, but also increases performance using a variety of system tweaks and enhancements. If you're bogged down by To ...more

When Lollipop was released, Android's lock screen got a huge makeover. But most of the changes were made for aesthetic purposes rather than functionality. In fact, one of KitKat's best lock screen features was removed altogether—the ability to add custom widgets. We've since ...more

Even though the Galaxy S8 and S8+ are only just now being released to the public, the software leaks have been rolling in for a while. Everyone seems to have gone crazy for the new look Samsung is pushing out with Samsung Experience, the successor to TouchWiz. As a result, the ...more

Google's "At A Glance" widget gives you the current weather conditions and upcoming events from your Google Calendar in a handy spot right at the top of your home screen. But on Pixel phones, this widget is permanently embedded into the launcher, so you can't just long-press i ...more

The weather widget on the main home screen of a fresh-out-of-the-box Galaxy S5 is meant to show off the screen. Super-high contrast and crisp definition on the individual blades of grass in the background let you know that the phone you're holding has one helluva display. But ...more

Have you ever accidentally dismissed an important notification? Realized you didn't mean to delete an alert after hitting "Clear all?" Instead of pulling out your hair, know you can see the alert again — at least, a portion of it. There's been a hidden feature in Android sinc ...more

It's all about widgets. Widgets are one of the most important features on an Android phone—they can provide valuable information at a glance and are easily customizable. You can download widgets for the weather, news, Tweets, and so on, but there are limitations as to what ki ...more

There are plenty of reasons to upgrade to iOS 14, home screen widgets chief among them. With that in mind, it's ironic that Apple placed so much emphasis on "widgets" this year when the new update removes a fan-favorite widget of the past — the "Favorites" Phone widget, which ...more

With the release of various new and updated Samsung Galaxy S6 apps and features, like Smart Switch, Smart Remote, and wallpapers, something that's a home screen staple for most Android users was still missing. While we may have to wait a little longer for an extensive system ...more

The stock AccuWeather widget on the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is great if you want a super quick way to see the current time, date, and weather forecast for your area, but personally, its design just doesn't do it for me. It's big and bulky and I find that the background weather i ...more

Apple's iOS 14 introduced a new world of iPhone customization thanks to its updated widgets that can live on both the home screen and Today View. While they're incredibly useful, they're not very interactive, they restrict what's shown, and you can't resize them afterward. How ...more

Samsung's Galaxy Note 4 is a beautiful device worthy of all the critical acclaim it has received thus far. But aside from the S Pen features, most of the Note's user interface has a great deal of overlap with the Galaxy S5 that we all know and love. So it's not an entirely fo ...more

While Apple has been making strides in iPhone customization, it's still not up to par with what Android is and always has been. You can hide apps from the home screen now in iOS 14, but for everything that's still there, you can't add gaps between icons on the same page to seg ...more

Nova Launcher continues to push the boundary of features available to home screen launchers. While most users are waiting for their OEMs to send out the Android 8.0 update, Nova provides access to many of Android Oreo's features to the 99.8% of devices currently using an older ...more

There are a ton of streaming services available at your disposal in the Google Play Store—Spotify, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, Last.fm, and the list goes on and on. These apps help satisfy my day-to-day cravings for good beats, but I tend to do a little too much hopping around from ...more

The idle screen for the Chromecast is certainly beautiful. Full of many high-definition pictures taken of various parts of the world, it's almost a shame that we have to dismiss this screen in order to cast content. The folks over at RiR Software love this idle screen, too. S ...more

All across the world, Nexus 7s have been secretly living a double life. The clean, simple look of the stock Holo user interface is nice if minimalism is your thing, but to softModders like me, Holo is bare, lacking style, overly blue, and an eyesore. It gets the job done, but ...more

After utilizing Spotify's My Year in Music tool, I came to realize that I listened to over 30,000 minutes of music in 2014. Most of that was played while working from my Mac using the desktop version of the service. Although listening to music on Spotify while working helps s ...more

I'm constantly browsing the web, taking pictures, and playing games on my Samsung Galaxy Note 2, but there's one thing that I'm always doing—playing music. No matter what I'm doing on my smartphone, I'm always playing my music in the background at the same time. However, ther ...more

The transition from Android KitKat to Lollipop was pretty drastic in the looks department. Google's new Material Design guidelines changed the way many parts of the UI function, like the notification drawer, status bar, and most notably, the lock screen. Don't Miss: How to Pr ...more

The widget system on iOS leaves a lot to be desired when compared to Android's offering, but that's not really Apple's fault. The system is there, we just need some good widgets to really get the most out of it, so it's up to developers to create some awesome apps that work wi ...more

When it comes to multitasking, the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is the master of all smartphones, thanks to its huge screen size and many features. The phablet's display compliments its multi-window mode, which lets you run two apps simultaneously side by side Another cool feature is ...more

While it took Apple a damn-long time to finally include widgets in iOS, I do admire their implementation. Accessible from within any screen by pulling down the Notification Center (or, more correctly, the "Today" view), the home screen remains clean and minimal, which some of ...more

Google's Pixel lineup hangs its hat on smooth software and a polished UI. At the core of this experience is the Pixel Launcher, a home screen app that is often imitated, but never perfectly duplicated. That is, until developer AmirZ released the latest version of his Rootless ...more

In iOS 14, your iPhone can have home screen widgets, but you can also keep using widgets in the Today View if that's more comfortable for you. You could actually use both if you wanted. But when it comes to the Today View, the process for adding, removing, and editing widgets ...more

Widgets have been available on the iPhone for a while now, but they were tucked away in the Today View or hidden in the quick actions menu for app icons on the home screen. Android had always had a leg up on Apple in the widget department because they were so much more versati ...more

After more than a decade, iPhones are finally getting widgets on the home screen. They even have that Apple aesthetic that many people crave, with their uniform, squircle appearance. But fret not, as with pretty much any iOS feature, you can get them on Android with a tiny bit ...more

Notifications, while certainly helpful, can at times be overbearing. There are banners plastered every which way on your smartphone for almost every application. While many of the notifications can simply be swept away or turned off, the same can't be said of persistent notifi ...more

One of iOS 14's best new features is the ability to add and stack widgets on your home screen, which lets you check in with your favorite apps without actually needing to open them. Apple takes the concept one step further with "Smart Stacks," where iOS intelligently stacks wi ...more

We've wanted them for years, and Apple has finally made widgets accessible on the home screen in iOS 14. These are not the same widgets found in past versions of iOS. They're more data-rich, more colorful, and more versatile. And best of all, both the home screen and Today Vie ...more

Apple hasn't been the most avid supporter of widgets over the years. Yes, they added them to the Notification Center in Yosemite, but that requires a drawer to be opened and closed whenever you want to check them. In my search for a better solution, I came across Ubersicht by ...more

Even though Instagram has been available to Android users for about 8 months now, there are a scarce amount of widgets out there for it. And by scarce, I actually mean none. There was BlinxBox, an Android home screen widget that displayed your Instagram feed, but that app no l ...more

Home screen widgets might not be a new concept in the Android world, but for iPhones, they're downright revolutionary. A new iOS 14 feature allows you to place small, medium, and large-sized widgets of your favorite apps on the home screen, to see important information without ...more

Apple's just ushered in a new era for widgets on your iPhone. With the iOS 16 update, each of your lock screens can have up to five widgets. While Apple's apps were the first to get lock screen widgets, third-party developers can code their own ones into their apps — and here' ...more

More and more devices are using iOS 8 over iOS 7, and that means more and more developers are adding iOS 8-friendly features to their apps, especially widgets. However, not every widget available for your Notification Center right now is awesome. Take for example the Dropbox w ...more

Running multiple applications at the same time is one of the Samsung Galaxy S3's and S4's biggest advantages over Apple devices, and it's a fact that Samsung certainly harps on constantly in their well-targeted commercials. Plus, there's the whole widgets thing. There are zer ...more

Multitasking is useful in pretty much all walks of life. Being able to do two things at once is better than just doing one thing... who would've thought. When it come to multitasking on my phone, I am constantly jumping between apps—whether it's browsing Facebook while looking ...more

The widget selection on Android is one of the main things that set it apart from other mobile operating systems. You can get quick, at-a-glance information for topics like weather, news, music, and much more, all without ever leaving your home screen. Don't Miss: 12 of the B ...more

Your iPhone's lock screen is about to get a major upgrade in iOS 10, as shown off by Apple at WWDC '16, and it will make dealing with notifications and apps a breeze. The new lock screen has been fully redesigned to give users better and faster interaction with the apps they n ...more

IFTTT is the king of simple automation apps. With minimal setup, you can easily add applets that companies and users create. You can also create your own applets to suit your needs. Sometimes, though, you need to trigger an action on your own. For times like these, adding a wi ...more

Apple's grand reveal of iOS 8 at WWDC in San Francisco is still a few days away, but that doesn't mean there isn't any speculation as to what features and enhancements might come packed in the new mobile operating system. With iOS 7's complete UI overhaul not even a year old, ...more