Widgetsmith debuted in 2020 alongside the release of Home Screen widgets in iOS 14. The app, created by David Smith, quickly went viral as TikTok users crowned it the best way to make your Home your iPhone screen ‘aesthetic’. Since then, the app has been receiving regular updates to further improve its flexibility for creating Home screen widgets. Now, Widgetsmith tackles Apple’s latest customization feature: support for adding widgets to your iPhone’s lock screen. With iOS 16, you can add widgets to the lock screen as well as customize things like font colors, wallpapers, and more. By default, Apple offers widgets for many of its stock apps. Just like it did with home screen widgets, Widgetsmith takes things to the next level. You can create an infinite number of custom widgets for your iPhone lock screen, including photos, weather, time, step count and more. There are three different sizes of Lock Screen widgets supported by iOS 16, and Widgetsmith has options for all three. You can create text widgets, which appear in the area just above the time on the lock screen, as well as circular and rectangular options for below the time. Widgetsmith also allows you to fully customize any of the widgets you create. You can change the font, text and icon colors, designs for things like the step counter and clocks, and more. Just like we saw with Widgetsmith’s support for home screen customization, you can get crazy here. Today’s Widgetsmith update also includes some changes that benefit home screen widgets as well. The widget editor has been redesigned to be more consistent and streamlined, making it easier to move between different settings and customization options. Widgetsmith 4.0 also directly integrates David Smith’s other apps, including Pedometer++, Wokouts++, CalZones and more. All of these can be opened automatically whenever you click on a related widget. Additionally, you can now attach custom URLs to widgets. These custom URLs can be attached to a widget so that whenever you click on that widget, the URL is opened. This addresses one of the biggest limitations of widgets, which is that clicking on a widget can only take you to the application in which the widget was created. Finally, Widgetsmith also supports the ability to isolate people in images from their background as well as insert images with transparency. This means you can add widgets to your lock screen or home screen that are just the subject of an image, without the original background. Smith explains: You can now isolate the people that appear in a photo widget by removing the background. This allows for really impressive effects when combined with a wallpaper that matches the background color of the widget. Additionally, you can drag and drop images from other sources into Widgetsmith or load them from Files that include transparency and your widget’s background color will now be displayed. The release notes for Widgetsmith 4.0 from the App Store:
An improved widget editor to make creating and configuring widgets simpler and more intuitive. Widgetsmith provides a wide range of lock screen widgets in all new styles. The ability to isolate people in images from their background and insert images with transparency. A powerful set of new tools that automatically launch in Widgetsmith every time you tap a widget. These are contextual for each widget. For example, tapping on a weather widget displays the weather forecast for the selected location.
Widgetsmith is available on the App Store as a free download with an in-app subscription of $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year to unlock the full experience. FTC: We use affiliate links that automatically earn you income. More. Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:
