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What is the point of widgets
- Thread starter roland.g
- Start date
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I can't say for any other widget yet, but the battery one will be very handy for me when I update later this year.
Widgets are glancables. They are non-interactive and cannot send events back to their relevant app, they can only present data, like complications on Apple Watch.
The point of the Music Widget I believe is primarily to make you go "Oh that looks like a nice album I've just been recommended. I'll jump into that one". Calendar, Weather and a stack with news and such is the ones I use.
The point of the Music Widget I believe is primarily to make you go "Oh that looks like a nice album I've just been recommended. I'll jump into that one". Calendar, Weather and a stack with news and such is the ones I use.
I heard in one YouTube video (don't remember which one unfortunately) that while small widgets are only a gateway into the app when you click them, medium and large ones can have some interactivity to them. Does this just mean that e. g. depending on which album you click on the larger music widget you get to that particular album? Or is there also the potential for more?
Until widgets become interactive, they are useless.
What the point of having a widget on your home screen, If it doesn't auto refresh, or you cant interact with it.
Since they're not interactive, you still have to open the widgets like a normal app.
Hope apple make them interactive soon, or they're just a waste of space on the home screen.
What the point of having a widget on your home screen, If it doesn't auto refresh, or you cant interact with it.
Since they're not interactive, you still have to open the widgets like a normal app.
Hope apple make them interactive soon, or they're just a waste of space on the home screen.
Apple explicitly said at WW (tech talk not keynote) that you cannot add buttons, check boxes, menus, etc. in Widgets. They can give different entry points into the app, yes, but that's it. The clicked section can act as a Navigation handle that triggers a URI, hooking into the same system for entering a specific point in an app as when you click on a link and it opens said link in fx. the YouTube app
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Auto refresh is a thing. Widgets are created with a "timeline" where the app sends a list of views to the springboard with timestamps for when to change the UI. The app underlying the widget can ask for on-demand refreshes of the timeline however, shipping a new set of Views to springboard. For example if your location changes an event can trigger Weather to refresh its contents and ship a new view to Springboard with the relevant weather for the new location.
However just because an app requests a view update it isn't necessarily allowed to do it. - If the app is on the front page of your Springboard and you look at it often, it will be allowed, but if it's at the bottom of your today view and you never scroll down to see it, Springboard will just store the fact that there's new data, but not refresh the UI until you scroll to it, to preserve on battery life. It's actually quite an elegant system
Widgets can certainly get new data. And they are mainly there to provide data at a glance (weather, calendar events, reminders, sport scores, headlines, stats, etc.). Quite far from useless.
“Give us Dark Mode”, they said. “This Dark Mode stinks”, they then say. And then it wasn’t.
“Give us automation”, they said. Then they say, “This automation with notifications stinks”. And then it wasn’t.
“Give us widgets”, they say. “But these widgets aren’t good enough”, they then say.
Apple typically does these things incrementally, mainly to make sure they work as designed and don’t become security and privacy risks.
Check back next year at this time.
some do auto-refresh. Calendar widget certainly follows my schedule
Obviously widgets are meant to auto-refresh. If yours don't, then it's possible it's just a beta bug. No need to get disappointed just yet.
So apparently the Music widget is a Recently Played widget and if you larger that 2x2 it gives you more suggestions but not more info.
I for one think it would be more useful as a currently playing music widget. I get that it takes you into the music app, but I think it is ok not to have interactivity like controls and volume. I do think it would be way better as indicating what you are listening to. I realize that refreshes as soon as every 3 minutes or so on a playlist of different albums but that’s fine. As a recently it is kind of useless.
Calendar takes you into your calendar
I for one think it would be more useful as a currently playing music widget. I get that it takes you into the music app, but I think it is ok not to have interactivity like controls and volume. I do think it would be way better as indicating what you are listening to. I realize that refreshes as soon as every 3 minutes or so on a playlist of different albums but that’s fine. As a recently it is kind of useless.
Calendar takes you into your calendar
When I first saw a mockup with these widgets I thought this will be nice. But the more I think about the less I like it. My homescreen is the place to start my apps - the more the better. In JB times I immediately added a row and a column to get more of them on my first HS. If I will use e.g. a 2x4 widget I will lose 7! slots for my apps. I have to put them in a folder to leave them on my first HS or they will travel to my 2nd HS - a swipe away.
Meanwhile I think I will not use any widget. Not on my first homescreen.
Meanwhile I think I will not use any widget. Not on my first homescreen.
They do refresh (though a bit buggy right now). But they don’t allow you to add controls for interactivity.
I was actually happy with the App Library and the hide Home Screens function as I wanted less clutter. I do wish you could assign a category or they had better categories for the App Library folders but I look at those like shortcuts to otherwise hidden home screens. I want less in view but easy ways to get to it. Hopefully the widget function will improve and I’d like to see a 1x2 widget if you can get good info into that size. I’ve got a 2x2 stack and a medium 2x4 stack. It will be interesting to see the widget options that come from Devs/3rd part apps. But I don’t see much use for the uber large widget that devours your screen.
I find the app library pretty useless (the list is fine), because you never know which apps will be visible or where they’ll be. If you have a particular app in mind you are better off using spotlight. And if you don’t have a particular app in mind you are better off using one or more “suggestions” widgets.
I'm confused by some of the responses on here...what exactly were you expecting?
Widgets already existed. They are just moving them to the home page and expanding the view options. I for one am happy to at a minimum just see the weather widget when I open my phone. Calendar as well. And as they add more 3rd party ones when iOS 14 is public?
Having more info at a glance is the main purpose. I think some of you were expecting or hoping this was some sort of full blown springboard redesign.
Widgets already existed. They are just moving them to the home page and expanding the view options. I for one am happy to at a minimum just see the weather widget when I open my phone. Calendar as well. And as they add more 3rd party ones when iOS 14 is public?
Having more info at a glance is the main purpose. I think some of you were expecting or hoping this was some sort of full blown springboard redesign.
I think the proper analog are the Watch complications. They present glanceable discrete data.
I do get the concern with needing to flip to a 2nd (or even 3rd) home screen page to get to your go to apps. For now, the solution is to simply let the widgets live on the -1 page like they have for the past several years. Perhaps a future solution would be to summon the widgets pages with 2 taps on the back, like shortcuts can now be invoked? A tap on the front screen would bring you to your app-filled home screen.
Was discussing this on another thread about widgets...just imagine when individual sports teams have widgets (assuming sports are actually happening). The ability to stack them and flip through for scores, news, etc. That's just one example, but I'm looking forward to just basic "enhanced" info right on the main page so I don't have to swipe right and then scroll.
Oh I am too. And that will be a great use case.
This is simply Apple’s next push into app-less computing. App-clips and Shortcuts are other manifestations. There will be a time in the not too distant future when information is simply delivered and how it gets to you (the apps) will matter less and less (have you ever seen a character on Star Wars or Star Trek ask their computers to open an app and then check there what they wanted to know?).
I always thought that the big food retailers (Starbucks and McDonalds come to mind) would never implement Shortcuts in general and Siri suggested Shortcuts specifically. My thinking was that they depended too heavily on visits to their apps to facilitate cross-sell. In the last 3 months, however, both have embraced these solutions and it may or may not have been due to the need to automate things more because of the pandemic.
It will be hard for developers and big retailers to let go of the app paradigm. For retailers, especially less dominant ones, an app is like a physical store location - a landmark. For developers, its much the same. An app is an alter ego, a statement about you and your development skills.
Both of these things are why, I think, Apple is baby-stepping this.
But widgets (and app-clips [which I don’t see being very successful, by the way]) represent a next step in the process to a homogenous computing experience, in which the user simply requests what they want to know, see or do and the phone delivers it without the visible mediation of apps.
Yeah...still confused about app clips, but maybe they're just ahead of the game here. Same with Beacon when that came out, although that probably had more to do with privacy concerns than anything else.
It's like in Minority Report when scanners just automatically read your eyes and suggested stuff.
I don't visit a lot of fast food, but probably should set up something for when I do, like Chick Fil A or Panera...probably missing out on some benefits by not using the app. I do like the idea of the phone suggesting it (assuming I have already had the app installed) when I am close to a retailer. Again...as long as I already installed their app.
Yeah...still confused about app clips, but maybe they're just ahead of the game here. Same with Beacon when that came out, although that probably had more to do with privacy concerns than anything else.
It's like in Minority Report when scanners just automatically read your eyes and suggested stuff.
I don't visit a lot of fast food, but probably should set up something for when I do, like Chick Fil A or Panera...probably missing out on some benefits by not using the app. I do like the idea of the phone suggesting it (assuming I have already had the app installed) when I am close to a retailer. Again...as long as I already installed their app.
And you’ve hit a on a good one here: I don’t want an app for every restaurant I frequent. I have a 64gb iPhone and space is precious (and I suspect some of these apps are not the most space-efficient). But an App-clip-like ordering experience would be good. “Hey Siri...I feel like ordering Chick-fil-a today” would get you instead of a full app or a website, a “thin-client” like app clip to allow you to order from the menu, pay from Apple Pay and then disappear when you’re done. This will be great for smaller chains and restaurants that can’t afford the big development bucks to build out an entire app. My local Chinese place could have an app clip simply with its menu and payment method. They don’t want/need anything more than this.
When I found out iOS 14 widgets don't allow for interactivity, I was dismayed at first because this felt like a step back in functionality from the iOS 10-13 widgets. But, the more I think about it, the more I feel like this both makes sense and is necessary if you are going to start letting people add widgets to their home screen. It also simplifies the whole implementation of widgets in iOS.
In iOS 10-13, widgets
The one place I do wish Apple would make an exception and allow for interactivity is a Now Playing widget. It seems like it would be really useful to have if you listen to music often. But, I can see why Apple wouldn't want to introduce inconsistency here. After all, the music controls in the Notification Center and Control Center are only a swipe away.
Just my 2 cents.
In iOS 10-13, widgets
- Live on a separate screen, where you have to scroll through a list to find the one you want. Why would I want to scroll to a separate screen to access a limited version of my app when I could just tap and open the full app?
- Offer limited interactivity, mainly via an expand/collapse option. It seems to be hit or miss as to which state the widget will be in when you go to look at it. Some always stay in the last state you used while others seem to revert to the collapsed view after a while.
- The user doesn't know how much bigger the widget will get if expanded (the Stocks widget takes over the screen) and doesn't know what information will be displayed.
- If the expanded view doesn't offer the needed information, the user taps to go to the full app.
- Live on the left screen or can be moved to a home screen.
- Offer a fixed set of information that is selected by the user when creating the widget.
- Are fixed size and not interactive. The widget will always take up the same amount of space and show the same information.
- Any tap on the widget takes you to the app, at which point the full UI and all information is available.
The one place I do wish Apple would make an exception and allow for interactivity is a Now Playing widget. It seems like it would be really useful to have if you listen to music often. But, I can see why Apple wouldn't want to introduce inconsistency here. After all, the music controls in the Notification Center and Control Center are only a swipe away.
Just my 2 cents.
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Note that these widgets are diffferent than the old ones - they work completely differently, and have different capabilities. For example a calculator widget is impossible now, whereas it was possible with the old ones.