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What is the point of widgets
- Thread starter roland.g
- Start date
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But the old ones are still there, correct?
Just swipe right to the control center page and interct with widgets you need to interact with versus the quick glance "info only" widgets that are on the main start page.
10 min? You glance at them whenever you want to get a quick update or check on something.
I love the widgets, but I do think the music widget should have been a “now playing” widget with a couple of controls on it, maybe in the future this will happen.
Adam.
Adam.
Probably not in the near future. Widgets can only serve as an entry point into an app (e.g. a contact photo linking to the chat conversation in an app) and they also can‘t refresh in real time. They have to use timelines (think the app serving the OS a list of views with timestamps on when to show them), if the views require an update they have to present an updated timeline and iOS determines if the app gets to update right away or not.
Having a now playing widget with a playback scrubber / time showing would essentially not be possible with the current widget implementation... nor would a skip / pause button without having the press open the app where you‘d have to press again.
That’s what I immediately thought of. “Throw away apps” to use for a quick task and then it disappears once you’re done.
wow. That’s incredibly disappointing. I had assumed they would have the same capability as the current widgets in the today view.
What capabilities of the widgets in the Today view do you not feel are satisfied by this? I'm unaware of any widget that isn't just a view with a navigation link
i have multiple widgets that allow me to interact with my hue lightbulbs throughout the house (Setting scenes, turning on or off certain lights) Todoist widget lets me clear completed tasks. Then I have many that take me into the app to start a specific task, like scanning a document in Dropbox.
Will the today view, with the interactive widgets still be available in 14?
That doesn't sound like interactive widgets to me. That still sounds like URI based widgets. These new widgets should be able to do anything that can be done with a URI scheme. - But yes, classic widgets in Today still exist. Classic widgets can't be moved out of the Today view like new-style widgets, but they still exist
No...the home page ones are informational only and not interactive (other than opening the app when you press them). You will still need to utilize the today view widgets for that.
What are you saying no to? What I was questioning was the interactivity that other Today widgets bring. Haven't seen any of those be interactive other than navigation to the relevant app section either
Ah right, fair enough. That's out the window then. But shortcuts can be triggered straight from the Widget
I feel like we are going in circles, but I may have explained improperly or not understood correctly. The todoist app lets you check off tasks in the widget. The hue app lets you set scenes and control lights from the widget. They don’t open the app to complete those tasks. Another example is the widget for the shortcuts app. You can run shortcuts from the widget.
So, are those types of interactions possible from home screen widgets?
I was a bit confused before, I think there was a bit of a communication mishap but it could also well have been me.
Regardless, Shortcuts can still be run directly from the home screen widget, but the others, no.
Whether Shortcuts is "cheating" by being part of the OS, or it's because it can trigger it from a URI without opening the app I don't yet know.
It could still be possible to have some behaviour associated with widgets, but not something like ticking off a reminder. The native Reminders widget also no longer has that functionality.
While old-style widgets are still available, I am also sure that they will eventually be removed, though probably not before iOS 15.
Anything a widget is doing is encoded as a URI; essentially like a URL; URI being the more general format. So it would for example be possible to send the following URI when you tap a specific area in a widget:
todoist://deleteReminder/0?0
too trigger a function called deleteReminder on the 0th list of reminders and the 0th entry in there, but when iOS triggers the call, it will open the app to pass it the URI to handle.
What do you mean not resizable? A widget that supports different sizes can be picked in any size you want. - At least that works fine on my iPhone. You have to remove it and bring it back in the new size, but you can pick the size you want
No I mean on the home screen it’s said that you can resize it on the home screen. Will see if that’s the case on next beta
You can still move to iOS14..... you don't have to use the widgets
You can just setup your homescreen and use your device like iOS13 and before.