Widget Woes

[Vlad Soare]

The first thing I noticed is that the Favourites widget is gone. And there's apparently no way to bring it back. I can't find it anywhere. Am I missing anything?
Then, there appears to be no widget that replicates the functionality of the Up Next one. There's either a Reminders widget, which only shows upcoming reminders but no calendar events, or a Calendar one, which only shows calendar events (and only those happening today for that matter, nothing in the future). The Up Next widget used to show both reminders and calendar events, and it also showed events happening in the near future, not necessarily today. Can I get that functionality back somehow?

Thanks.

 

[adrianlondon]

No. Not without a third party app/widget. I think they forgot about the Favourites widget, as they also removed the 3D press on FaceTime and Phone icons to bring up Favourites.

They did this during the first few iOS 13 betas but brought it back. However, despite the 8 betas and the public release, iOS 14 is feels pretty much like it's still on beta 1. Luckily, it wasn't bad for a first beta

 

[Vlad Soare]

I installed a 3rd party widget, Favorites Widget Pro, which brings some of the functionality back, but I'm still not happy. Being an old-style widget, it's crammed at the bottom of the page together with other old-style widgets. And touching an icon doesn't call the contact directly, but opens a menu first. 3D touch is supposed to effect a direct call, but it's not working.

 

[Shifts]

Am also missing the Up Next widget, I found it really useful.

Also find the functionality of the Notes widget has been deprecated: 3 out of 4 views shows a static list of notes (well, if you only use the folder Notes inside the app, then it will not be static, but I keep a huge library of Notes in different folders). The 4th view only shows the very last edited note, and no list of last edited notes exists. This was my most used widget on iOS13, so I hope its functionality will expand a bit.

Edit: Oh no, it is worse. The 4th option gives you one static sticky note, and not your last edited one! Completely useless now. Opening the app is far more convenient. ?‍♂️

 

[adrianlondon]

From the first beta,I complained (logged a Feedback) that the calendar widget removes events after 15 minutes even if their duration is much longer. Apple ignored the Feedback I updated it each beta to no avail.

Calendars (by Readle) has just added the new style widgets to their app and they work well. The 4x2 widget nicely highlights any current event.

 

[adrianlondon]

The Shortcuts widgets are stupidly oversized. I wish they would allow a shortcut to take up the space of one icon instead of four (!!) for the 2x2 widget and two for the larger sized ones.

I would simply add the shortcuts to the Homescreen the old fashioned way except that opens, and leaves open, the Shortcut app before running the shortcut. The widget doesn’t do that. The iOS 13 widget was much better for its use of space.

 

[user17]

Have to say I'm incredibly disappointed with the implementation of widgets. When I saw the iOS 14 presentation I can't have been paying attention because I thought they would be a lot more useful than they are. Unless I'm being really stupid and missing something - they're not at all interactive, right? As far as I can tell they're just oversized versions of whatever app is already there. So for example podcasts - all it does is open up the podcasts app! It's actually worse than opening the normal app because it doesn't open it at a page with controls. I thought the whole point of widgets was you could control and interact with the app (albeit in a more limited way) without actually opening it, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all currently.

 

[pacorob]

Have to say I'm incredibly disappointed with the implementation of widgets. When I saw the iOS 14 presentation I can't have been paying attention because I thought they would be a lot more useful than they are. Unless I'm being really stupid and missing something - they're not at all interactive, right? As far as I can tell they're just oversized versions of whatever app is already there. So for example podcasts - all it does is open up the podcasts app! It's actually worse than opening the normal app because it doesn't open it at a page with controls. I thought the whole point of widgets was you could control and interact with the app (albeit in a more limited way) without actually opening it, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all currently.

Only the smallest sized widget cannot be interactive see the Apple developer instructions on Apple.com. The other widget sizes can. I also would like to see that all homescreen widget sizes support interactivity in the same way (or even better) as the 'classic' widgets so actually have buttons that control a certain thing and not only open an app. These classic Notification Center widgets still work really well for e.g. quick access for a e.g. password manager to always quickly access without constantly have to look at it on a homescreen. I still hope that the widget area in the Notification Center area won't be abandoned.

 

[aenflex]

Have to say I'm incredibly disappointed with the implementation of widgets. When I saw the iOS 14 presentation I can't have been paying attention because I thought they would be a lot more useful than they are. Unless I'm being really stupid and missing something - they're not at all interactive, right? As far as I can tell they're just oversized versions of whatever app is already there. So for example podcasts - all it does is open up the podcasts app! It's actually worse than opening the normal app because it doesn't open it at a page with controls. I thought the whole point of widgets was you could control and interact with the app (albeit in a more limited way) without actually opening it, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all currently.

I agree with you. Not being able to interact with widgets makes many of them pointless for me, unfortunately. While I do appreciate some of them for the a-a-glance info they provide, (Batteries, Robinhood), most of the widgets that can be placed on the home screen are useless to me. Faster to open the app. I really hope Apple adds increased functionality and more native widgets in future updates. I’m betting they will because I feel like lots of people are going to ask for that.