Well, hello there! I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Apple launched this new schmancy update called iOS14 that includes a lot of cool features and tools. However, the one I’ll be writing about today is the new widget feature.

If you’re like me, you’ve spent the entire morning and afternoon in an organizational frenzy – rearranging, deleting, and moving apps around the screen. It is strangely engrossing, to say the least.

Let’s just say, I woke up around 7:45am [which is a rarity for me], and it is currently 4:03pm… and I’ve only organized HALF of my stuff.

I will be guiding you with my own know-how and telling you everything you will need to know in order to make this process smoother and, hopefully, faster.

^{Make sure you’ve downloaded and installed the iOS14 update already before continuing! To check, go to Settings -> General -> Software Update.}

1. Move your apps to the App Library

And this one is the first tip because it’s probably the most important one, the one that I wish I’d done first – move all the apps to the app library.

To do this, tap and hold your finger over any app [or anywhere on your home screen], and, once you have an app under your finger to move it around, tap other individual apps to group them together. Once you have a bunch of them grouped [don’t release your finger, yet], drag them to the furthest page to the right of your screen until you reach the App Library. Once there, release the apps – they will automatically organize themselves! Woot, woot!

2. Download “Widgetsmith” in the App Store

Go to the app store and download Widgetsmith – you’ll need it for the rest of the tutorial!

This is an app created specifically to work in conjunction with Apple’s new iOS14 update and allows for more awesome and aesthetically-pleasing iPhone screens. Fair warning, though – it is a d d i c t i n g .

3. The features

I decided to record a video showing a brief overview of the widgets both from iOS14 and Widgetsmith. In this case, I feel like a video will be a better way to showcase it. I will be explaining more about it in a video [an actual youtube video!] soon as well!

4. Small, Medium, and Large Widgets

As you saw from my last video, there are 3 different sizes to the new iOS update and Widgetsmith app.

I love to create a bunch of different-sized widgets and play around with the order/structure. Normally, however, I tend to mix and match between the small and medium widgets because they allow for a bit more flexibility than if I were to incorporate a large widget – which takes up a whopping 16 spaces worth of individual apps whereas the small and medium-sized widgets take up 4 and 8 spaces respectively.

My only complaint is that I wish I could change the medium-sized widget from a horizontal position to a vertical position. I feel like it would have looked really nice as a small little sidebar of sorts on each home page.

5. Layouts

There are so many styles and structure combinations to set up in each of your home screen pages – I’ve been rearranging for hours on end all day today while also writing this blog post. Every time I wrote something on here, and then went to rearrange some more stuff around, the more familiarized I became with the update which brought me back to this post to add more and more to it!

I’ve already done 7 pages of my home screen, which dumbfounds me to no end because you’d think that someone who’s spent 8+ hours organizing would have their entire phone organized to the Apple gods.

Here’s one of my completed pages:

I made another post where I’ve included all 7 of my completed home screen pages! I also included a poll because I want to know which pages are everyone’s favorite. Go check it out!

6. More Neat Widget Apps

So, upon searching for apps in the App Store, I came across several other neat widget apps to download – I must say, some of them look promising.

Like, a Jumping Dino game widget?! Sign me up!

Here is a list of widget apps that I found and will possibly be reviewing in another blog post:

• Motivation – Daily Quotes
• Steve – The Jumping Dinosaur
• Sticky Notes + Widget
• Color Widgets

Let me know if you’d like to see any more widget app reviews!

7. Final Thoughts on Widgetsmith

I feel like, overall, the Widgetsmith app is superb! The fact that it’s free [with optional in-app purchases] makes it even better. Albeit I haven’t tried that many other apps, I feel like it can’t get any better than what I’ve already tested. However, should my opinion change on the matter, I will most certainly update this review and let you know why.

Nonetheless, I will be testing out more widget apps this week. So I will be posting my thoughts on each of them.

Pros about the Widgetsmith app:

• It offers many types/styles of free widgets [time, date, custom, calendar, reminder, health & activity, and astronomy widgets!]
• Ease of using the app/good structure flow
• Quick learning curve
• Compact and straightforward design

Cons about the Widgetsmith app:

• Not many fonts to customize text [there are only 9 fonts as of right now]
• No color picker wheel to allow freedom in choosing whatever background color we like [there are only 29 colors, and although that may sound like enough, it’s not – _{at least for me it isn’t]}. The same applies to the border colors. I was just honestly expecting a color wheel or bar of some sort.
• “Weather” and “Tides” widget styles are only accessible through a paid subscription with Widgetsmith. However, this didn’t really bother me, because I, myself, am not that interested in those.

And with that, I officially conclude this blog post! Join my email list below to get notified of when I post fresh content and for free digital content you can use on your social media and much more!

Thoughts? Let me know in the comments whether you agree or disagree with the points I made or if you just like the blog post in general. This took me hours to write – mostly because I kept learning new things and wanted to provide more details on it.

But, alas, I am done!

As always, thank you for reading ♥

_{||Nocturnal Blogger ♥}

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