- There are rumors that iOS 14 may introduce widgets to the iPhone home screen.
- A handful of new concept designs illustrate what this new type of functionality will bring to the table.
- Apple will introduce iOS 14 at WWDC in June. WWDC this year will be an online-only affair due to the coronavirus.
- Visit BGR’s homepage for more stories.
With WWDC 2020 now a little more than a month away, we still haven’t heard a whole a lot about what iOS 14 is going to bring to the table. Sure, we’ve seen tidbits about new app discovery tools, but we haven’t exactly seen anything particularly exciting to look forward to just yet.
Now this isn’t to say iOS 14 will be entirely uninteresting. What’s more likely is that Apple has simply done a better job of keeping upcoming features under wraps compared to previous years. With that said, we’ve seen a few iOS 14 concept designs over the past few months and, truthfully, we wouldn’t mind if Apple took a few design cues from some of them.
Recently, we’ve seen a handful of concept videos which set out to show what the iOS home screen might look like with widgets. Incidentally, we’ve seen some rumblings that Apple may introduce widgets in iOS 14, though it’s certainly not a sure thing at this point.
First up, we have this video from iSpazio. It’s not heavy on the details but it does provide us with a decent, if not short overview of how widgets might appear on the iPhone home screen.
A more precise concept worth taking a look at comes from designer Parker Ortolani.
“Here’s my concept for adding widgets to the iOS home screen,” Ortolani said via Twitter earlier this month. “I call it SpringKit. Three icon classes for developers to pick from that users can also switch between. All of them fall into the existing grid and customization features.”
As evidenced below, you can see that the Weather app, in widget form, would tell you the weather in real-time. A Camera app widget, meanwhile, would allow you to take photos a tad more quickly.
While iPadOS 13 already has widgets, the functionality is admittedly somewhat limited. If widgets are in fact part of iOS 14, we can only hope that they’ll be a bit more powerful than what is currently available on the iPad.
Personally, I’m fully on board with the idea of widgets on the iOS home screen if only because it would be something different. The iOS home screen has more or less remained the same for years on end and it would be nice if Apple gave us a few more customization options.
Now if any of this sounds familiar, it’s because concept designs involving widgets on the iOS home screen go all the way back to the iOS 8 days, as evidenced by the video below:
With WWDC right around the corner, we certainly won’t have to wait long to see what Apple has in store for us with iOS 14. Recall, Apple’s developer conference this year will be markedly different on account of the coronavirus as Apple last month announced that WWDC will be an online-only event comprised of a virtual keynote and remote video sessions with engineers.
“We are delivering WWDC 2020 this June in an innovative way to millions of developers around the world, bringing the entire developer community together with a new experience,” Phil Schiller said in a press release. “The current health situation has required that we create a new WWDC 2020 format that delivers a full program with an online keynote and sessions, offering a great learning experience for our entire developer community, all around the world.”
