Apple’s iOS 14 is set to bring proper home screen widgets to Cupertino’s mobile operating system, and a new concept video gives us a hint at what they might look like.
Created by Italian Apple-centric website iSpazia, the video shows how a suite of native and third-party apps could have widgets that serve up real-time information and notifications in a small box that extends the app’s icon. The video also demonstrates how a firm press on an app’s icon would pop up an additional window or two with the latest app information or recently accessed features.
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The idea behind these widgets would be to avoid the need to completely open up apps to access their latest information. Instead, this widget concept shows how such information could be accessed and absorbed at a quick tap and a glance.
Of course, this is just a concept video and Apple hasn’t confirmed that iOS 14 will bring widgets with it. But Android has had home screen widgets for years, and is one of the key areas where iOS is a bit behind Google’s mobile operating system.
Integrating smart widgets into iOS 14 would help evolve iOS, which has arguably not changed that much over the past couple of years. There haven’t been many leaks suggesting that iOS 14 might get a whole raft of other features, so there’s a good chance that Apple has something up its sleeve that will be more attention-grabbing than the addition of widgets.
However, one other key feature iOS 14 is set to get comes in the form of a "Clips" tool that allows iPhone users to try out parts of an app without actually downloading it. This is another feature that Android already has, and Clips could help close the gap between the two operating systems.
If iOS 14 does indeed bring in widgets and app previews, then it could give devices such as the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone SE, some sharp new features that evolve iOS into an operating system ready for the iPhone 12.
