With iOS 14 now out, many app developers are rushing to add widgets to their creations. These updated widgets take advantage of the biggest feature added to iOS 14 — the ability to put widgets anywhere on a home screen.
Previous iOS releases also featured widgets, but iOS 14 frees them from the Today view to the left of the iPhone's home screens, while allowing for richer widgets with more engaging and informative designs.
- iOS 14 home screen ideas: Our favorite custom iPhone layouts so far
- How to change your default apps in iOS 14
- Plus: iOS 14 green and orange dots explained: Here's what they mean
The number of apps that support iOS 14's widgets grows exponentially as each day brings a new batch of updated apps. Here, we're going to highlight our favorites, with an eye toward adding more as developers continue roll out iOS 14-compatible apps that feature new widgets..
Weather Line
There are tons of great choices among the best weather apps, but what we like about Weather Line is the way in which it visualizes and contextualizes weather, so that you not only know what the forecast is now, but what you can expect it to look like in a couple hours, or a couple days.
To that end, Weather Line provides a ton of widgets in varying sizes, whether you prefer an hourly forecast or a daily one. The largest widgets offer a wealth of information, from humidity to sunset and sunrise times, as well as wind speed. And thanks to Weather Line's titular graph-driven interface, it's easy to understand weather trends.
Weather Line is free to start using, but like many of the best iPhone apps, an in-app purchase can unlock lots of features, like an animated radar, extended 10-day forecast and minute-by-minute precipitation. It costs $3.49 for a month, $19.99 for a year or $45 to unlock forever.
Download Weather Line from the App Store now
Weather Radar Widget
If you're looking for a no-frills radar widget that doesn't even offer forecasts, Weather Radar Widget is perfect. Whereas many more fully-featured weather apps require a subscription or payment to gain access to radar data, Weather Radar Widget is totally free, making it a compelling supplement to whatever free weather app you already use.
There are two sizes for widgets in this app: a smaller 2x2 option, and a larger 4x4 one. Additionally, you can view radar data inside the app itself. This app doesn't even track your location, opting instead to show the radar feed for whatever location you manually select.
Download Weather Radar Widget from the App Store now
IMDb
The IMDb app has always been relatively good at providing answers to that eternal question of what to watch, and the same is true of its new widgets. There are an array of snippets from the app's wide breadth of features you can now pin to your home screen, like popular movie trailers, what actors were born on this day, the latest news and, of course, movie and TV show recommendations.
Best of all, this being IMDb, absolutely all of these widgets are free, meaning there's no reason for the most fervent entertainment buffs reading this not to see how these widgets look on their iPhone's home screen.
Download IMDb from the App Store now
Copilot
If you're looking to be more mindful of your spending habits, Copilot now puts all the information you need to know right on your home screen. There are widgets that display your spending in a specific category — say, groceries — against your preset goals. There are widgets that provide a snapshot of your bank account balance, which admittedly, is not something everyone will want to advertise on their phone's unlocked home screen. And there are even widgets that list all your recent transactions, accessible by connecting your financial accounts with the app.
Copilot comes highly recommended, with a host of rave reviews from critics and users alike, though that ingenuity comes at a price — either $8.99 per month or $69.99 for the year (less than $6 a month). It's certainly not cheap, though the app does offer a free trial and a demo mode, allowing curious users to peruse all the widget options.
Download Copilot from the App Store now
Merriam-Webster Word of the Day
Here's a simple one. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary app now offers a Word of the Day widget, allowing avid readers to embiggen their vocabulary simply by swiping through their home screens. The widget comes in two sizes — one 2x2 square that merely mentions the word itself, as well as a 4x2 square that includes the definition.
At the time of this writing, the word of the day is "crabwise" which evidently means "sideways, or in a sliding or cautiously indirect manner." I feel like I could have predicted that though, so I hope Merriam-Webster is a little more daring with its future Word of the Day choices. Then again, you get what you pay for, and this app is free.
Download Merriam-Webster Dictionary from the App Store now
Hotwire
The current state of the world makes this either the perfect time to travel or the absolute worst, depending on who you ask. Nevertheless, there are surely lots of hotel and flight deals to be had, and the Hotwire app serves them up straight to your home screen with its new iOS 14 widget.
At the moment, this widget is limited to top weekend deals near you, though it'd be nice to give users the ability to customize content to their needs. If you have a particular destination in mind, for example, the weekend getaway widget probably won't be of great assistance. Hopefully, Hotwire will continue to add additional widgets in the weeks and months ahead.
Download Hotwire from the App Store now
FotMob
If it's soccer scores you want, FotMob is the app for you. And with the app's latest update, widgets are on offer as well, allowing you to glance at recent results, next matches and the latest news directly from your home screen.
A vast variety of worldwide leagues are supported in this app, meaning that no matter where you're located or what club you follow, you'll be able to get the information you're looking for from FotMob. What's more, this app is totally free unless you wish to remove apps, in which case it's just $2.49 for three months or $7.49 for the year.
Download FotMob from the App Store now
Pennant
What are sports without data? Pennant is an app totally dedicated to understanding the race to the playoffs — which teams are leading, where yours falls, and how their recent performance has shaken out. And Pennant takes full advantage of iOS 14, bringing its colorful bar graphs to your iPhone's home screen for a glance of league or divisional standings in a variety of sports, including baseball, football, basketball, hockey and soccer.
There is one caveat, and it's that Pennant's widgets aren't free. To use them, you'll have to pay for Pennant Premium, though the price is hardly steep, at just $9.99 for a year. That's certainly more than enough time to confirm that the New York Giants are still awful.
Download Pennant from the App Store now
Fantastical
Fantastical has been a mainstay among iOS' best calendar apps for quite some time, thanks to its effortless system of creating appointments simply by describing them, in addition to clever newer features like forecasts provided within events and the ability to let your colleagues propose alternate times if one doesn't work out.
So it's no surprise, then, that Fantastical leads the way in terms of apps with iOS 14-ready widgets. There are a whopping 11 in total, from compact ones that show the current date, today's events or an entire month grid, to larger ones that present all of that information and let you drill deep to get a better sense of what awaits in the hours ahead.
All of Fantastical's widgets are thankfully available at the free tier, though if you want some of the apps other aforementioned helpful features, you'll have to subscribe to Fantastical Premium, which costs either $40 for the year or $4.99 per month. Fantastical Premium also unlocks Apple Watch and macOS versions of the app, so you can view your calendar on all the platforms you interact with.
Download Fantastical from the App Store now
Noted
Noted's mission is to be the ultimate note-taking app across your iPhone, Mac and Apple Watch. That includes everything form typing out notes with the benefit of a rich text editor, to being able to record and clean up audio notes for clearer playback and even Apple Pencil support.
Noted does it all, and now in widget form as well, as you can quickly access your recorded and written notes direct from your iPhone's home screen on iOS 14. A record button embedded right within the widget also makes it easy to create a new audio note on the fly.
Noted's widgets don't require a subscription, though many of the app's additional features, like being able to export PDFs, attach documents and the aforementioned noise reduction feature, cost money. Noted+ will set you back $2.49 a month or $23.99 for the year.
Download Noted from the App Store now
iOS 14 widgets outlook
Those are just some of the third-party apps with iOS 14 widgets that have piqued our interest. More are on the way, and so we look forward to sharing new favorites as they emerge. We encourage you to share which widgets you've found helpful or enjoy using in the comments as well.
