Will iOS ever get widgets?

[Mitlov]

Apple is no stranger to widgets...OSX Tiger's dashboard was my first experience with the idea. Android and Windows Phone have both adopted wholeheartedly the idea of gathering information from the home screen without having to go into an individual app to see the info, and BlackBerry 10 seems to be jumping on that bandwagon as well.

But on the secondhand iPad 1 I've recently acquired (updated to most recent version of iOS), you still have to go into a weather app to see a weather update, you have to go into a news app to see headlines, you have to go into your calendar app to see your next appointment, etc.

Has anyone heard of plans to add this sort of functionality to iOS in the future? It seems to me to be a notable competitive shortfall that Apple should address.

[Ed Hardy]

This is a feature that would violate Apple's focus on KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). On the other hand, it would certainly make Apple's smartphones and tablets more functional. That makes widgets something that I'm sure gets brought up at iOS design meetings all the time.

[Mitlov]

In OSX, the widgets were hidden away on a dashboard so that they didn't clutter up the main desktop. Seems to me that allowing the user to designate four widgets for the lock screen would be similar. How about four widgets on an iPhone, or eight for an iPad's lock screen. That would add functionality without sacrificing the KISS interface of selecting apps once you unlock the device.

Windows Phone has a calendar widget and a Zune widget on the lock screen (audio controls to skip tracks for Zune; display of your next appointment for calendar) and it adds a lot of utility. Something like that, only with more widget options on the lock screen (because there's no widgets/live tiles/etc once you get past that screen) might enhance iOS a lot.

[questionfear]

I would love to see widgets either replace the search screen or as an extra section in the notification dropdown. Either way they could be unobtrusive but available to those who wanted them.

[Varjak]

Oddly, newer Android phones seem to be dropping the 'search' button on their phones. Isn't that pretty odd? I noticed it with the new Sprint Evo LTE and other One X/S models.

[Hook]

Oddly, newer Android phones seem to be dropping the 'search' button on their phones. Isn't that pretty odd? I noticed it with the new Sprint Evo LTE and other One X/S models.

That happened awhile ago. My Samsung Player doesn't have it, but it really isn't needed (i never used it on my Nexus One) as search is completely integrated into the platform.

[r0k]

I played with widgets briefly on my ill-fated Sylvania tablet. I think they offer a lot. They remind me of the animated icons in BB OS that would update without user interaction based on weather or stocks or whatever. They also remind me of the OSX dashboard. I have a lot of widgets on the dashboard on my Mac but I almost never switch to the dashboard. Meanwhile, on my Win 7 machine at the office, there are 3 widgets on the desktop and they fail to update some of the time. I wouldn't mind if Apple allowed widgets on the desktop like Win 7 provided they worked. I wouldn't mind them on iOS either. The only animated icon I can think of at the moment is the calendar icon in iOS that always shows today's date.

Perhaps notifications will replace dashboard. Any app can write to notifications so you could argue that iOS has widgets now. All you have to do is swipe down to view notifications and swipe again for them to go away.

[Varjak]

Yeah, Hook, that's come up before. I guess I shouldn't have repeated it; but it does 'bug' me a bit.

[royfernandez]

This is a feature that would violate Apple's focus on KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). On the other hand, it would certainly make Apple's smartphones and tablets more functional. That makes widgets something that I'm sure gets brought up at iOS design meetings all the time.

I think widgets will be added in the future, have you guys checked out Dashboard X on Cydia? It's great but drains the battery.

[r0k]

I think widgets will be added in the future, have you guys checked out Dashboard X on Cydia? It's great but drains the battery.

Just in case it hasn't been said yet... Welcome to Brighthand, royfernandez!

I think Apple tends to keep an eye on Cydia. More than one feature has been brought over to iOS from there. One would think that with iOS watered down multitasking, a properly done widget wouldn't drain the battery so much. That is to say an app running as a widget would get similar resources to an app "paused" in background but still quietly receiving OTA updates and still able to send notifications.