With iOS 14, Apple brought widgets to your iPhone’s Home Screen—with iOS 16, Apple wants to do the same with your Lock Screen. With this update, you can create multiple Lock Screens that you can cycle through at any time, and each Lock Screen can hold up to five different widgets: There’s a grid of four squares below the time, and a text-based widget at the top. To check out your options, press and hold the Lock Screen, tap the “Customize” button, then tap a widget area for a list of all available widgets.
Apple did a pretty good job of curating some basic widgets, but as always, it’s the third-party apps doing the heavy lifting here. While the Lock Screen widgets are limited (there’s no option for photos or colorful media), there are already dozens of great apps that support Lock Screen widgets. Here are some of our favorites:
Launcher: Use this popular app to create shortcuts that will perform actions, play music, and more, without needing to leave your Lock Screen.
Widgetsmith: This app spearheaded the customizable widget revolution in iOS 14. Now, you can take that revolution to your Lock Screen, with the ability to add widgets for weather, calendar, text, and even photos.
ScreenKit: The app’s iOS 16 update includes more than 100 widgets specially designed for the Lock Screen. You can view the date, your step count, weather, reminders, and more on the Lock Screen, with pre-styled shortcuts.
Carrot Weather: This weather app with its unique sense of humor has more than 20 customizable widgets for the Lock Screen. These widgets will show the weather, detailed forecast, along with jokey updates.
Flighty: A great way to see live flight progress, countdowns, and flight updates.
LookUp: The popular dictionary app can now display the word of the day on the Lock Screen.
Motivation: Daily motivational quotes on your Lock Screen.
Zones: Another app from LookUp’s developer brings customizable time zone widgets to the Lock Screen, allowing you to view the time in multiple places at once.
Personal Best: If you like keeping track of your workouts, the Personal Best app now has Lock Screen widgets. The app will show you stats from recent workouts, heart rate activity, and more.
SmartGym: The app has a new weekly widget that shows you the entire week’s activity at a glance.
WaterMinder: The popular water reminder app now has a Lock Screen widget, helping you stay on track with your water goals.
Speedy: This free app lets you add quick contact shortcuts to the Lock Screen, taking the concept of a speed dial to a whole new level. It also supports messaging via third-party apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal.
Pretty Progress: A lightweight and “pretty” way to add countdowns to the Lock Screen.
Soor: The third-party popular music player now has widgets to play your favorite mixes in both rectangular and circular designs.
Todoist: The popular task manager now lets you view your to-dos from the Lock Screen. Similar apps like Things have also added this feature.