Creating and Editing Widget Stacks

In this video, we’re going to look at how we can stack widgets on top of each other on the iPhone. We can do this with both the Today view and with the widgets on our Home Screen. Let’s see how we stack widgets on the iPhone. Let’s go to my iPhone.

If we look at my Home Screen here, you’re going to see that I have a couple of widgets here. I have a photo widget, and then I also have a weather widget. Now let’s say I wanted to add another widget to my Home Screen, but I also want to keep all of my apps here on my Home Screen. To do that, add a widget while keeping the same layout on my Home Screen; what I need to do is create a stack of widgets.

So let’s say I wanted to add the stocks app to my Home Screen here. The way that I would do that as I would stack it on top of one of my other widgets. I’m going to stack it on my photos widget. And when I do that, what I’m able to do is swipe between those different widgets.

So how do I do that? The first thing we need to do is go into our jiggly mode, where we can edit our Home Screen. I tap and hold on any one of the app icons or any one of the widgets. I’m going to tap and hold on my photos widget here. We can see they are jiggling. Now what I do is I go up to the plus in the upper left-hand corner. This is where I can view all of my different widgets that are available. And I find my stocks widget. Now, when you create a stack of widgets, all those widgets in that stack need to be the same size. So I could add this stock’s widget right here to my photos widget because they’re both the same size, but if this wasn’t the same size, what you would need to do is you would need to swipe up to view all of your different widgets. Let’s go over to my stocks widget here. I can see all of the different sizes here. I select the one that I want. I’m going to go with this square one here. All I have to do is tap and hold and drag this. And I place it on top of that other widget. You’re going to see that I have a thick border here. This is telling me that it is going to create a stack. So now I let go. We can see we have two dots here. And now I have both of those widgets in that same widget area. So I’ve created a stack.

Let’s go and add my calendar widget to this as well. I go back up to the +; I swipe up until I find calendar. I need to find the same exact size. This is the size right here. I drag it up. I place it on top of the other widget, and again, I have this thick border here; I let go. And now we can see, we have three widgets there.

So let’s see how we swiped through these different widgets. I tap on done. I’m looking at my calendar widget. All I have to do is swipe to switch to a different widget. What do you think’s going to happen when I swipe again, it’s going to go into my photos. I swipe again. It goes to my calendar. So it’s just cycling through those. I can swipe up and down with it. Let’s go and create a stack with this widget here. How do we do that? Tap and hold until it jiggles. I go up to the + here, swipe up until I find the widget that I want. We’re going to go with my activity widget here. So it’s going to pull the information from my Apple Watch. It’s the same size as my weather widget. So now I know I can drag this up. I place it on top of there. We have our thick border at the top here. I let go. We have our stack. I tap on done, and now I can easily swipe through those widgets.

To edit a stack, we tap and hold on it, and then you’re going to see Edit Stack. When we edit a stack, what we’re able to do is change the stack’s order. And then we also can delete a widget. If we no longer wanted in our stack, all we have to do is swipe to the left. Let’s say I no longer wanted to have fitness in my stack. I swipe over to the left. And you’re going to see delete. I can tap on delete, or what I can do is keep swiping all the way over to the left, and it’ll delete that widget.

You will also see that we have smart rotate up here. What is smart rotate? Well, the iPhone uses machine learning to display the widgets based on what you’re doing. For example, let’s say you get up in the morning; the first thing you do is check the weather. The iPhone knows this through machine learning, through Siri knowledge, and what it will do is it will display the weather widget when you first get up in the morning. Now let’s say you work out in the evening. You check your activity to see how you’re doing again; what the iPhone will do using smart rotate displays the fitness widget in the evening. So when you have smart rotate turned on, your widgets will change depending on what you’re doing throughout the day. If you do not want it to change, all you have to do is turn the slider off. This is going to be on by default. When this is turned off, the only way a widget will change is when you swipe up and down yourself, it will not change on its own.

So that’s how we work with stacks of widgets on the iPhone. We can use stacks of widgets in our Today view as well as on our Home Screen. We can have up to 10 widgets in a stack. When you create a stack, all the widgets in that stack have to be the same. To create a stack, we go into our jiggly mode, edit our Home Screen, or edit our Today view. We go to all of our different widgets by tapping on the + in the upper left-hand corner and drag one widget on top of the other. Again, they do have to be the same size. To edit a stack, you tap and hold on the widget. And then you’ll see edit stack. From there, what you’re able to do is remove widgets and turn smart rotate on and off.

So that’s how we stack our widgets on the iPhone.