Easily build widgets and make them available in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS using the WidgetKit framework and the widget API for SwiftUI. You can also use WidgetKit to create widgets for the iPhone Lock Screen, as well as complications in watchOS, and to build support for interactivity and animated transitions, so people can take action right in your widget. And with iOS 16.1 or later, you can create Live Activities to deliver timely updates.
What’s newWidgets and Live Activities share even more capabilities across platforms in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and watchOS 11. Widgets on Apple Watch now support interactivity and animations, and widgets on iPhone and iPad allow for accenting specific parts of a widget to make them stand out when the Home Screen is tinted. The Smart Stack in watchOS 11 is even smarter with the ability to add relevancy to widgets so they show up when they’re needed most.
Live Activities now appear in the Smart Stack on Apple Watch, so people can get real-time updates about events — like sports game scores or delivery tracking. A Live Activity can even launch your app on Apple Watch, if you have one.
The latest releases also let you use WidgetKit to create controls for Control Center, the Lock Screen, and the Action button, bringing your app’s features to all-new places across the system. Controls can toggle a setting, execute an action, or deep link right to a specific experience — and you can create them with just a few lines of code and the new Controls API.
With widgets in iOS 16, you can let people quickly glance at the latest information from your app on the iPhone Lock Screen.
You can also provide the latest information from your app on the Home Screen of iPhone and iPad.
Smart Stacks are sets of widgets that use on-device intelligence to surface the right widget at the right moment based on factors like time, location, and activity. Even widgets that haven’t been manually added are suggested in Smart Stacks based on past behavior and on intent donations for new events.
In watchOS 9, you can provide timely, relevant information with full-color images, text, and dynamic gauges on more than a dozen Apple Watch faces using WidgetKit.
Get started with Live Activities to help people stay on top of what’s happening in your iPhone or iPad app. ActivityKit lets your app provide live updates through glanceable experiences powered by WidgetKit and SwiftUI — right on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island.
Use Xcode and these resources to build widgets and complications.