This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Using Widgets
Widgets are “mini” versions of apps installed on your iPhone that you can access easily and quickly from the Widget Center.
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You can open the Widget Center in a number of ways:
Wake your iPhone and swipe to the right on the Lock screen.
Move to a Home page and swipe all the way to the right.
Swipe down the screen to open the Notification Center and then swipe to the right.
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At the top of the Widget Center, you see the Search tool (more on this later). If you open the Widget Center from the Lock screen, you see the current time and date under the Search tool; if you open it from a Home screen, you don’t see the date or time. Beneath that, you see widgets for apps installed on your iPhone. Swipe up and down the screen to browse your widgets.
Each widget provides information or functions based on its app. For example, you can use the FAVORITES widget to place phone calls using the Phone app or to make FaceTime calls to your contacts you’ve designated as Favorites (you learn how to do this in Chapter 7). You can see your daily calendar in the CALENDAR widget, get news in the NEWS widget, or listen to music in the MUSIC widget.
You can expand a widget to show all of its information or tools by tapping the Show More command or collapse it to a more minimal state by tapping the Show Less command.
You can interact with widgets in several ways. Some widgets provide information that you can view within the widget, such as CALENDAR, STOCKS, or UP NEXT. Some apps provide options you can tap to perform specific actions; these include FAVORITES and MUSIC. When you tap something within a widget, the associated app opens and either performs the task you indicated or shows more information about what you selected.
Some apps even have multiple widgets. For example, the Calendar app has the UP NEXT widget that shows you the next events on your calendar and the CALENDAR widget that shows the events on the current date.
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If you don’t move into an app from a widget, you can close the Widget Center by swiping to the left. You move back to the screen you came from, such as a Home screen. If you do move into an app from a widget, you work with that app just as if you moved into it from a Home screen.