Home Screen
- Touch and hold an empty area of the Home Screen until the icons start to jiggle.
- Tap Edit in the top corner, then Add Widget.
- Search or scroll to the app you want.
- Swipe sideways to see the sizes that app offers.
- Tap Add Widget, or drag the preview to where you want it.
- Tap Done.
To move one afterwards, touch and hold it and drag. To remove it, touch and hold and choose Remove Widget. Some widgets offer settings — touch and hold and look for Edit Widget, which is where a weather widget's location option usually lives.
Lock Screen
Lock Screen widgets arrived in iOS 16 and live in a row under the clock.
- Touch and hold the Lock Screen and tap Customise.
- Choose Lock Screen.
- Tap the area beneath the clock to open the widget picker.
- Choose your widgets. The row holds a limited number of small slots.
- Tap Done.
The slots are genuinely small, so expect one value rather than a display. Not every app offers Lock Screen widgets, because they have to be designed separately for that shape.
StandBy
StandBy shows widgets when the phone is charging on its side in landscape, on iOS 17 and later. Once it is enabled in Settings → StandBy, put the phone on a charger sideways and swipe on either panel to change what it shows. It is the same widget system in a different frame, so anything that offers a suitable size will appear.
Choosing a size
| Size | Footprint | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Small | Four app icons | One value, read at a glance |
| Medium | Full width, small height | A reading plus a few supporting values |
| Large | Full width, double height | A complete view without opening anything |
| Lock Screen | Very small | A single number |
The useful question is not how much information fits but what you want to know without deciding to look. A widget you have to study is a shortcut to opening the app; a widget you read accidentally while unlocking your phone is doing its job.
Why a widget looks out of date
This is the most common complaint about widgets, and it is worth understanding because it is not a bug.
A widget is not a live view of an app. iOS renders it from a snapshot and then decides — based on battery level, how you use the app, time of day and how much refresh budget the app has left — when it may next update. Apps get a limited number of refreshes per day, and iOS spends them where it thinks they matter.
Practical consequences:
- Opening the app is the reliable way to refresh. The app fetches a current reading and saves it; the widget renders from that.
- Low Power Mode reduces refreshes significantly.
- A rarely opened app gets a smaller budget. iOS learns your habits and allocates accordingly.
- A widget that renders from a cached value never fails. It may be a little behind, but it always shows something, even with no signal.
That last point is a design choice worth looking for. A widget that fetches its own data can show a blank or an error when the network is unavailable. One that renders from a value the app already stored always draws, and the honest cost is that the value may be a few minutes old.
Thermometer's widgets read a snapshot the app writes to a shared container each time it fetches a reading. The widget itself does no networking at all — so it renders instantly and offline, and it shows the reading as of the last time the app ran. Opening the app updates the snapshot the widgets draw from.
Getting a weather widget that is actually readable
A few things worth checking, whichever app you use:
- Does it show the unit you think in? A widget in the wrong scale is a widget you have to convert, which defeats the point.
- Can you tell what it is at a glance, in the dark? Contrast and size matter more than detail.
- Is the number labelled? A bare figure with no scale is ambiguous the first time you see it in the other unit.
- Does it show a location you recognise? Widgets that follow current location can be confusing when you travel; a pinned city stays put.
- Does it look right on your wallpaper? Widgets are translucent, and a busy photo can make a subtle widget unreadable.
If you want to know which number the widget is showing you and where it comes from, that is is Apple Weather accurate and what "feels like" means.