Apple is finally bringing widgets on the home screen to iPadOS 15

XDA

By Rich Woods

Published Jun 7, 2021

Apple has announced that starting with iPadOS 15, you'll be able to put widgets on the home screen, like you can today on iPhones.

Today, Apple held its keynote for WWDC, announcing new software updates like iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, tvOS 15, and macOS Monterey. For iPadOS 15, Apple is finally delivering some key iOS 14 features like home screen widgets. Indeed, last year, the Cupertino firm delivered home screen widgets for the iPhone, but iPad users had to keep their widgets in a dedicated widget section.

The way that widgets are going to work on iPadOS 15 isn't all that different than how they work on an iPhone, but obviously, things are bigger on the iPad. There's a new widget selection menu, and there are also some bigger widgets.

You can see that widgets are divided by different categories, and can search, and so on. While the widget UI is refreshed, this is really about feature parity with the iPhone. It's clear that last year, Apple didn't consider this to be an iPad feature; now it is.

As mentioned, there are bigger widgets, too. Here are some examples of apps that use the new, larger widget: Files, Photos, and Apple TV. iPadOS 15 also brings new widgets for the App Store, Find My, Game Center, Mail, and Contacts. You can probably imagine how each of those can take advantage of extra real estate. And with apps like Photos, it can be more visually appealing by showing you various pictures, or things that happened on this day from years ago.

There's one other iOS 14 feature that's coming to iPadOS 15. iPad is getting the App Library feature now. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's basically an app drawer, and like home screen widgets, it arrived on iPhone last year, but not on iPad. App Library can automatically organize apps into categories like Productivity, Games, and Recently Added. You can use the App Library to remove certain apps from your home screen without uninstalling them. You can always access them through the App Library once you do that, though. You can also set whether new apps will show up on the home screen or not, landing only in the App Library.

Home screen widgets and the App Library will debut in iPadOS 15 this fall.