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Widget Defined

Widgets are interactive app elements available on Android and iOS devices that let users view information and interact with apps through small modules on their home screen.

Android has offered widgets since its early releases, while iOS widgets arrived in 2020 with iOS 14. The appearance and size of widgets vary between devices, but their purpose is the same across both operating systems: giving users a quick way to view app information at a glance from the Home Screen, much like iOS Live Activities surface real-time updates without opening an app.

How to Use it in a Sentence

iPhone and Android users can customize the app widgets accessible from their home screen.

Common FAQs

Live Activities use Apple's WidgetKit functionality to display live data, but they are not widgets themselves. One fundamental difference is that Live Activities are associated with push notifications, and widgets are not. A Live Activity can be started and updated directly from an app using ActivityKit or ActivityKit push notifications, which are a key part of Apple Live Activities functionality. They can appear exclusively on the Lock Screen and last up to eight hours, whereas widgets are permanent fixtures on the Home Screen.

iOS Live Activities are designed to display changing data for live events such as sports scores, delivery statuses, and other real-time transactional updates. Widgets, by contrast, are not tied to a particular live event and are permanent features that require less lifecycle management. Widgets have been available since 2020 with the release of iOS 14, while Live Activities were introduced in 2022 with iOS 16.

Widgets let users view timely information like weather, fitness progress, and scores at a glance, without opening an app or leaving their current screen. For mobile app developers, they offer a direct way to keep content visible and useful, which supports stronger user engagement and retention.

iOS widgets appear as larger square or rectangular boxes, while Android widgets tend to be smaller and take up less screen space. On both devices, users can customize and interact with the widgets and trigger actions via those interactions. On iPhone, users can create a widget stack that they can scroll through to keep more widgets available on one screen without overwhelming the screen space.

Apple restricts widgets to first-party and approved iOS apps, whereas Android allows any third-party app to be added as a widget.
 

Yes. OneSignal supports Apple Live Activities as part of its customer engagement platform, alongside push notifications, in-app messaging, SMS, and email. Learn more about how to add iOS Live Activities to your app.