It has been quite a while since iOS 8 release and we are already expecting iOS 8.1 to drop later this month. Coming from a jailbroken iPhone 5s to an unjailbreakable iPhone 6 running iOS 8.0.2, one of the most useful features to me is Notification Centre Widgets, plus you can remove the stock iOS widgets as well. With increasing number of third party apps adding this feature as well as standable apps for widget for specific purposes, I am now picking 20 of them that I have been using or trying out throughout the weeks. Let us start from those standalone widgets.
Productivity Widget Bundle by Avanio
Undoubtedly this bundle is one of the most popular ones. It is from the same developer of ProWidgets, a extremely useful and robust jailbreak tweak. This is also the first widget that I got one my iOS 8 device. The bundle contains 3 different widgets, namely Agenda+, Forecast+ and Paste+.
Agenda+ combines events and reminders into one widget in an organised list with very sleek design that, in my opinion, completely matches the current iOS design and style. It supports quick actions to a specific item to view details, copy them or remove the item. More importantly, you can also quickly add events or reminders on the fly by tapping on the “plus” sign on the left hand side of the widget. From there it will pull up the widget app. In the app, you can also customize the widget, such as period of calendar (maximum 3 days), reminder list to show, etc.
Forecast+ is basically a weather widget. It shows current temperature, weather condition, day high and low, plus 5 days forecasts in a separate row. You can also disable its compact view to show more information such as city, humidity, last updated time, etc. The design is very minimal and the interface is also collapsable that can help save the space, especially when you have a small screen. One of the best things I like is that you can pick the city and language in the app setting. That eliminates the requirement of enabling location services.
Paste+ is a very comprehensive and useful clipboard widget performing quick tasks with clipboard that supports plain/rich text, links and images. For images such as your last screenshot, you can save to photo library, email, upload or share. If you copied a text, you can choose to send as messages, tweet it, search in Google, send to Evernote or OmniFocus in my case. The actions are all customizable in the app, as long as you have the supported apps installed on your device. This tool is extremely useful when you always edit or compose articles like me, as a blogger.
Productivity Widget Bundle by Avanio is available in the App Store for $4.99.
TapToShare
Back into good old days in iOS 6, Apple introduced Share Widget that you can share status to Twitter and Facebook from notification centre. But it has gone from iOS 7 onwards. TapToShare brings this feature back to iOS 8. It basically looks the same as iOS 6 Share Widget. The recent update added seeing to hide either or both share buttons.
Only issue is that, I believe due to limitation from Apple, it will pull up the app before the share sheet pops up. But it is very minimal and fast in loading. It will not go wrong as it is free on the App Store.
Widgets Pro
Widgets Pro provides 10 different widgets for Notification Centre, which is compatible for both iPhones and iPads. The widgets are Twitter feed, Weather, Real-time Flight Tracking, Calculator, World Clocks, Compass, News Feed, Youtube, Weather Warning and Hurricane tracker. Each Widget can give you the info you need at a glance. For instance, the 1 tweet per page and it can load up to 38 latest tweet from your account. There are quite a number of options in the App settings panel as shown below.
A few things that I dislike about the app. Firstly, the widgets are not compact enough that take up a lot of space of the notification centre, especially the calculator widget. Secondly, I could never get some widgets working. For example the Facebook widget, it continuously asks for permission of accessing the account but it just shows failed retrieving. The Twitter widget also occasionally fails working.
Widgets Pro is available on the App Store for only $0.99. Definitely worth the buck if any of these widgets works and is useful for you.
One Widget
One widget provides a collection of gorgeous Notification center widgets. This version has 6 widgets. Free ones include Twitter, Bit Coin Price Index and World Clock. By paying additional $0.99 for each or $1.99 for all and future widgets, you can currently get three more widget including Weather, Translate and Calculator.
The Twitter widget provides a sneak peek on your latest twitter timeline, and allowing to do few basic tasks like retweeting, right from the notification center. The widget also includes the most missed out feature of iOS 7 and 8 – Tap to Tweet and Tap to post to Facebook as well. Bit Coin Price Index widget provides an upto date price of Bitcoin in your favourite currency. World Clock widget provides a quick peek on the different times of your favourite cities across the world at a maximum of 4 custom location.
OneWidget is available for free on the App Store.
Quick-Tap
After missing the great widget app Launcher which was pulled by Apple earlier, I looked for an alternative and found Quick-Tap that is able to provide a rather limited but sufficient functionality, comparatively. Quick-Tap gives you one tap access to your contacts, music, launching Instagram, etc. It reminds me about Launch Centre Pro and the customisation process is quite similar.
It also features an advanced filter system, so Quick-Tap buttons can be shown in certain locations, on specific days or at different times of the day, making Quick-Tap the most versatile way to access your contacts, music or other apps.
Quick-Tap integrates lets your do the following actions with a single tap:
• Phone, email, sms or FaceTime your contacts
• Play tracks from your music collection without unlocking your phone
• Get directions home, via Apple Maps, Google Maps or Maps Pro
• Send your current location to a friend
• Chat via Skype, Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger
• Browse to a specific web page
• Instantly capture photos from Instagram
Quick-Tap is currently free on the App Store with in-app purchase of $1.99 for advanced functionality.
Musica – Widget Player
Musica is a standalone widget app that allows user play any song in your music library on the fly. You are able to see song info from “Now playing”. Tapping on “Listen other songs” will take you straight to the singer’s iTunes page which is really handy. You can also pick songs from your playlist within the widget without pulling up your Music App. It definitely does more than what Control Center offers you.
If you want to try it out, head over to App Store and download it for free.
Wdgts – A Collection of Awesome Notification Center Widgets
Wdgts provides a set of 8 beautiful and useful widgets for Notification Centre Today’s view. It includes Calculator, Currency Converter, Time Zone, Calendar, Photo Frame, Network Monitor, Battery and Memory & Disk.
The app is free of charge but by paying an additional $1.99, you can unlock premium features including ability to copy and paste result from Calculator and Currency Converter, add up to 5 times zones, add up to 10 photos to phone frame and ability to scroll between months in calendar
Download it here from the App Store and try them out.
On another hand, there are tons of apps being updated for iOS 8 that bring along with very useful app-based companion Notification Centre widgets. Here I will talk about some that I frequently use and hard to pick among if they fall into the same category.
Productivity
If you follow me for a while, you should know I am a productivity guy. There are plenty of options to get things done. Here are some apps that I recommend.
Calendars 5 by Readdle
I always struggle between Calendars 5 and Fantasical 2 because both of them are excellent calendar apps.
In addition to new iOS 8 exclusive interactive notifications, the most useful feature for me is the agenda widget that allows user to view their schedule for today. There is also a shortcut to invoke the app to add new Calendar event or reminder which is really handy for me.
Calendars 5 is available on the App Store for $6.99
Todoist: To-Do List | Task List
I started using Todoist instead of other apps when I redeemed for a free 6-month Premium offer from AppSumo. It is useful for me in the sense that it is cross-platform. I can continue with my list on my Android devices when I take them for meeting or so. The widget is compact. If there is no tasks for today, you can tap to add. If there are tasks, you can view it in the list, and mark as complete there. Tapping on a specific item will bring you to the app itself.
Todoist is free to download from the App Store with IAP of annual premium subscription for $28.99.
Clear – Tasks, Reminders & To-Do Lists
Clear is a legendary to-do and reminder app that is still very popular and loved by many iPhone users. It is famous for its simplicity and clean design. Now in iOS 8, it brings us a very nice notification centre widget. You will get a handy view of your upcoming reminders for the day, and with a single-tap you can view them in Clear.
If you have a clean list, the widget will show some quotes from famous persons. You can see from the screenshot above the quote comes from our beloved Jony Ive. It refreshes every time when you invoke notification centre.
Clear is available in the App Store for $4.99.
Evernote
Needless to introduce Evernote in detail. It is an extremely useful productivity tool for many and is my daily driver to capture important or useful information and documents. I used to try out the widget in Android to create any kinds of notes with a single tap even on the Homescreen. Now it has come to iOS and you can enable this function in notification centre. You will be able to create text, image contents, reminder and list from the widget. But it missed the shortcut for creating audio contents like it has for Android, but seems it is too picky to ask for that.
Certainly you can download Evernote in the App Store and enjoy free monthly 60MB upload for free.
OmniFocus 2
OmniFocus is my go-to app for project management at all time. With its update for iOS 8, we can view a list of actions due today in Notification Center. The list is analogous to the Today section of Forecast within OmniFocus.
As a professional project management app, OmniFocus 2 for iPhone is priced at $19.99 on the App Store.
Dropbox
Again, this is a must have app for everyone. You can now view your recent activity in Today view widget in the Notification Center. Tapping on each item will bring you straightly to it in your Dropbox location. This comes to be very handy when you try to manage stuff across platforms or devices. Download Dropbox for free here on the App Store.
Day One (Journal / Notes / Daily)
Having been one of the most popular Lifestyle app, Day One quickly brought an important feature-wise update right after iOS 8 launched.
You can toggle the widget or its specific section on and off from the Settings panel inside Day One app.
If you have habit to write diary or capture everything of life everyday, download Day One from the App Store for just $1.99.
Weather
One of the most annoying things in iOS 7 and 8 is that even though it brings Today’s Summary in Notification Center, it is yet one of the least practical features in this “world’s most advanced operating system”. Without activating location services, which is one of the most battery-draining features of iOS, users are not able to quickly view the current weather condition. Fortunately, iOS 8 widgets are going to help you out on this.
Clear Day® – Weather HD Fr.
Clear Day® 3.0 now provides stunning iOS 8 exclusive Today Extension Widget for instant access to weather forecast data. All users are offered free 3 months subscription in premium widget, just enable it for free when you activate the widget. I love the design best among every other that I have tried. The widget is collapsible and very well designed with graphs showing next 10 hours and 3 days forecasts, without trading off for less sufficient information at all.
Clear Day is available on the App Store for $2.99.
AccuWeather Platinum – Weather for Life
AccuWeather is one of the best Weather app that I have ever used for both iOS and Android with its richness in terms of features and contents. Its recent iOS 8 update brings AccuWeather MinuteCast® – minute-by-minute local precipitation forecasts for the next two hours including precipitation type and intensity, and start and end times for precipitation. There is also a separate widget for this new feature in addition to the local weather widget. One drawback to the widget is that it requires Location Services to be turned on in order to show the weather information, lacking manual setting or direct pull from the app. Another thing that I do not like is that the widget is not collapsible which took large portion of the screen.
The iOS 8 update only dropped for the Premium version. If you like it, you can download it here for $2.99.
Others
Sky Guide: View Stars Night or Day
Star Guide is one of the apps that I tired out since its iOS 8 update but not before. I initially thought it is for fun but it turns out to be actually quite informative.
Its iOS 8 Widget can be added to Today section of Notification Center, including rise and set times for the Sun, Moon and planets along with a day/night timeline and altitude plots. It will also list any meteor showers and lunar eclipses. To me as not an addict to Astronomy, I still find it useful for sunrise and sunset time information which is good for photographer.
Banca – all currency converter
I downloaded Banca a while ago when it went free for a limited time and I did abandoned it. Now I just get it back for the sake of its awesome widget.
Banca’s Today Extention shows the last currency pair used in the app by default when collapsed, and is able to be expanded with one tap to change source currency. It automatically uses any currency or number value you may have copied into pasteboard and tapping the target currency will copy the result back into pasteboard.
It is especially handy when you use it when you are traveling. You don’t have to search through the home screen or folders for the app for this functionality but only from swiping down the Notification Center.
PCalc Lite
PCalc has paid and lite (free) versions but you are able to get the same calculator widget from both of them. Good things are you can copy and paste the number to and from the widget. You can also collapse the widget to show only the result.
Certainly, if you just need to perform simple quick calculations I do not recommend the full version which is $9.99. So download the Lite version here and try it out.
Time Zones + World Clock Time Zone Converter
Time Zones is a very useful app for me as I often need to schedule conference calls for my teammates all around the world. I need to know their time instantly to make sure everyone is comfortable with it schedule. But I have put the app into folder to it takes me a few seconds to locate and open it. Now the widget shortens the time to less than 2 seconds. Only drawback is still non-collapsible. But nothing else I can complain since it is a free app on the App Store.
Battery Doctor – Master of Battery Maintenance
My beloved Battery Doctor app has just received an update for adding Notification Center widget. It shows your current battery life in terms of both percentage and time remaining. There is also a shortcut to its cache cleaning “TapBoost” functionality. But again, the widget is way too large than it should have been. Hope this can be improved in the next update.
I hope this post is helpful for you to pick something you need and find useful. Let us know down in the comments section about what you use.
This article, 45 Awesome Widgets for iOS 8, was originally published at simonblog.com.
The post 45 Awesome Widgets for iOS 8 appeared first on The iPhone and iPad Blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment