How to Create and Edit Widget Stacks on iPhone & iPad
Modern versions of iOS and iPadOS offer widgets to be added to the Home Screen. By allowing widgets to live amongst apps, Apple instantly made them more usable and more important for iPhone and iPad users. It also introduced stacks.
Stacks are super widgets that house more than one standard widget. That not only brings more functionality to a widget but it also saves space – there is no need to have two widgets visible if you only need one at any given time. Switching widgets within a widget stack is a simple case of swiping on them, as it should be.
Setting up a new Widget stack is easy, and once you’ve started, you won’t want to stop!
How to Create a New Widget Stack on iPhone & iPad Home Screen
Creating a widget stack and adding it to your Home screen first requires a single widget to be added, and then we layer the other widgets on top. That may sound confusing, but it’s really not, here’s how this works:
- Go to your devices Home Screen if you aren’t there already.
- Press and hold on an empty area of your Home Screen.
- With your apps jiggling, tap the “+” icon in the top-left corner of the screen.
- Scroll through the available widgets and tap the one you want.
- Drag the widget onto your Home screen and leave it in place.
- Now it’s time to add our second widget, creating a Widget stack.
- With your apps still jiggling, press the “+” button once more and select a second widget.
- This time, drag the widget on top of the widget you just created. A stack will be created when you lift your finger.
You can complete that process over and over again until you have all of your favorite widgets added to your Home screen.
You can swipe up and down on the stack to switch widgets, too.
Editing a Widget Stack on iPhone / iPad
Adding or removing widgets from a stack is easy as well.
- Press and hold on the widget stack you’d like to edit.
- Tap “Edit Stack” from the menu. and you’ll have several options for how to edit and customize the widget stacks
- Remove Widget from Stack: You can remove a whole stack by tapping “Remove Stack” if you’d prefer. Swipe left on the widget you’d like to remove and tap “Delete” to complete the process.
- Change Widget Order: You can also change the order of a stack’s widgets by dragging them up and down the list.
- Smart Rotate: Enabling “Smart Rotate” will have your iPhone try to predict which widget should be at the front when it’s needed most.
- Remove Widget from Stack: You can remove a whole stack by tapping “Remove Stack” if you’d prefer. Swipe left on the widget you’d like to remove and tap “Delete” to complete the process.
The ability of widgets and stacks to take over a home screen means the sky’s the limit in terms of how you can customize your iPhone or iPad. Developers and users continue to push widgets, and there are all sorts of useful options available out there, ranging from widgets for weather, fitness, finance, reminders, lists, custom photos widgets, mini-games, and so much more.
Enjoy widgets! Remember, the widget feature requires iOS 14 or ipadOS 14 or newer, so as long as your device has been updated to a semi-modern version you should be good to go to use this nifty capability.
Do you have any favorite widgets or widget stack combinations? What do you think of this feature? Let us know your thoughts, tips, suggestions, or whatever else widget is on your mind in the comments.
This would really be great if it worked. There is no remove stack command anywhere. Try again.