Elon Musk’s X rolls out home and lock screen widgets for iPhone and iPad users

Elon Musk led X has finally introduced widgets for iOS, allowing users to access top news, shortcuts, and notifications from their home screen and lock screen. Curiously enough, as 9to5Mac points out, the first Home Screen widget for iPhones was shown off at WWDC 2020 during a teaser video for iOS 14, but the feature never really arrived.

Since then, Twitter has seen a change of CEO from Jack Dorsey to Parag Agrawal and the subsequent acquisition of the company by Elon Musk. Musk went on to dismantle the legacy verification programme, create a paid verification system, change the name of the company to X, create xAI, launch the Grok chatbot, deeply integrate it on the platform, merge X and xAI, and even launch a person encyclopedia before the new update was announced.

Now that the widgets on X are finally here, let’s take a look at what they offer.

X widgets for iOS: What to expect

For the Home Screen, X brings only a single widget for now called “X News Highlights,” which gives headlines about trending topics on the social media platform. If a user clicks on any of those headlines, they will be redirected to the X app to see the full news.

As 9to5Mac notes, the widget comes in three sizes: small, medium, and large, meaning it can adjust well on your screen.

Meanwhile, the X widgets for the Lock Screen are much more varied. Currently, the app offers “X Notifications,” which shows the notification count for users, and “X Messages,” which shows unread messages in X chat. There are also separate widgets for Grok AI. One of them leads directly to a chat with the AI, while the other enables voice-based interaction.

Again, there are both large and small variants of these widgets, giving users a choice in how they want them to fit on their screen.

X revamping notifications for iOS

A user on X revealed that the social media platform is also working on redesigning the notifications page on iOS. The image shared by the user shows that the company may be adding more visual elements to notifications.

However, Nikita Bier, head of product at X, says that the new notifications page is not completely ready yet. The clarification from X suggests that users may be greeted with a refreshed notifications page in the not too distant future.