Home Widget Reviews

I bought the lifetime license for this because I thought it was very helpful but recently my premade widgets have been becoming unresponsive as a majority of the buttons that have been associated with certain devices have lost that association all at once. I fixed it once by painstakingly going back in and resetting each widget but I woke up this morning and it was back to its messed up state.

I feel every few days I need to re move a device from the widget and read it. I do this because the device reads as unresponsive and simply touching it does not refresh the widget. I ve tried controlling the device from the Home app and then check the widget again only to find it still stuck on unresponsive.

Although this is a great concept, the widgets don’t seem to update in real time unless controlled directly from the widget. My main use case is to have a 3 panel widget showing both of our garage door and our house lock. When the house is secure, they are grey and when anything is open or unlocked they are highlighted. This works fine if you control the devices from the widget directly. However, if they are manually changed or changed via Siri/homekit directly the widget doesn’t show the status change for a very long time. This negates the usefulness of HomeWidget . If I’m doing something wrong please let me know.

Finally, I really don’t understand the backgrounds concept. The setup and functionality is quite confusing and I still don’t understand it.

I originally was excited about HomeWidget after purchasing it, but now it’s a little bit of a letdown because of one frustrating limitation. The device states only update after preset intervals. That is, if you turn on a light using your iphone, your ipad’s widget will not display that device state change instantly. I have my preset refresh interval set to Home Widget’s recommended 30 minutes, but I’m not 100% sure if it even updates that often. Apple’s own home widget does display state changes instantly.

Because of this, I’ve really only been using the widget for opening cameras. It does this pretty well. The only problem is that it just opens in the home widget app, so you have no access to recordings. I wonder if an apple shortcut can also do this?

The background option is interesting, but cumbersome to use. It is super hacky. A bug I’ve been seeing is the background reverts to a default blue until you interact with the widget.

Hi, HomeWidget is just what I was looking for. I have an iPad mounted on a wall in my front room and HomeWidget allows me to access my HomeKit scenes quickly. However, often the widgets do not reflect what’s actually happening. Lights are being reported as on despite being off, etc. If this can be fixed I would give HomeWidget 5 stars.

iPhone 14 Pro Max
** Update after installing iOS 16, the home widget background position setting no longer works. It always shows as the top position even when set to bottom. Really solid app, I use it daily for quick actions. The one thing I wish it supported is fan speed control. Currently it only supports on/off toggle so the fan comes on at 100%. Wish it had functionality similar to a dimmer switch like the Home app which allows you to set the fan at 25%, 50% or 75%.

Trying to bring in two of the same size widgets to my Home Screen but I am only getting the option of a small medium large or extra large and only have access to one large widget even though I have created several. Am I doing something wrong. Other than that I love HomeWidget and I am trying to use it with my Apple Music to split up into different rooms.

The feature stops working about a while on iOS 17.1, the widgets just doesn’t refresh on clicking anymore. It happens on both iPhone and iPad, and I didn’t have this issue before updating, must be the OS update.

It looks nice, though every time you click on a button it literally opens up the widget app and runs it. Not as clean as the built in controls from the swipe down menu so i uninstalled. This would be a great app apart from that.

I have a few thermostats in HomeKit and right now you can only toggle the state of it on the Home Screen, whether it’s cooling, heating or auto. I’d really love to be able to set the temp as well. 100% the reason I looked at HomeWidget. Without that, for my purposes at least, it isn’t super helpful. It’s an awesome idea and if it included what I said above, you’d have a customer for life!

I created many iOS shortcuts to add to my Home Screen to control HomeKit devices. HomeWidget has replaced them all and allows for multiple widgets so that devices and scenes can be grouped.
The user interface could be better.
HomeWidget also allows for the creation of a shortcut to open the home app. It would be great if this could include other apps like HomeCam to provide a short cut to view cameras.
Great job so far.

Great app. Only thing holding it back is an Apple restriction that makes you open HomeWidget to update the device statuses on the widget. Unfortunately HomeWidget developer can’t do anything about this.

What a beautiful app, its what Apple should do for some of their apps such as Maps and Home in iOS 16. They barely got updates, Maps more so. I immediately bought the lifetime edition. Thanks for offering it and family share!

Update: just added HomeKit cameras. HomeWidget just gets better & better. Don’t know how anyone could give it less than 5 stars.

I’m a big use of Apple’s Home app but it certainly has it’s flaws. This takes care of one of them and does it extremely well. Why Apple, with all their money & resources, doesn’t have a widget for the Home app is beyond me! But that’s OK because I hope this developer make tons of money on HomeWidget. It is flawless…I can’t even think of suggestion to make for improvement, it is so good. It’s intuitive, beautiful, and works flawlessly. It’s on the home screen on all my Apple devices! OK…one small suggestion I saw in another review…add a button show open a camera or an app that opens cameras like HomeCam.

This HomeKit widget app is a game-changer for anyone invested in the HomeKit ecosystem. Its simplicity, customization options, and reliability make it a must-have for smart home enthusiasts. I highly recommend HomeWidget to anyone looking for a convenient and efficient way to manage their HomeKit devices. Kudos to the developers for creating such a fantastic tool!

Home Widget is an amazing app that lets you control your HomeKit accessories right from your home screen. You can create widgets of different sizes and customize them with colors and icons for your HomeKit accessories (with live status display). You can also access scenes and shortcuts with just a tap. Home Widget even syncs with iCloud, so your widgets are available on all your devices.

Home Widget is the HomeKit widget app that Apple doesn't make but should have. I highly recommend HomeWidget to anyone who uses HomeKit and wants to have easier control over their smart home.

HomeWidget is great. Who knows when Apple will let us put any homekit toggles on the Home Screen natively. Great work. It works perfectly every time.

Kind of a bummer that it must fully launch your app each time. But I would imagine that is something the API requires. I love that in the settings you have an option to make HomeWidget minimize immediately. Great workaround. I subscribed immediately because all great creation should have compensation. If it continues to work well I’ll bump up to the lifetime.

Thanks for a great app/idea!

Just upgraded to the lifetime purchase! When I first installed, I did have an issue with synchronization between iPad and iPhone panels; but after reaching out to the developer, he researched and everything is working perfectly now. Developer responded very quickly and the updated/fixed app was in HomeWidget Store within 2 days. HomeWidget has added an entirely new level of convenience to HomeKit, and I’m extremely pleased.

Been using and testing for several months now and it works very well. Apple should take note and learn a few things from this developer. Time to buy the full license at $8.99! Five stars!!!

HomeWidget is the only way to click an icon on your home page and have something happen in Homekit. I see some complaining that HomeWidget needs to open/close in order to accomplish this, but that is an iOS requirement…nothing the developer can do. If you want quick, one-touch access to your homekit gear, this is it.

HomeWidget is awesome! The amount of controls you can put into widgets truly has me excited! Thank you to the developer for taking the time to make this and continue to improve it please don’t stop!

This is the first homekit app I’ve seen in a while that brings something legitimately new to the table. It comes a lot closer to truly native widgets for HK than a lot of us thought possible and instantly became one of my most used apps.

This is an amazing laucnher for HomeKit accessories as well as launching custom shortcuts created within the Shortcuts app. Allows you to create beautiful homescreen widgets by allowing you to blend into your wallpaper background rather than being stuck with an always solid black or white background. May sometimes take a few moments to refresh the current state of accessories due to the limitations Apple has put on the refresh rate of widgets. Another limitation put on by Apple and not the developer is that launching a shortcut from the widgter has to first open the Shortcuts app to run but yet Apple's Shortcuts widget doesn't for some reason. But overall I love the design of HomeWidget and it is very useful for quick access to controlling your home or speeding up your processes using shortcuts.

I use it every day to quickly and easily pull up snapshots of my HSKV cameras, and quickly toggle my fan on at night. I need to dedicate some more time and add more buttons to the widget. :)

Thank you for making this amazing widget. I wish there were more useful widgets like this out there!

This is app is super simple to get up and running. Saves time as it is on your home screen as opposed to having to open up the HomeKit App or use Siri when you want things done quietly.

I have added my 9 most used HomeKit accessories and scenes. This was all super simple and intuitive to setup.

Again this is a must for every HomeKit user.

HomeWidget takes on a lot, and delivers! Although there are a very few rough edges, Home Widget is the full-featured Home widget that Apple should have provided. In general, the polished interface and well-thought-out interaction design are standouts. I’m an interaction designer that has worked for Apple, Palm, and Yahoo!, and I fully endorse Home Widget. Definitely worth the money to upgrade!

I love the widgets that I can set up for our connected home! Please had a couple of questions after signing up for the Lifetime Subscription and the Developer responded right away! Super nice, super helpful.

Looking forward to more features down the road but this is a great App! Love the ability to get a lifetime license - not a fan of monthly fees!

I like the functionality of HomeWidget. I am able to create a quick glance layout that I get to create and group accessories together in a logical format that fits my preference.

One thing I would point out, because I have a bit of OCD, when choosing which widget layout to create, the 6x3 widget has a description of 7x3. Just thought you would like to know.

HomeWidget works exactly as intended and the developer is very responsive when contacted regarding features and/or issues. Hard to ask for more than that, highly recommend.