Home Widget puts HomeKit controls right on your Home screen

Home Widget Banner (Image credit: Clement Marty)

What you need to know

Home Widget puts your HomeKit accessories on your Home screen.
Create widgets of all sizes and customize which accessories are available.
Home Widget updates accessories as they're turned on and off, too.

If you have a home full of HomeKit gear or even just have a single light bulb, controlling things shouldn't be difficult or require multiple taps. That's why I'm a little bit in love with Home Widget — it puts smart home accessories right on the iPhone and iPad Home screen.

Available in the App Store now, Home Widget takes everything that your HomeKit home can control and puts it onto your Home screen via the magic of widgets. You can control light bulbs, door locks, and more all without ever needing to open the Home app. You won't even need to open the Home Widget app beyond setting your widgets up the first time. From then on, you'll just tap a widget and it will handle the rest!

See?

Your HomeKit devices will automatically update so each widget will always show the current state of things and a recent update added support for sensors, too. Want to add a HomeKit shortcut or Scene to a panel? No problem!

If your home makes use of HomeKit accessories this is going to be the best iPhone app you download this month. It's simple, can be customized as much as you like with colors and icons, and importantly it just works. Whether you're a HomeKit guru or just getting started in the world of smart homes, Home Widget is definitely worth checking out.

You can download Home Widget from the App Store now. It's free, but an in-app purchase is needed to unlock the full functionality — and it's super cheap so really, why wouldn't you?

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.