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X rolled out widgets for iOS devices, allowing users to view news highlights, notifications, messages, and AI shortcuts right from their home screen and lock screen. This addition introduces the app to Apple widgets, nearly five years after Twitter briefly appeared in a WWDC 2020 teaser for iOS 14.
A lot has changed at the company since then. Twitter leadership shifted from Jack Dorsey to Parag Agrawal, followed by an acquisition by Elon Musk and a complete overhaul of all products and priorities. The latest addition of widgets adds a new layer of advancement to the app.
X announced the rollout of the feature in a post on the platform, “X widgets on iOS are here…access top news, shortcuts, and notifications from your home or lock screen.”
For iPhone Home Screen, X provides a single widget titled ‘X News Highlights.’ The feature highlights news articles linked to trending topics on the platform. This widget serves as a gateway to access the application. A click on a news headline takes consumers to X to read further postings or conversations.
As observed by 9to5Mac, the widget can be resized from small, medium, to large, depending on the level of priority they want to give X content on their home screen. Although this is very basic at the moment, it gives a boost to discovery and newsreading, an area where X has trended under Musk.
The widgets in the Lock Screen have more variety. One can include X Notifications, which shows how many are unread, and X Messages, which shows how many messages are pending in chat notifications. Moreover, X offers widgets dedicated to Grok and AI chat support.
One of Grok’s widgets launches a text chat option, and another widget supports voice chat from the Lock Screen, showing seamless integration of the AI assistant with this platform. All of these features come in varying sizes.
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Signs of a complete iOS overhaul are also making waves. A user on X posted screenshots of a redesigned notifications page that will include more visual information. This redesign is not yet complete, according to a statement from Nikita Bier, head of product at X.
With years of lost opportunities, changes in leadership, and shifting focus, have widgets in X’s iOS signaled a real shift in prioritizing platform refinement, or a late introduction of overdue features?
