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X for iOS finally offers widgets, five years after first teasing them

Avatar for Dylan McDonald  | Dec 14 2025 - 5:00 am PT
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X for iOS has finally rolled out widgets for your Home Screen and Lock Screen.

Over five years ago, at WWDC20, a Home Screen Widget for Twitter was shown off in the reveal video for iOS 14. However, these never ended up materializing.

Now, X has finally added support for both Home Screen widgets and Lock Screen widgets for their app for iPhone and iPad:

Home Screen Widgets

This new update brings only one option for a Home Screen widget, called “X News Highlights”, which shows headlines of what’s trending on X. Tapping one will open the topic within the app. This widget comes in three sizes:

The "X News Highlights", which shows an "Explore" heading with various headlines listed below, is shown in large, medium, and small sizes.

Lock Screen Widgets

X has a larger variety of widgets for the Lock Screen. First of these is “X Notifications”, which shows your current notification count. Next is “X Messages”, which shows the number of unread messages in X Chat. Finally, there are two widgets for Grok, one for quick access to chat and one for voice. All four of these widgets include a larger and smaller variant.

The "X Notifications" Lock Screen widget, which shows the X logo and a number.
The "X Messages" Lock Screen widget, which shows the X logo and a number.
The "Grok" Lock Screen widget, which shows the Grok logo and "Chat with Grok".
The "Grok Voice" Lock Screen widget, which shows the Grok voice icon and "Talk to Grok".

Wrap up

In the end, the Home Screen widget did end up being fairly similar to the one shown off in WWDC20, albeit without the background image. What do you think of these new widgets? Let us know in the comments below!

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Author

Avatar for Dylan McDonald Dylan McDonald

Dylan is a 9to5Mac contributor. He has had a lifelong interest in and passion for all things technology, particularly Apple. In addition to covering the latest news and developments in the world of Apple, he brings perspective as an indie iOS developer with several successful apps on the App Store.