iOS 17 & Widget Studio Developer Journal

A challenging release to prepare for a big launch ahead. Plus, a sneak peek on Widget Studio UI

Dear widget creators,

first of all I’d like to wish you a happy new year! 🎉

With no pun intended, as SuperWidget 1.10 is out on 1/10, I want to announce a few news and give you a preview of a highly anticipated feature: Widget Studio.

January is a good month to keep what didn’t go as expected behind and have a fresh start. For me, in relation to SuperWidget, it was the fact that iOS 17 introduced so many little changes that completely modified the bordered widget appearance.

This meant that before continuing to work on Widget Studio, the mode that will enable you to create your customised widgets, I had to fix these small issues first.

For the techies, since the classic widget you can currently use on the app has a gradient border, I heavily relied on overlapping the widget content (title and data) on a rounded square background. With the introduction of the containerBackground API I had to modify the structure of the actual widget and its preview all across the app.

SuperWidget 1.10 then fixes the appearance for iOS 17 and sets the foundation for the rendering engine that will power the custom widgets of Widget Studio.

Widget Studio Preview

The past two months marked an important milestone for the project.

I was able to build a satisfying prototype for what will be the user interface editor for the widget. The rendering engine will not only allow for real-time visual updates of the widget you’re going to build, but also the possibility to export and share it with friends or the community.

As you can see, the actual UI is still in its early stages, but the hard part was completed and everything from now on gets a lot easier.

The focus when building the editor will be on making it extremely easy and intuitive to use, avoiding complex menus and settings that will limit you.

The roadmap

Very soon I’ll be opening a public beta for the Widget Studio so, whoever’s interested in lending me a hand to test the layout engine and the editor will receive an early access version of it.

Stay tuned and thanks a lot for reading until here!