How to Add or Edit the Smart Stack of Widgets on iPhone

For the first time in the history of the iPhone, iOS 14 offers the ability to add widgets to the home screen. These widgets come in different sizes, and although they don’t have any interactive elements, they do relay a lot of useful information. To make things even better, you can use the smart battery to maximize the iPhone home screen experience. If you are wondering how to add or edit the Smart Stack of Widgets, you’ve come to the right place.

In case you were wondering, a Smart Stack “intelligently” switches between widgets based on past activity. For example, you might have made a habit of opening the Reminders app in the morning – with a smart battery, expect the Reminders widgets to appear at that time. Your iPhone uses machine learning to power the Smart Stack, so don’t be surprised to see the right widget at the right time.

Additionally, a smart stack helps reduce the clutter of multiple widgets since you can also manually drag up or down a stack to access the widget you want.

Let’s see how to add and edit Smart Stacks on iPhone. We’ll also show you how to create your own custom widget stacks from scratch.

How to add a smart stack in iOS 14

iOS 14 comes with a smart stack of ready-to-use widgets. You can add it like any other widget to the home screen.

Start by long pressing on an empty area of ​​the home screen to toggle all app icons. Next, tap the plus icon in the upper left corner of the screen.

You should see the widget gallery. Tap on the smart battery, which you should see at the very top.

Choose a size (small or medium), then tap Insert Widget to add the smart stack to the home screen.

After inserting the Smart Stack, feel free to move it to the Home screen or to another page.

You can also add multiple Smart Stacks, which is great if you want to have them on different home screen pages.

Show Widget Gallery: Since you’ve already added a smart stack, you won’t see it listed at the top of the gallery anymore. Therefore, type “smart stack” in the Search Widgets field for it to appear. Then select a size and tap Add Widget.

Note: You can also add a smart stack of widgets in Today view (if it doesn’t already have one) – switch the screen, bring up the list of widgets, select Smart stack, then tap Add Widget . Today view is also the only way to add and use Smart Stacks on the iPad, where you can’t add widgets to the Home screen.

Remove widgets from Smart Stack

Smart Stacks that you add to the Home screen contain many widgets. You can’t use some of them at all. In this case, you can remove such widgets, which you don’t plan to use, quite easily. There are two ways to do this.

The first method is to manually scroll through the stack until you come to the widget you want to remove. Take the Actions widget as an example. Next, long press Smart Stack and select Remove Stocks. Tap Delete to confirm.

If there are multiple widgets that you want to remove quickly, it is best to select the Edit Stack option from the long-press context menu. In the list of widgets that then appears, drag the unwanted widgets to the left of the screen, and then tap Remove.

When you’re done removing unwanted widgets, swipe down to exit the Home screen.

Change the order of the smart stack

When manually browsing a Smart Stack, you might not like the order in which each widget appears. Fortunately, you can change the default order.

First, long-press the stack – in the pop-up menu that appears, tap Edit Stack.

Then, press and hold the handles next to each listed widget to drag them in any order. Swipe down to exit the home screen.

Disable Smart Stack

You may prefer to browse a smart stack instead of letting the widgets rotate automatically. In this case, you can turn off the “smart” functionality of a widget.

Long press Smart Stack, select Edit Stack, then turn off the switch next to Smart Rotate.

Return to the Home screen and the Smart Stack will no longer display useful widgets on its own. If you want to get the functionality back, go back to the edit widgets screen and turn on smart rotation.

Create a custom smart stack

Rather than inserting a smart stack from the widget gallery, you can create your own custom “smart” stack. If your iPhone’s home screen already has widgets, drag and drop a widget onto another widget of similar size to start stacking it.

Repeat the process to create the stack with the desired widgets. You can also drag and drop widgets onto others of the same size while adding them to the home screen through the widget gallery.

This is how you build your own stack of “smart” widgets. Feel free to build as many as you want. Custom Widget Stacks work like the Smart Stacks that you insert through the Widget Sheet.

You can change the order, delete widgets, and even turn off the Smart Rotate feature in a stack of custom widgets.

Remove Smart Stack

If you no longer need Smart Stack, you can get rid of it quickly.

Long press Smart Stack, and then tap Remove Stack. Press Delete again to confirm.

Get smart

Rather than scattering multiple widgets across the home screen and distracting you all the time, opting for a smart stack allows you to both reduce clutter and focus your attention on the widgets that matter most. Smart Stacks can still show the wrong widgets at first, but give them some time to “ learn ” from your iPhone interactions, and you should have a great user experience.