Getting Started With WidgetKit

All you need to know to create your first Home Screen Widget

This article is originally published at swiftsenpai.com

WidgetKit was first introduced in iOS 14 as a simple framework whereby developers can leverage to create a Home Screen Widget. Since then, it has slowly evolved into a framework that powers some of the most anticipated features in iOS 16, namely Lock Screen Widget, Live Activities, and Dynamic Island.

It is safe to say that WidgetKit has now become one of the must-learn frameworks for all the iOS developers out there. Therefore, I have decided to create a series of articles that center around WidgetKit and other related topics. This article will be the first in the series, so let’s take things one step at a time by looking into the basics you need to know to get started creating your first Home Screen Widget.

There is a lot to unpack here, so let’s get started.

The View Size Widget

In this article, we will build a simple Home Screen Widget that displays the dimension of the widget. On top of that, the widget will also display the timeline provider information which we will take a closer look at later on.