Rather than seeing my unremarkable apps when I unlock my phone, I now get to see interesting quotes and pictures. I start by reading my favorite Harry Styles quote, “Treat people with kindness,” and scroll past to see aesthetic pictures, cute calendars, and what song I am currently listening to.

After seeing the new iOS14 update all over TikTok and hearing all about it from my friends, I decided to take the plunge and download it myself so I could see what all the hype was about. I knew from TikTok that I needed to download the app Widgetsmith, which allows you to customize and design your widgets the way you want. My next step was to decide what color scheme I wanted my phone to have.

While this may seem like an obvious choice for more decisive people, I deliberated for a while over whether I wanted pastel pink and purple, fall colors to match the season or dark green. However, because my friend, junior Kaylie Wong, had just gotten me a pastel purple Wildflower case as a birthday present, I decided on pastel purple.

In Widgetsmith, there are options for small, medium or large widgets. I ended up only using small and medium sized widgets because personally, I thought the large ones were too imposing. From there, I chose one of my small widgets to be a mini-calendar, showing the date and time, and the other to be an aesthetic quote from Pinterest (if you are trying to change your home screen using widgets, Pinterest will be your best friend). My two medium widgets were a Harry Styles quote that said “Treat people with Kindness” and a picture of purple clouds. 

My last widget required me to download the app, Tunetrack, so I could install a widget that shows what song on Spotify I was listening to at the moment. 

After getting all my widgets ready, I changed the home screen background to a light purple watercolor and started arranging my widgets the way I wanted. I chose to have one of my medium widgets on the first page, my two small widgets on the second page and the Spotify widget and the second medium widget on the third page. 

I enjoyed choosing and organizing my widgets, but I will admit that the update is very addictive and I spent far too much time on it considering the mountain of homework I still needed to do. I give the update and the apps I used a 10/10, and recommend it to anyone who is looking to switch up their phone screen into something more aesthetically pleasing.