A goal widget on iPhone is a small panel on your home screen that shows a goal you are working toward, so you see it every time you unlock your phone. The most useful ones show the goal as a picture and change as you make progress, so a glance tells you where you are.
To add one, press and hold an empty part of your home screen, tap the plus button in the top corner, search for the app, pick a size, and tap Add Widget. That part takes about ten seconds. Choosing what goes in it takes a little more thought, and that is what this page is about.
Why the home screen is the right place
Most people unlock their phone dozens of times a day. Each unlock is a moment where something gets your attention. Usually it is a red badge or a news app. A goal widget swaps one of those moments for a reminder of something you chose for yourself.
You do not have to open anything. You do not have to remember to look. That is the whole advantage over a note in a journal or a list in an app you open once a week.
What makes a goal widget worth keeping
Plenty of widgets get added with good intentions and stop being noticed within a week. The eye learns to skip anything that never changes. A few things help a widget stay visible.
- A picture. A photo of the place, the result or the person you want to become is read in a fraction of a second. A sentence takes longer, and you stop reading it after a few days.
- Visible progress. If the widget changes as you do the work, it has a reason to be looked at. A number that ticks up helps. An image that changes helps more.
- One goal per widget. A widget crammed with five goals becomes wallpaper. Give your main goal its own space.
- The right size. The small size suits a single image or a number. The medium size gives a wide photo enough room to be recognizable.
Picking the photo
The photo does most of the work, so it is worth five minutes. Pick something specific. A beach in general is weak. The beach town you have been saving for, with the street you want to walk down, is strong. A generic fit person is weak. A trail you want to run, or a dress you want to wear to a wedding next summer, is strong.
Check how it looks small. Faces and fine detail disappear at widget size. Big shapes, bright colors and a clear subject survive. If you can tell what the photo is from across a room, it will work on a widget.
If you are short on ideas, our guide to what to put on a vision board works just as well for a single widget photo.
Setting it up so you keep using it
- Put the widget on your first home screen page, near the top. Widgets on the third page get seen once a week.
- Remove one other widget you never use, so this one has less competition.
- Decide on a daily action that counts as progress, and keep it small enough that you would do it on a bad day.
- Pick a length you can picture finishing. Seven days or thirty days is easier to commit to than an open-ended year.
What about the Lock Screen and StandBy?
iOS also has Lock Screen widgets and StandBy mode, and some apps support them. Lock Screen widgets are tiny and mostly suited to text and small icons, so a photo goal usually belongs on the home screen. Check what an app actually supports before you rely on it. If you want the goal on your lock screen as an image, a wallpaper is often the simpler route, and our lock screen vision board guide covers how.
Privacy on a widget
A widget is visible to anyone who sees your phone. That is fine for a holiday. It may not be fine for a goal you have not told anyone about yet. If that matters to you, choose a photo that means something to you and very little to anyone else, or use an app that can hide the widget.
How Reveal the Dream does it
Reveal the Dream is built around a goal widget. You pick a photo of your goal, and it starts covered by a frosted layer divided into one region per day of your journey. Each daily check-in uncovers one more region, in the app and on the widget, until the whole photo is showing. Missing a day does not reset anything. The days you showed up stay uncovered.
On iPhone the widget comes in small and medium sizes. Classic gives you one journey at a time, 7 or 30 day lengths, the Petals reveal style, a home screen widget and a countdown to the next check-in. Premium adds a widget for every journey, several journeys at once, custom lengths, rest days, App Lock with an option to hide the widget, and more reveal styles and cover colors. You can see how the reveal looks in your browser before you install anything.
Goal widget ideas to try
- A photo of the trip you are saving for, paired with a daily savings habit.
- A picture of a finished marathon line for a daily run.
- A book cover for a daily reading goal.
- A calm room for a daily meditation habit.
A simple way to start today
Choose one goal. Find one photo of it. Decide on one small daily action. Add the widget to your first page. Then leave it alone and let it do its job for a week. If you glance at it and still feel something, keep going. If you have stopped noticing it, change the photo.