ZUS emailed me that the latest version of their iPhone app now includes a “notification widget for IOS 10”. What does that mean and how can I add it on my iPhone 7?
ZUS makes a number of interesting products, but my favorite is its USB car charger with GPS location features. It’s smart, slick and charges super fast, a real boon when you have as many gadgets as I do! The company did recently email that “We have added a ZUS widget. This widget provides useful information without the need to open the app.”
Nice, but what is that and how do you do it? That’s what I’m here for!
There are two notification views on the new iPhone, actually. Swipe down and you’ll get the more standard notifications. Lots of one-liners, if you’re anything like I am. But swipe left-to-right and there’s a screen where you can set up your favorite widgets to give you a glimpse at your schedule, your activity, the weather, and, now, where you parked your car!
To start, unlock your iPhone 7 and swipe right-to-left to bring up the widget notifications screen. Here’s what I see:
Notice that there are three widgets at play here: Up Next (the calendar), Activity (and yes, I haven’t done much yet this morning!) and Weatehr (which shows the weather here in Boulder, Colorado). To add a new widget like the one from ZUS, swipe to the very bottom of the widget notification screen. You’ll see this:
Look closely at the bottom. In fact, I have two new versions of installed apps that have widgets available, not just ZUS! Nice.
Tip: If you think an app should have a widget and it’s not showing up, make sure you have the very latest version of the app!
A tap on the big, round Edit button gets you to where you can remove widgets and add new ones. It’s relatively obvious what to do, I think:
You can delete a widget by tapping on the red “-” button, add one to the active list by tapping on the green “+” (notice ZUS is showing up at the bottom), and reorder your widgets by tapping-and-dragging on the three horizontal line buttons adjacent to the active widgets.
I fiddle around a bit and:
A tap on “Done” on the top right and the new widget is ready to roll and already darn useful, as you can see:
That’s it. Ready to go. And curious about the ZUS? You can learn more about this nifty gadget on their Web site!