UPDATE: Well it took a month+ after my original posting in early March, but looks like somebody has made this into a real product, and gone to town with the idea on the jailbroken iOS’ Cydia marketplace. Its called Velox and theyre charging for it.

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A decent way to do Widgets and Shortcuts in iOS while maintaining that Apple ‘feel’

I have no idea if this has been suggested before, but heres a comp I made showing a way to do Widgets in iOS with minimal changes to the basic iOS UI. (This was made quickly so it doesn’t look as nice as it could. A lot of the elements are cut and paste)

The demo image attached here shows the settings app, which has always been an iOS pain-point. It desperately needs Android style switches for turning phone antennae on-off quickly, unlike the current method which takes far too many clicks. Cydia jailbreak customizations often put these in the Notification center, but Apple clearly doesnt think its a good idea, or it would have been done by now.

The suggested Icon Sheet slides out with a Double-tap on the Icon. It can be used by different apps in any way the Developer wants.

What the Sheet can show and do:

Calendar – ‘Today’ events, or quick view of a Month calendar

Weather – current weather for your location

Clock – Time in a ‘favorited’ Time-zone, like your home-city (right now you open Clock > World Clock > Scroll to city)

Clock – Quick timer (maybe using a slider for minutes)

Safari – iCloud tabs or Bookmarks – will save many clicks.

Camera – Shortcut to open App and start shooting Video (saves having wait for the app to open and only then slide switch for video mode)

Settings – Please can we have this? See image attached with this post

Twitter — Switch between multiple accounts, and open app.

What I think the advantages are: