Scriptable is one of these apps. It lets you create custom widgets for your iPhone’s Home screen, which the community has used to create some amazing utilities.
Let’s look at what Scriptable is, how you can use it to create awesome iPhone widgets, and how to make your widgets blend in seamlessly with your Home screen wallpaper.
What Is Scriptable?
Scriptable is a free iOS app that lets you run JavaScript on your iPhone and iPad. If you’re a programmer, you can write your own scripts and run them. If you’re not familiar with any programming languages, you can just copy code written by others to add useful features to your iOS device.
For example, we’ve seen a script that automatically alerts you when there is a price drop on any of your favorite iOS apps.
Read more: What Is JavaScript and How Does It Work?
Scriptable is still fairly new to the App Store, but it’s already added many game-changing features, including the ability to run scripts in iOS 14 widgets. This means that you can write or copy JavaScript code to Scriptable and have your own customized “mini apps” displaying information via widgets.
The Scriptable community has already created some wonderful widgets this way, with handy features like showing you weather data to a personalized news feed right on your Home screen.
While the possibilities are almost endless, you should keep a few limitations in mind. As of this writing, Home screen widgets are only supported on iPhones and the 7th-gen iPod touch. Unfortunately, you can’t add widgets to the Home screen on an iPad yet.
Baffling as this is, the limitation is from Apple’s end; it’s not Scriptable’s fault. Similarly, iOS 14 has certain memory limitations on Home screen widgets. If you’re planning to create your own widgets, be sure to check the limits before you start.
Finally, the Scriptable app has a gallery to help you quickly find the most interesting scripts and install them. This is good to get started with the app, but you’re better off looking for scripts hosted on GitHub because you’ll find detailed setup instructions there.
Scriptable’s gallery descriptions are not the most helpful for beginners; we’ve encountered some bugs like screenshots not being visible.
How to Set Up Scriptable
There are some common steps that you’ll have to follow while setting up Scriptable widgets, which includes copying the JavaScript code and importing it into the app. However, the final steps vary for each widget, which we’ll highlight a little later.
First, let’s cover the basics. Here’s what to do in order to get set up with Scriptable:
Download Scriptable. It’s an iOS-exclusive app that’s free to download. The in-app purchases are optional tips to the developer that don’t add any features. Download Apple’s Shortcuts app. JavaScript code tends to be long, and you don’t want to have to select and copy hundreds of lines of code on your iPhone. We’ll use a shortcut to save scripts to Scriptable in two taps. Download the Save Script shortcut to your iPhone. For most Scriptable widgets, you’ll have to go to the GitHub page for the script and find the raw code to use this shortcut. For example, once you open the Weather Cal script on GitHub, click the Raw button above the first line of the script. From here, hit the Share button in Safari (or the browser you’re using) and then tap Save Script. This will add it to Scriptable.
Adding a Scriptable Widget
Next, let’s see how to add Scriptable’s iOS widgets to your iPhone’s Home screen:
Tap and hold any empty part of the Home screen until all app icons start jiggling. Tap the Plus icon at the top-left. Search for Scriptable. Swipe right to select the widget size that you need. You can choose Small, Medium, or Large. Tap Add Widget. Now tap the widget. This will show you a box called Run Script. Tap Choose next to Script and select the script that you want to use. If the script requires it, type text in the Parameter box. This is used for some basic inputs, such as when to reset a timer. Tap any blank part of your screen and you’ll see the widget displaying the information that you need.
How to Give Scriptable Widgets a Transparent Background
Some Scriptable widgets, such as Weather Cal, allow you to change their background. You can use this feature to make your widget “transparent.” The trick is to use a script that will take a screenshot of your Home screen to create a perfectly matched background image for the widget.
Technically, this script should work with other widget builder apps such as Widgetsmith. While it’s fully optimized for Scriptable, you may run into minor alignment issues with other apps.
Follow these steps to get a fully transparent background for widgets:
Download the Invisible Widgets script. Tap Share > Save Script and give it any name, such as Invisible Widgets. Now go to your iPhone’s Home screen. Tap and hold a vacant part of the home screen until all app icons start jiggling. Now keep swiping left till you reach a blank page. Now take a screenshot of your iPhone. Open Scriptable, run Invisible Widgets, and tap Continue. Then select the screenshot you took in the previous step. Follow the prompts to select the size and position of the widget, tapping Export to Photos when done. Now you can open any script in Scriptable (as long as it allows you to add an image as the background) and use this image to create beautiful transparent widgets.
Script Away to Glory
If you can code, Scriptable has all the tools you’ll need for serious iOS automation. But even if you’re not a programmer, you can enjoy the work of others using this great app. Excellent widgets are just one part of the Scriptable package; take a look around and see what else you can achieve with it.
And remember that automation on iOS doesn’t end with Scriptable. Siri Shortcuts also has several tools to improve your productivity.
