Widgets, Themes & Wallpapers

Rather than a widget maker, this is a widget shop. Widgets, Themes & Wallpapers, from developer Mikhail Katin, offers a catalogue of pre-built widgets, icon packs and wallpapers for the iPhone to browse and apply, so you can change the look of your Home Screen without designing anything yourself.

A theme pairs icons with a matching background so one choice changes the whole screen at once. Adding a widget takes a few steps. The listing credits its background artwork to freepik and Unsplash, which tells you the wallpapers are curated stock rather than original work, and it says almost nothing about catalogue size or how the app makes money.

You open it with a mood in mind, scroll categories of themes until one fits, and apply it. Icons and wallpaper change together, and a widget or two from the same set goes onto the Home Screen for the time, weather or whatever the design surfaces.

After that it is rarely opened until the look gets stale, at which point the cycle repeats. There is no editor to learn and no colour picker to fiddle with, which is the appeal and also the limit: if the catalogue has nothing you like, the app has nothing more to offer.

Home Screen customisation attracts two kinds of people: those who enjoy building a look and those who want the result without the effort. This app is for the second group. Searches tend to come from someone who has seen a themed screen and wants one by tonight. A thousand or so ratings at 4.5 suggest a small, fairly satisfied audience.

Five screenshots for an Art and Design app will be before-and-after Home Screens and a gallery of themes, because the visuals are the entire product. The aesthetic depends on which theme you pick, so the app's own interface matters less than the catalogue's range. Expect a grid-of-thumbnails browsing experience.

Version 1.150 is an odd number that implies a very long run of small updates to a first major version, plausibly new designs being added. The developer is an individual, and only the App Store is linked. The listing is silent on pricing, which makes the business model and the long-term plan harder to judge than the version string alone would suggest.

Free to download, rated 4+. The listing does not say whether themes are free, individually priced or subscription-gated, and does not mention ads, so budget for the possibility of a paywall before the good designs. No account is mentioned.

Applying custom icons on iOS involves Shortcuts, so expect some manual steps on first setup. Storage and offline use aren't described. The artwork is stock from freepik and Unsplash, which may matter if you want something unique.