iOS 14: People Widget puts your friends first

iOS 14 arrived with brand new widgets but without the one Apple offered to quickly call your favorite contacts. An inexplicable shortcoming that Widget Contacts is committed to fixing. The software is free for 2 favorites while by paying 2.99 € (once and for all) you can insert up to 12 contacts in a large widget.

We had described a method involving Shortcuts to replace this missing widget. An approach that remains relevant but that we can find tedious to set up despite its wider possibilities.

With Contacts Widgets it’s a little easier. We establish a list of the people most often called by drawing them from the app in Contacts. We also define a style for each of the widget formats that we will use: a color or a background image and a color for the text of the names.

Then, from the installed widget, and still blank (s) of any content, we select the people to display there as well as the visual style to use (by default we will have a white background). Incidentally you can also define if a tap on an avatar will launch Phone, FaceTime or Messages (no other choice unfortunately). This association with a communication app also applies uniformly to all people in the widget. At worst we can create a widget for Phone and another for Messages for example.

A tap on an avatar returns to Widget Contacts and a button with the phone number immediately appears. Ideally it would be more pleasant to have a less busy view, or with a plain or blurred background. Because there we see in the background of the call button the view of the utility settings.

However, the app developer has promised us other functions or settings in future updates.