With the iOS 16.2 update, Apple has added the Sleep and Medications widgets in several variants for the lock screen of your iPhone.
- What’s happening? In iOS 16.2, two new lock screen widgets display useful statistics for your sleep and medication schedules.
- Why care? If you track your sleep or medication intake, you can now see your sleep time and medication schedule without opening the Health app.
- What to do? Update to iOS 16.2 when it launches to get the new widgets.
iOS 16.2 brings the iPhone sleep widget
The Sleep widget displays your most recent sleep session on the lock screen of your iPhone. This includes your sleep stages and how you’ve slept.
You can also review your Sleep schedule with this widget. Three variants of the widget are available. The small one takes up a single tile on the lock screen, displaying your sleep time in hours and minutes. The two-tile version shows sleep quality. Another one displays both your nap time and a detailed chart.
On the iPhone 14 Pros, the widget collapses when the always-on display is dimmed.
Introducing the Medications widget
The Medications widget allows people who track their medication intake in the Health app to view reminders to take pills and quickly access their schedule.
The small version occupies a single tile and displays a pill pictogram. A larger version will show you whether you’re scheduled to take any medications today. This widget doesn’t support displaying inventory levels or refill reminders.
No, these aren’t interactive
Like with all lock screen widgets in iOS, touching a Sleep or Medication widget will take you to the corresponding section in the Health app.
iOS widgets are not interactive so they can only provide those hook points to the creator app. This limits what you can do with widgets and is the reason why you can’t, say, delete emails or mark a message as read right from the widget.
When does iOS 16 launch?
Apple is currently testing iOS 16.2 with developers and public beta testers. If you don’t have an account on the Apple Developer website at developer.apple.com or you’re not enrolled in the Apple Beta Software program at beta.apple.com, you’ll need to wait for a public launch of iOS 16 to take those new widgets for a spin.
With a few more betas to go, expect the update to drop in the coming weeks.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, iOS 16.2 will become available around mid-December. When it arrives, you’ll download and install an over-the-air update on your iPhone or iPad in Settings → General → Software Update.