App Store Apps

How to control Apple TV from your iPhone’s Lock screen with CiderTV widget

CiderTV, a software-based alternative for your Apple TV Remote, includes a built-in keyboard and has the ability to control linked Smart TV volume. As of recently, the app comes with a handy widget that makes it possible to control most of the functions of your Apple TV right from the Notification Center. It will save you a lot of time, here's how to get started with CiderTV and set up the widget.

Check out this endless runner game you can play from Notification Center

Knowing that Apple has been restrictive in the past on what is and what isn't allowed to pass in the App Store for a Notification Center widget, it can be fun when little gems find their way into the top charts section and you stumble upon them.

While looking through them, I discovered a free endless runner game called Steve - The Jumping Dinosaur, but unlike other endless runners you've played before, this game is played inside of a Notification Center widget rather than from the app itself.

5 Notification Center widgets I use every day

When it comes to my own personal iPhone, many of the apps I use on a daily basis have Notification Center widgets that provide information to and even have shortcuts to different actions right from inside of Notification Center.

Apple originally introduced the ability for third-party app developers to create Notification Center widgets with iOS 8, so long as they follow strict guidelines, but that doesn't keep them from being useful.

In this roundup, I'll share my five favorite Notification Center widgets that I use on a daily basis and why I like them.

Feeday offers a quick peek at Instagram from Notification Center

One of my favorite social networking sites right now is Instagram. I love looking at pictures more than reading about how someone feels about the weather today. Pictures really can be worth a thousand words and can make you feel more connected to friends than a sentence.

Feeday is a third-party widget that puts the last couple of posts from your Instagram feed right in Notification Center so you can get a quick view of your feed without having to open the app. Check out our app review of Feeday below.

iOS 9.1 enables quick-replying from notifications in WhatsApp for iPhone

At long last, iOS is allowing app makers to implement text replies in notifications, a feature Apple used to reserve exclusively for its Messages app.

Twitter was the first App Store app to gain this great time-saver of a feature. On iOS 9.1, WhatsApp for iPhone now supports a handy text field for quickly replying to incoming messages without leaving the app you're currently using.

This feature requires an iPhone with iOS 9.1 or later.

This app injects your Instagram feed inside Notification Center’s Today view

There's no shortage of apps on the App Store for browsing Instagram using your iPhone and iPad, and most let you enjoy snaps from people you follow far more elegantly that on Instagram's official iPhone app. But wouldn't it be great if you could check out the latest Instagram photos anywhere in iOS, with a simple pull-down gesture?

That's what Feeday, a new Today Widget for the iPhone and iPad by developer Arcangelo Fiore, does.

With this app you can easily keep track of your latest Instagram feed right within the Today view of iOS's Notification Center, and it's free!

Breaking brings an RSS feed reader widget to Notification Center on iOS and OS X

If you are a news junkie, you probably have all sorts of alerts set up to let you know the moment a story breaks. Wouldn’t it be nice if your RSS feeds were available right in the Today view of Notification Center?

Breaking – News in your Today tab populates your favorite news feeds in Notification Center for iOS and OS X, so you access stories you want to read without having to open a special app for it. All of your news is right in front of you, available with one swipe or click.

This widget adds a phone dialer to Notification Center

There are dozens of apps out there that offer a streamlined interface so you can find contacts and make phone calls quickly and easily, but how many can you count will put a widget on your Lock screen so you can make phone calls in Notification Center?

YoBu is a Notification Center extension that allows you to search for contacts by name or number, and then call them right from the Today view on your Lock screen.

1SecMoney review: record income and expenses right from Notification Center

How people keep track of finances is a personal preference. Some like complex, feature rich programs that allow them to connect and follow all of their income and expenses meticulously. Others are happy with simplicity.

1SecMoney is a simple finance-tracking app that lets you add daily additions and subtractions for your bank and credit card accounts. You can also input items directly from Notification Center using the Today widget. We’ve got a hands-on app review of 1SecMoney for you today.

Cheatsheet: a widget for all those little things you can’t remember

Your license plate, your driver license number, your hotel room number, the combination of your locker at the gym. All these are little things that we sometimes need to have quick access to but not necessarily remember. This is where an app like Cheatsheet comes in handy. Simply write things down in Cheatsheet and refer to them at any time directly from the widget in the Today tab of Notification Center.