---
title: "Home Assistant widgets on the iPhone Home Screen and Lock Screen"
description: "The official Home Assistant app offers widgets for Assist, scripts, sensors, gauges, details, energy, calendars and pages, in Home Screen and Lock Screen sizes. iOS refreshes widgets on a budget, about every 15 minutes for sensors, so a widget is a glance, not a live view. For live progress, use a Live Activity."
canonical: "https://vulpo.app/guides/home-assistant-iphone-widgets"
url: "https://vulpo.app/guides/home-assistant-iphone-widgets.md"
last-updated: "2026-10-02"
version: "1.3"
---

# Home Assistant widgets on the iPhone Home Screen and Lock Screen

> The official Home Assistant app offers widgets for Assist, scripts, sensors, gauges, details, energy, calendars and pages, in Home Screen and Lock Screen sizes. iOS refreshes widgets on a budget, about every 15 minutes for sensors, so a widget is a glance, not a live view. For live progress, use a Live Activity.

## Add a widget

Touch and hold an empty area of the Home Screen or Lock Screen, tap Edit, then Add Widget, and pick the Home Assistant app (or another Home Assistant app that offers widgets). Most widgets ask you to pick an entity, script or template after you place them: touch and hold the widget and choose Edit Widget.

## Widgets in the official app

The official app offers these widget types, according to its documentation. Home Screen widgets come in small, medium and large; Lock Screen widgets in the circular, inline and rectangular sizes.

- Assist: opens Assist with the pipeline of your choice
- Scripts: runs a script with a tap
- Sensors: shows sensor values
- Open Page: opens a Home Assistant page in the app
- Gauge and Details: show values from templates
- Energy and Calendar: your energy dashboard and upcoming calendar events (added in August 2026)
- Custom widgets (beta): the most configurable type

## How often widgets refresh

iOS decides when a widget refreshes and gives each app a limited budget. The official documentation puts sensor widgets at about every 15 minutes. To refresh sooner, an automation can send the app a silent push notification with the message update_widgets, for example whenever the entity a widget shows changes. Anything that changes by the second, such as a washing machine cycle, belongs in a Live Activity instead.

## Widgets in Vulpo

Vulpo offers eight widget types for the Home Screen: toggle, group, solar, chart, person, camera, lock and cover. Solar, chart and person are also available on the Lock Screen. Interactive widgets toggle the entity in place without opening the app. Two widgets are free; Vulpo Pro removes the limit and adds the Group widget, which shows up to eight entities as tiles. Vulpo is made by the publisher of this site.

## Can a Home Assistant widget toggle a light without opening the app?

Yes, with an interactive widget. In the official app, a Scripts widget runs a script in place. In Vulpo, the toggle, group, lock and cover widgets act on the entity directly.

## Why does my widget show an old value?

iOS limits how often widgets refresh. Opening the app or tapping an interactive widget usually refreshes it, and the official app can be asked to refresh widgets through an update_widgets notification.

## Sources

- [iOS widgets (Home Assistant Companion documentation)](https://companion.home-assistant.io/docs/integrations/ios-widgets/)
- [Home Assistant iOS app releases](https://github.com/home-assistant/iOS/releases)

Vulpo 1.3. Last updated 2026-10-02. Source: https://vulpo.app/guides/home-assistant-iphone-widgets

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