Placing multiple individual widgets across your iPhone Home Screen provides quick access to weather forecasts, calendar events, battery levels, and fitness rings, but it quickly consumes precious app icon space and introduces visual clutter. Apple solves this dilemma through Smart Stacks, a feature in iOS that lets you combine up to ten widgets into a single Home Screen slot. Using on-device machine intelligence, Smart Stacks can automatically cycle to the most relevant information based on your location, time of day, and routine habits.
What Makes a Widget Stack “Smart”?
While standard widget stacks require you to swipe manually to cycle through layers, a Smart Stack adds two intelligent capabilities:
- Smart Rotate: Automatically evaluates contextual triggers (such as your morning alarm, calendar meetings, commute departures, or workout logs) to rotate the most timely widget to the top of the stack.
- Widget Suggestions: Automatically inserts relevant widgets from apps you frequently use when a high-priority action occurs, even if that widget was not initially added to the stack.
Adding a Pre-Built Smart Stack to Your iPhone
Apple includes a pre-configured Smart Stack in the widget gallery that features commonly used native apps:
- Touch and hold an empty area of your iPhone Home Screen until the icons begin to jiggle (entering “jiggle mode”).
- Tap the + (Add) button in the top left corner of the screen (or tap Edit > Add Widget in iOS 18).
- Scroll down through the widget list and tap Smart Stack.
- Swipe horizontally to choose your preferred widget size: small (2×2), medium (2×4), or large (4×4).
- Tap Add Widget, then drag the stack to your desired Home Screen position.
- Tap Done in the top right corner to lock the layout in place.
Building a Custom Widget Stack from Scratch
You can also build custom stacks by dragging existing widgets directly on top of one another:
- Enter jiggle mode by long-pressing any blank area on your Home Screen.
- Add a widget from the gallery (e.g., Weather).
- Add a second widget of the exact same size (e.g., Batteries). Note: Widgets must share identical dimensions to be stacked together.
- Press and hold the second widget, then drag it directly over the first widget until a translucent white boundary outlines the stack.
- Release your finger to drop the widget into the stack. Repeat this process with up to 10 distinct widgets.
Customising, Reordering, and Deleting Widgets in a Stack
Fine-tuning the behavior and order of widgets inside your stack takes only a moment:
- Press and hold the Smart Stack on your Home Screen until the quick actions menu appears.
- Tap Edit Stack.
- Review the stacked widget list:
- Reorder: Press and hold the three horizontal lines (drag handle) next to any widget to drag it higher or lower in the stack.
- Remove a widget: Tap the minus (–) badge on any unwanted widget and tap Delete.
- Toggle Smart Rotate: Tap the Smart Rotate button at the bottom of the editing screen to enable or disable automatic rotations based on your daily usage.
- Toggle Widget Suggestions: Tap the Widget Suggestions button to allow or disallow iOS from dynamically showing unpinned app widgets.
- Tap the close icon (or tap outside the editing pane) to save your changes.
Interacting with Widgets Within a Stack
With interactive widget support in modern iOS versions, you can interact directly with widgets without opening their parent applications:
- Swipe vertically on the Smart Stack at any time to manually flick between your stacked widgets.
- Check off completed tasks directly inside a stacked Reminders widget.
- Tap play or pause on a stacked Podcasts or Music widget without launching the full media app.
- Tap anywhere outside interactive buttons to launch the full application instantly.
Creating tailored Smart Stacks keeps your iPhone Home Screen sleek, organized, and packed with actionable intelligence right when you need it.