Blank/Customisable Widget Labels

Scriptable
1

Hi, loving this app so far. I’ve been creating a few widgets for my home screen and I’m really happy with them. The only issue is the widget label of “Scriptable” underneath each widget - it’s not awful but I’d much prefer there to be no label at all (or configurable).

I’m not an iOS developer but I had assumed as Apple allows developers to set different names for their apps in the app store and the one that displays when the app is on your home screen (usually a shortened version), that this was just a third name the developer could set (or it would follow one of the others).

However, recently I found the Clear Spaces app. This app was on TestFlight at one point and created quite a buzz because its widgets had no labels at all. Once it been officially released though, they added a "cs" label to the widgets (I assume Apple didn’t approve of the blank labels). But, with the most recent update… (1.5.2) labels are now blank again!

They claimed in some earlier reviews that they were looking into a “workaround”. Is there any chance @simonbs could look into this and possibly replicate what they did here? Maybe Scriptable could even allow the script to set the label depending on this workaround.

2

Hi,

You’re right that apps can have different names on the App Store and under the icons on the Home Screen. However, the app name displayed under a widget is the same name as the app shows under its app icon. Clear Spaces removes the name under the widget by using a blank space character as the name under the app icon.

I understand the appeal of having a “blank” name under widgets, but I’m not currently willing to show a blank name under the app icon.

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3

Thanks for the quick response! That does make sense and I understand that’s a big sacrifice UX wise to have a blank app name on the home screen. It’s a shame they’re tied together, hopefully in the future Apple sees a use case for typical apps to have different names for their widgets e.g. “Forecast” or “Current Temperature” for weather apps.

1 Like