Apple Invites Gets a Home Screen Widget
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Over the past couple of years, Apple has introduced some fun new first-party apps that you may not be aware of, as they are not preinstalled on new iPhones, unlike most of its other apps.
For example, in February 2024, Apple gave us Apple Sports, a free app that takes a clean and minimalist approach for sports fans to keep track of their favorite teams and leagues. In fact, it does such a good job that some have complained it’s too fast with the results, with live play-by-play information that beats out the game you’re watching on streaming or cable.
In what could become an annual tradition, Apple followed suit in February 2025 with another fun new first-party app, Apple Invites. As the name implies, this is designed to help you plan social events, but it follows the same playbook as Apple Sports in delivering a whimsical yet straightforward design that helps you get the party started without too much fiddling around.
To be clear, Apple Invites isn’t just an app — it’s a gateway into a background iCloud service that does most of the heavy lifting of sending out invitations and managing your guest lists. That’s (mostly) a good thing, as it means you can invite folks who don’t have Apple Invites installed, or who aren’t even iPhone users. Invitations will be sent out with a link to access a web page on iCloud, where they can RSVP. You can also use the same page to create and manage events if you’re on a Mac or an iPad, since Apple Invites is only available for the iPhone.
There’s a relatively small downside to this, in that Apple isn’t giving Apple Invites away entirely for free. There’s no cost to download the app, and anyone can use it to receive invites and respond to events created by others without paying, but you’ll only be able to create a new event and send out invites if you’re an iCloud+ subscriber. However, considering that even the cheapest $0.99 per month 50 GB plan qualifies, it’s not too high a bar for most iPhone users to jump over.
It’s also great to see that Apple has been quite proactive about keeping Apple Invites fresh and interesting. Several updates have come out since its initial release. In late May, Apple Invites 1.2 added the ability to include a Link tile in your events to direct guests to external sites, such as a gift registry, potluck list, trip planner, or any other relevant information. Then, a summer fun update in June added 45 new season-themed backgrounds, ranging from a lime slide and a frosty beer to beach scenes and sports balls.
This week, Apple Invites 1.4 is out, featuring another handy new feature. Whether you’re planning your last bash of the summer or getting ready for some fall festivities like Canadian Thanksgiving (Columbus Day for my American friends), there’s a new widget to help make sure both you and your guests are ready to go.
It’s the first (and only) widget to come to Apple Invites, and it’s pretty single-minded: it shows the title image and name of a selected event you’re scheduled to attend (whether you’re the host or an invitee) with a countdown to when it’s happening. However, it’s available in three sizes, and it’s done quite elegantly.
For one thing, not only will you get to prominently display the selected image for the upcoming event, but the font for the title and the countdown will also mirror the font used for the event. The countdown will also switch from days to hours on the day of the event.
The one small catch is that this doesn’t automatically show you the next event on your list by date. Instead, it shows you whatever event you’ve selected from the widget’s settings (accessed by tapping and holding on the widget and then choosing Edit Widget from the menu that appears). That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it gives you more control over what you want to see, and it even means you can easily have more than one widget to show different upcoming events.
