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With the release of Apple’s iOS 14, users can finally add widgets to their homescreen and subsequent pages, paving the way for unique ways to customize your iOS device. Inspired by a widget from iOS Reddit client Apollo, developer Mark Hambly decided to make his own to show off the beautiful astrophotography of NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) project.
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| A collection of various layouts you can achieve using the new widgets in iOS 14. |
The aptly named APOD app, which is free to download (and ad-free), will refresh every day with the latest image(s) from NASA’s APOD feed. You can customize the widget to show up as a 2×2 square, 2×4 rectangle or a 4×4 square to squeeze it into whatever homescreen setup you’ve customized. The widget offers the option to show the current APOD, a random APOD or cycle through a collection of your favorite APOD images you’ve marked within the app.
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| You can pick between the APOD, a random APOD from the past or a collection of Favorite APOD images you’ve saved. |
If you want additional information on the image being displayed, you can tap on the widget and it will take you into the app, where you’ll see the image’s title, the date it was released and the description provided by NASA. You can also browse through the Astronomy Picture of the Day by date and even tap the ‘Random’ button that will surprise you from a past image.
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The app is still in its infancy, as it was quickly developed ‘over a few evenings’ as part of a personal hackathon, so if you do come across the bug, just report it to the developer through the app’s settings. The app is available in the iOS App Store.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
