Comparison

Widgnest vs Elements

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Widgnest

Features
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Widgnest turns your Home Screen into something that's actually yours. Pick from more than 50 widgets — clocks, calendars, weather, countdowns, notes, checklists, habit trackers, finance tickers and more — then style them the way you like. Five themes, custom accent colours, and a library of wallpapers designed to match. Everything runs on your device. No account, no sign-up, no ads, no tracking. WIDGETS FOR EVERY PART OF YOUR DAY Time & Date • Digital and analog clocks • Date and calendar • Year progress and ISO week number • World clock across time zones • Multi-countdown and days until the weekend Weather & Nature • Current conditions, hourly and 7-day forecast • Sunrise, sunset and golden hour • UV index and air quality • What to Wear, based on the hour you're actually in • Weekend Planner — Saturday and Sunday, and the best dry hours to head out • Moon phase Productivity • Next meeting and the day's agenda from your calendar • Notes and checklists • Pomodoro timer Habits & Health • Habit grid and streak counters • Water intake • Weight tracker with a trend graph • Fasting timer • Mood tracker and days since Personal & Aesthetic • Countdowns and anniversaries • Photo frame • Quote of the day and horoscope Finance • Currency exchange rates and cryptocurrency prices • Budget ring, subscriptions and bills due • Payday countdown and salary per second Smart Utility, Social, Fun and Mindfulness • Wi-Fi QR code, unit converter, bubble level, tip & split • Birthday list from your contacts, together since, long-distance clock • Magic 8-Ball, random picker, joke of the day • Life in weeks, life progress and daily affirmations MAKE IT LOOK RIGHT • Five themes: Glass, Minimal, Material, Dark Luxe and Neon • Custom accent colours • Adjustable panel transparency WALLPAPERS BUILT FOR WIDGETS More than 80 wallpapers, ready to save to Photos. Every one is measured rather than just labelled: filter for OLED wallpapers that hold true blacks, or widget-safe ones that stay calm exactly where your widgets sit, so your text keeps its contrast. Each wallpaper tells you which theme it looks best with. Browse by collection and keep the ones you love in Favourites. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Your notes, lists, counters and settings never leave your iPhone. Widgnest has no user account and collects no analytics. Weather and finance widgets ask public services for data using nothing but coordinates or a currency symbol — never your identity. WIDGNEST PRO A single one-time purchase unlocks every premium widget, all four premium themes and custom accent colours. No subscription, and every future widget and theme is included. Questions or ideas? Write to info@designer2.org

About

Elements

Features
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Aesthetic widgets that match — because you designed them that way. Most widget apps hand you a pile of unrelated widgets. Elements gives you a design system: set the typeface, the accent, the background and the density once, and 32 kinds of widget wear it — on the Home Screen, the Lock Screen, StandBy, CarPlay, and on your Mac. 145 designed faces. 206 backgrounds, 118 of them photographs. 12 accent colours, or your own. 180 finished looks you can apply in one tap and then keep tweaking. WIDGETS THAT KNOW SOMETHING • Weather written as a sentence — "31° now, feels 35°. Haze till 6pm." • Your next event, your month at a glance, and how long until the next thing • A groceries list you tick off from the Home Screen • Steps, distance and sleep, read from Health • Sunrise, sunset, the moon's phase, and how much daylight you lost since yesterday • Prayer times, computed on device from five published methods • Currency at the day's published reference rate • Battery, storage, world clocks, countdowns, a verse, a word, your own feeds CUT OUT A SUBJECT AND STICK IT ON YOUR SCREEN Pick a photo and Elements lifts the subject out of it — no background, just the thing. Size it, turn it, nudge it, give it a paper edge. Keep a shelf of them and let the widget rotate through. MINI-APPS YOU FILL YOURSELF Habits you check off. Tallies you count. Subscriptions with renewal reminders. A focus timer. A fasting window. Readings your own Shortcuts write into. A canvas you compose from blocks. All of it stays on your phone. FED BY YOUR SHORTCUTS Four Shortcuts actions let your automations write straight into a widget: update a reading, check in a habit, adjust a counter, set a canvas block. State how often your shortcut runs and the widget will say "as of 9:41" when it misses — a stale number never poses as a fresh one. CORRECT, OR IT TELLS YOU WHY The most common complaint about widgets is that they go stale, blank, or wrong. Elements treats that as a feature to build, not a bug to apologise for. Every widget knows how fresh its data is and says so. Every failure is named — "no location fix", "offline", "not allowed" — instead of one shrug. There is a Widget Health screen that shows what actually reloaded today against the system's own budget. NOTHING HERE IS A SCORE No badges. No XP. No streak repairs to buy. No confetti, no leaderboards, no red marks for a day you missed — a missed day is an empty dot. The reward is that the number is right and the typography is good. THREE THEMES, LIGHT AND DARK Ink Bento is near-black panes and feather numerals. Dawn Glass is warm paper. Pop is flat saturated colour. Every design can pin its own theme and its own light/dark, so one widget can be dark while another follows your phone. PRIVACY Calendar, Reminders, Health and everything you type stay on your device. Health access is read-only and the widget extension never touches it. Weather sends your location — or the place you pin — to Apple to get a forecast, and a few widgets fetch public data like exchange rates or the headlines from feeds you add yourself. There are no accounts, no analytics and no tracking. Four finished widgets — clock, weather, next event, battery and storage — fully styleable, no ads, no watermarks. Elements Pro unlocks the rest of the catalog, saved designs, and the mini-apps. Terms of use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Widgnest4 screens
Elements4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is ads: Widgnest at none against Elements's shown. Widgnest also leads on iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). Elements's advantage is update cadence (every 4 days vs every 3 weeks). On price, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price Ā· Rating Ā· Positive reviews Ā· Number of ratings Ā· Update frequency Ā· Ads Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Monetization Ā· Best chart rank Ā· Devices Ā· Requires iOS

CostPrice Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Ads Ā· Monetization

Both are free to download. Widgnest sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Elements sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Widgnest ships an update every 3 weeks, Elements every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 1, 2026 and October 4, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences Ā· 3 level
Widgnest versus Elements: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterWidgnestElements
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeksEvery 4 days — better
AdsNo — betterYes
In-app purchasesYesYes
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.0 — better26.0
Further details — not scored
Size17 MB98 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperDesigner2 jdooTouseef Hassan Nasir

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Widgnest

One-time1
  • Widgnest Pro$0.99
3 purchases

Elements

Subscriptions2
  • Elements Pro Monthly$2.991 Month
  • Elements Pro Yearly1 Month trial$19.991 Year
One-time1
  • Elements Pro Lifetime$49.99

Questions

Is Widgnest free?
Widgnest is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Elements free?
Elements is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Widgnest or Elements have ads?
Elements shows ads; Widgnest does not.
Which is updated more often, Widgnest or Elements?
Widgnest ships an update every 3 weeks, and Elements every 4 days. Most recently, Widgnest was updated on October 1, 2026 and Elements on October 4, 2026.

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