Backtick vs WhyNot Widgets
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Backtick
This app transforms your home and lock screens into a functional terminal. Display real-time data like calendar events, reminders, weather, and system stats directly on your device's interface.
- Functional terminal interface on home/lock screen
- Display calendar, reminders, weather, battery, GitHub
- Full-page and console widgets
- 35+ widget types including git, focus, and weather
- Lock screen widgets and StandBy mode support
- Customizable themes and palettes
- Integrates with Shortcuts and Siri
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Backtick turns your home and lock screen into a terminal. Not a picture of one — a working one. Panels drawn with hairline rules, a tab bar you actually tap, a cursor that genuinely blinks, and your real life inside it: calendar, reminders, weather, steps, battery — and now your GitHub, your focus sessions and anything your automations want to say. FULL-PAGE WIDGETS (iOS 27) The Terminal fills an entire home screen page — now, next up, tasks, weather and system as one live session. The Console goes full page too, with bit idling above the menu. THE WIDGETS — 35 OF THEM • Terminal — five panels switched by tapping tabs on the widget; small, medium, large and full page • Console — a navigable menu: arrows move, enter selects, esc backs out, without opening an app • git log — your GitHub contribution graph, streak and recent activity • focus — one tap starts a timer, with a Live Activity on your lock screen and Dynamic Island • curl — any number from a JSON endpoint you choose, with a sparkline of recent values • echo — shows whatever you send it from Shortcuts; build automations that write to your home and lock screen • Weather — current, hourly and forecast; the small one pages when you tap it • Clock — a live 7-segment face with ticking seconds, zero battery cost, 12h or 24h • Countdown — days to a date you pick; ticks live on the final day, counts up after • Daylight — sunrise to sunset as a gauge, golden hour, light left • Year Progress — every day of the year as a dot; watch it fill • Elapsed — day, week, month and year as block gauges • Month — the full month with event markers • Timeline — upcoming events with durations drawn to scale • Steps — today's count and distance, with the week as bars • Disk — storage as a block gauge • Moon — tonight's phase as a dot matrix • motd — a daily line from bit, free • bit — a resident terminal creature. It has moods, it types little lines, its heartbeat blinks, and it reacts when you poke it. Bond over time. LOCK SCREEN Nine rectangular widgets (next up, tasks, weather, forecast, hourly, elapsed, battery, daylight, echo), six circular gauges, and inline status lines. STANDBY Charge your phone on its side and the Terminal, Weather, Clock and bit widgets switch to big, glanceable layouts you can read from across the room. THEMES Six full terminal palettes — Dracula, Gruvbox, Nord, Solarized, Catppuccin and Tokyo Night — or classic true black with one of five accent phosphors. Every widget follows instantly. SHORTCUTS, SIRI & CONTROL CENTER • "Set Backtick Message" puts any text on the echo widgets — when you arrive at work, when your battery runs low, whenever • Start or stop a focus session from Siri, Shortcuts or Control Center • Tick your top task, poke bit, or jump to your agenda from Control Center or the Action button BUILT LIKE A TOOL • Tick reminders off from the widget — writes straight to Apple Reminders • Tap a section to open YOUR apps: choose which calendar, reminders and weather apps widget taps launch • Battery, weather and steps refresh in the background through the day • Live clocks, countdowns and a blinking cursor with zero widget refreshes • True black. Made for OLED and dark home screens. PRIVATE BY CONSTRUCTION • No account, no sign-in, no Backtick server — there isn't one • Calendar, reminders, steps and device stats are read on-device via Apple's frameworks • Weather comes from Apple Weather using your approximate location • git log and curl talk only to the addresses you give them; an optional GitHub token stays in your phone's keychain • Nothing is collected. There is nowhere to collect it to. FREE / PRO The Terminal widget, Next Up, the inline status line, motd and the classic amber theme are free forever. One purchase unlocks everything else — every widget, every palette — no subscription, no upsell treadmill. — Privacy policy: https://backtick.app/privacy.html Terms of use: https://backtick.app/terms.html
WhyNot Widgets
This app places a customizable app drawer and unique clock widgets on your Home Screen. Launch up to nine apps with a single tap and personalize your device with beautifully designed, hand-drawn widgets.
- Customizable app drawer
- Single-tap app launching
- Multiple widget styles
- Hand-drawn clock widgets
- Light and Dark mode support
- One-time purchase packs
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Nine apps. One widget. One tap. WhyNot puts a tiny app drawer on your Home Screen. Pick up to nine apps, choose a style, and every one of them launches with a single tap. No folders to open. Many apps launch straight from the widget, the rest pass through WhyNot for a moment, and the picker tells you which is which. BUILD IT YOUR WAY • Up to nine apps in the smallest widget size. One app or nine, the layout adapts. • Light and Dark show the real app icons, as they look on a light or a dark Home Screen. Mono and Ghost are two quieter looks. • Fill, or anchor the drawer to a corner for a folder-like cluster. • Hold a tile and drag it to rearrange. CLOCKS WITH CHARACTER • Dial: a quiet analog clock inspired by classic industrial design. Small, medium, and a large desk clock with your week laid out underneath. • Flip: a split-flap clock that rolls over on the minute. • Almanac: the month on a card, in Flip's material. Two keys turn the pages, the name brings today back. Free. • Every widget is built for light mode, dark mode, and the Clear look. Pin any widget to always light or always dark, whatever your phone is set to. MADE TO BE LOOKED AT Every widget is drawn by hand, with real shadows, real materials, and one light source. Nothing is a template. Nothing is a screenshot of something else. PACKS (one-time purchases) • Halo: three screens on one large instrument, your wallpaper showing through. Home has the week, what is next and today's steps, Move and Exercise from Health with the goals. Next has the coming events and reminders, with a countdown. Outside has the weather from sunrise to sunset, hour by hour and four days out. The keys switch screens; a slider sets how much wallpaper shows. • Quartz: a desk clock from the nineties, in seven cases from olive to cream. A window for the date, the day or the temperature, numerals in figures or Roman. Tap to open Clock. • Vinyl: your record on a turntable, drawn after the classic Braun deck. The album artwork is the label, the record turns while Apple Music plays, the arm lifts when it stops, and back, play and next work from the widget. Small is the platter, medium is the whole deck. • Tally: a desk calculator from the seventies, on your Home Screen. Every key works. Small for quick sums, large for the whole instrument. Keeps the last result. • Frontpage: your day as a newspaper front page, in the tall widget size that arrived with iOS 27. The next event is the headline, more events and your reminders run in columns, real headlines from a source you choose or your own feed fill the fold, and tomorrow's weather closes the page. Three newspaper typefaces, newsprint grain, pressed type. • Console: your day at a glance. What is next and how long until it, the week ahead, and the sky, one tap apart on the widget. Every block opens Calendar or Weather directly. • Golden: when the light will be good. Golden hour and blue hour for where you are, on one living sky where the sun rises and sets across your Home Screen. The time is lit by the light of the moment. Tap to open the Camera. • WhyNot Pro: Scenes, your drawer set in a place, with the apps that belong there. Glass, the drawer on a frosted panel with your wallpaper showing through. Unlimited drawers, each widget showing a different one. Gradient backgrounds inspired by iPhone finishes or your own two colors. Buy once, keep forever. No subscriptions. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account. No tracking. No analytics. Your drawers live on your phone and nowhere else. Console, Golden, Frontpage and Halo use your approximate location for Apple Weather and, if you allow it, your calendars and reminder lists. Halo reads today's Health figures on your phone, only if you allow it. A feed you add is fetched by your phone, not by us. Nothing about you ever reaches us. WhyNot is made by This is E.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Backtick at 4.7 against WhyNot Widgets's 4.2. Backtick also leads on review sentiment (80% vs 66%) and iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). WhyNot Widgets's advantage is update cadence (daily vs every 9 days) and ratings volume (114 vs 6). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Backtick sells 2 one-off in-app purchases and WhyNot Widgets sells 9 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Backtick holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.2. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: WhyNot Widgets has 114 ratings behind it against 6, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 80% of Backtick's written reviews are positive against 66% of WhyNot Widgets's.
Backtick ships an update every 9 days, WhyNot Widgets daily. Both last shipped on November 6, 2026.
| Parameter | Backtick | WhyNot Widgets |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (6 ratings) — better | 4.2 (114 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 80.0% of reviews — better | 65.6% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 6 | 114 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 9 days | Daily — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 7 MB | 23 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Elvis Mederos | Iskren Georgiev |
Customer experience
Backtick
WhyNot Widgets
In-app purchases
Backtick
- 7-Day Trial of Backtick ProFree
- Pro$4.99
WhyNot Widgets
- Tally$5.99
- Vinyl$5.99
- Quartz$5.99
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- Golden$5.99
- Atlas$9.99
- Frontpage$9.99
- Halo$9.99
- WhyNot Pro$9.99
- Console$9.99








