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You want to read more, but the app sits buried on page three of your home screen and you forget about it for days at a time. A widget fixes that quiet problem. It puts your reading habit somewhere you actually look, so you glance at your phone and see whether you read today instead of remembering three days later that you meant to.
This guide covers every widget justRead offers, what each one shows, which to pick, and how to add them. justRead is an EPUB, PDF, comic, and audiobook reader for iPhone and iPad, and its widgets are built around one idea: making your reading habit visible without opening the app first.
A quick note on scope before we start. There are five home screen widgets, each in a small and a medium size, and five Lock Screen widgets. There is no large size. This post tells you exactly what each one does so you are not hunting for a widget that does not exist.
The five home screen widgets
Here is the whole lineup in one place, so you can pick before you go hunting in the widget gallery.
| Widget | What it is for | Tapping it takes you to |
|---|---|---|
| Currently Reading | Getting back into the book you are in the middle of | That book, at the page you left |
| Reading Calendar | Seeing your consistency as a heatmap | Your statistics |
| Daily Goal | Checking whether today's minutes are done | Your statistics |
| Streak | Watching the run of days you do not want to break | Your statistics |
| Quick Stats | A summary of your reading numbers at a glance | Your statistics |
Every one of them comes in a small and a medium size. Small is the glance: a tile the size of an app icon that answers one question. Medium is the same widget given room to show more of the picture. The clearest example is the Reading Calendar, where the small size is a single month and the medium size is a three-month strip, but the same trade sits behind all five. Pick small when you want an answer, medium when you want context.
Currently Reading
The one that saves you the most taps. It shows the book you are in the middle of, and tapping it opens that book rather than dropping you on the app's home screen. If your problem is friction, this is the widget that removes it: you go from a locked phone to the page you left in about a second, which is usually the difference between reading for ten minutes on a train and scrolling instead.
Put this one on your main home screen if you read in short opportunistic bursts through the day.
Reading Calendar
The Reading Calendar is the widget most people add first. It shows a heatmap of the days you have been reading. Days with reading activity are filled in; days you skipped are not. The pattern is the point. You can see your consistency at a glance, the same way a fitness app shows you which days you moved.
This is habit accountability you cannot argue with. A streak that is mostly solid with one gap looks different from a calendar that is half empty, and seeing that on your home screen does more for consistency than any reminder notification.
Small size: the month heatmap. A single month as a compact grid. Each square is a day, and filled squares are days you read. It is the size of a standard app icon block, so it tucks neatly next to your other apps. Use it when your question is "did I read today, and how is this month going so far?" If today is still blank by evening, that is your nudge.
Medium size: the three-month strip. A wider view covering three months instead of one. You trade the tidy single-block footprint for a longer read on your pattern: the stretch where you read every night, the week you fell off during a busy patch, the recovery afterward. If you are building a durable habit rather than checking a daily box, the strip gives you context the small size cannot.
A setup that works well: keep the small size on your main home screen for the daily glance, and put the medium one on a secondary page or in your Today View, where you go specifically to review how things are trending.
Daily Goal
Your daily goal in justRead is a number of minutes, and the Daily Goal widget shows how far through it you are today. It answers a narrower question than the calendar does. The calendar tells you about the month; this one only tells you about the next few minutes of your evening.
That narrowness is the reason it works. A goal you can see is a goal you close out, and because the goal is set in minutes rather than pages or chapters, it stays achievable on a bad day. Reading a PDF for work counts, a comic counts, and time spent listening to an audiobook counts too, so the widget fills up from whatever kind of reading you actually did.
Pick this one if you have set a daily goal and keep forgetting to finish it.
Streak
A dedicated widget for the run you do not want to break. One thing worth being precise about, because it changed: your streak counts every day you hit your daily goal, not every day you happened to open a book for a minute. That makes the number harder to earn and much more meaningful, and it makes the Daily Goal and Streak widgets a natural pair, since one is the day and the other is the record.
The app also tracks milestone badges as the run gets longer, seven of them, from a ten-day streak up to seven hundred and thirty days. The widget is what keeps that run in your eyeline on day nine, when it would otherwise be easy to let it go.
Quick Stats
The summary tile. Where the calendar shows shape and the streak shows a single run, Quick Stats puts your reading numbers in front of you without opening anything. It is the widget for people who like the numbers themselves rather than the pattern, and it is the natural one to pair with a Statistics screen you actually visit, because tapping it lands you there.
The five Lock Screen widgets
Lock Screen widgets are the smaller tier: the little tiles under the clock that you see every time you pick up your phone, before you unlock anything. justRead has five of them, and two are worth naming specifically because they answer the two questions people ask most.
Minutes Today is the plainest reading number there is. It sits under the clock and tells you how many minutes you have read today, which means you find out you have not read yet at 4pm rather than at midnight.
The progress ring is the visual version of the same idea: a ring that fills toward your daily goal, so you read it in a glance rather than reading a number. If you already have an activity ring on your Lock Screen, this is the reading equivalent and it works for exactly the same reason.
The other three fill the remaining Lock Screen slots, and you choose between them in the same gallery, so the fastest way to find the one you want is to scroll the justRead entries when you customize your Lock Screen and pick the one that reads best to you at a glance.
Lock Screen widgets are the highest-traffic real estate on the phone. You look at that screen dozens of times a day without deciding to, which makes it the best possible place for a habit you are trying to keep and a poor place for anything you need in detail.
What happens when you tap
Widgets in justRead are doorways, not destinations. Tapping one takes you to the exact book or screen behind it: Currently Reading opens the book itself, and the habit widgets open your Statistics screen rather than the app's front page.
That matters because a widget is intentionally a summary. The Statistics screen behind it holds the detail: your reading sessions, activity by hour, your Reading Recap by day, week, month, and year, your longest session and peak reading hour, and a reading speed trend that is still in beta. The widget is the doorway; the stats screen is the room.
You can read more about everything that screen tracks on the reading statistics page.
Shareable book cards (not a widget, but worth knowing)
While we are on the subject of seeing your reading at a glance, there is one related feature that gets mistaken for a widget but is not one.
justRead can generate a shareable book card: a clean visual card built from a book's stats that you can save or share. This lives inside the app, not on your home screen, so it is not something you add through the widget gallery. Think of it as a way to capture a finished book or a reading milestone as an image, rather than a persistent home screen tile.
It is worth knowing about because people often go looking for "a widget that shows the book I just finished" and what they actually want is this. Same idea, different place. You make the card in the app when you want it, rather than having it sit on your screen all the time.
How to add a justRead widget
Adding any of the five home screen widgets uses the standard iOS flow, the same one you use for any app:
- Touch and hold an empty area of your home screen until the apps start to jiggle.
- Tap the plus (+) button in the top corner.
- Search for or scroll to justRead in the widget list.
- Swipe between the justRead widgets to find the one you want, then between the small and medium sizes.
- Tap Add Widget, then position it where you want and tap Done.
For the Lock Screen the flow is slightly different:
- Touch and hold your Lock Screen until the Customize button appears, then tap it and choose the Lock Screen.
- Tap the widget area under the clock.
- Scroll to justRead and tap the widget you want to drop into the slot.
- Tap Done.
That is the whole process. If you want it spelled out with more detail and the full picture of what each widget option looks like, the reading widgets hub page has the complete walkthrough.
One thing to set up first: these widgets need data to display. If you have just installed justRead, the heatmap will be empty and the numbers will be zero until you have logged some reading sessions. Read for a few days and the squares start filling in. The widgets reflect what is already in your statistics, so they get more useful the longer you use the app.
Which ones should you use?
If you do not want to think about it, here is the short version.
Pick Currently Reading if your problem is starting. One tap from the home screen to the page you left removes the small friction that eats reading time.
Pick the small Reading Calendar if you want daily accountability. It is the everyday choice: one glance tells you whether you kept the run going, and it fits among your normal apps without dominating the screen.
Pick the medium Reading Calendar if you care more about the trend than today. The three-month strip is for reviewing patterns over time, so it suits people deliberately building a lasting habit.
Pick Daily Goal or Streak if you already read regularly and the thing you want is to not break the run. These two work best together, and they work best when your daily goal is set somewhere you can actually hit on a bad day.
Pick Quick Stats if you are the kind of reader who likes the numbers and will act on them.
There is no rule that says you can only pick one. A common setup is Currently Reading plus the small Reading Calendar on the main home screen, the medium calendar in your Today View for review, and Minutes Today or the progress ring on the Lock Screen, which together answer "am I reading enough today?" and "how is the habit holding up over time?" without ever opening the app.
If your real goal is building the habit rather than just monitoring it, the widgets pair naturally with goal tracking. The reading goals page covers how justRead handles pace and targets, and the widgets give you the at-a-glance feedback loop that makes goals stick.
FAQ
Does justRead have a home screen widget?
Yes, five of them: Currently Reading, Reading Calendar, Daily Goal, Streak, and Quick Stats, each in a small and a medium size. You add them from your home screen the same way you add any iOS widget.
What does the Reading Calendar widget show?
It shows a heatmap of the days you have read. Days with reading activity are filled in and days you skipped are not, so you can see your consistency at a glance. The small size covers a single month; the medium size shows a three-month strip for a longer view. Tapping either size opens your full Statistics screen.
Is there a reading streak widget?
Yes. There is a dedicated Streak widget for the home screen in small and medium. Your streak counts every day you hit your daily goal, not every day you read for a minute, and tapping the widget takes you straight to the Statistics screen for the exact numbers.
Is there a reading goal progress widget?
Yes. The Daily Goal widget shows how far you are through today's target, in small and medium on the home screen, and the Lock Screen has both a progress ring and a Minutes Today tile for the same job in less space.
Is there a large widget size?
No. Every justRead home screen widget comes in a small and a medium size only. If you want more information on screen, the answer is a second widget rather than a bigger one.
Are there Lock Screen widgets?
Yes, five of them, including Minutes Today and a progress ring that fills toward your daily goal. You add them by touching and holding the Lock Screen, tapping Customize, and then tapping the widget area under the clock.
Do audiobooks and comics count toward what the widgets show?
Yes. Time spent listening to an audiobook counts the same as time spent reading, and so does a comic or a work PDF. It all lands in one set of numbers, which is what the Daily Goal, Streak, Reading Calendar, and Quick Stats widgets are drawing from.
Can I add the widget to my iPad?
The justRead widgets are iOS widgets, so you add them by touching and holding the home screen, tapping the plus button, and choosing justRead from the widget list. Exact widget placement options can vary by iOS version, so use whatever the plus-button gallery offers on your device.
Why is my Reading Calendar widget empty?
The heatmap reflects your logged reading sessions, so a brand-new install will show an empty calendar until you have actually read in the app. Read for a few days and the days will start filling in. If you have been reading and it still looks blank, open the app to confirm your sessions are recording, then check the widget again.
Does the widget sync my reading to Goodreads or other services?
No. The widgets display data from inside justRead. They do not push your reading activity to Goodreads or any third-party social service. If you want to get highlights out of the app, justRead has a one-button Readwise export and Markdown export, but that is a separate feature from the widgets.
Putting a widget where you will see it
The point of a reading widget is small and specific: make your habit visible so you do not have to rely on remembering it. Currently Reading gets you back into the book, the Reading Calendar keeps your consistency in front of you, Daily Goal and Streak protect the run, Quick Stats holds the numbers, and the Lock Screen tier does all of that before you even unlock the phone. Every one of them is one tap from the detail behind it.
A widget gets you into the book. What happens next is the page itself, and two things matter more there than most people expect: whether dark mode is actually doing anything on your screen, and taking the breaks that keep a long session comfortable.
To go further, see the full reading widgets setup page, dig into everything the reading statistics screen tracks, or read up on how reading goals work in the app.
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