Preen, built with Claude Code, turns your iPhone into a widget display
Preen (HelloPreen.com) is an app that turns an iPhone screen into a personal widget display, built using Claude Code. Its creator, a , had repeatedly vibe-coded small widgets and displays with Claude Code, only to have them end up unused in a folder. The MacBook's Touch Bar used to be a natural home for this kind of thing, but Apple discontinued it, and the top menu bar is already too cramped to be a good substitute.
As real examples, the creator built a widget to remotely turn a Samsung TV on and off, using a Mac as a to bridge the phone and the TV — simply telling Claude Code "make a widget to turn my TV on and off" produced a working widget on the phone. The same approach was applied to a Yamaha soundbar: a already existed with a version of the soundbar's API, making that part easy, but it lacked reference for the subwoofer API, so Claude walked the creator through setting up a proxy on the Mac to fill that gap.
Key points
- Preen turns an iPhone into a personalized widget display
- Built with Claude Code; available at HelloPreen.com
- Designed to fill the gap left by the discontinued MacBook Touch Bar
- Just telling Claude Code what you want (e.g. a TV on/off widget) produces a working widget
- When reference info was missing (subwoofer API), Claude guided setting up a