One of the most interesting features of the Android operating system interface is widgets. Using widgets, you can display useful information on the screen of your Android device or provide quick access to important functions. But, unfortunately, there are not so many high-quality widgets for Android. In this article we have compiled a selection of the best widgets for Android.
Calculator++ is an advanced calculator for the Android operating system. This application allows you to perform both simple and complex technical calculations. One of the most interesting features of this calculator is the widget. The widget, which is installed along with the Calculator++ program, allows you to easily and quickly perform calculations without launching the application. Moreover, if the need arises, the user can switch from a widget to a full-fledged application by pressing one button.
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The next application has the simple name “Weather & Widget”. This application is interesting primarily for its widgets. Along with this program, several widgets of various sizes are installed at once. This widget for Android displays the following information: date, time, time for which the alarm is set, current weather, as well as the weather for the next few hours or days. Thus, this widget can replace several others at once.
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Month Calendar Widget is a simple calendar widget. This calendar shows the current month. The user can also go to view previous or next months. This widget does not provide any additional functions, but nevertheless it is very convenient to use.
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Slider Widget is one of the best widgets for Android. The main function of this widget is to adjust Android parameters. Using Slider Widget, the user can change the screen brightness, ringer volume, and the volume of other programs. In this case, the user does not need to open the settings; everything is done right on the desktop with just one movement.
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All mobile phone and smartphone users use their gadget as a handy tool. The Holo Bulb app makes this process much easier. After installing this application, a widget becomes available to the user, with which you can turn on the device’s flash directly from the desktop. This will not open the main application.
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Rocket Music Player is one of the most advanced audio players for Android. One of the most interesting and useful features of this player is the widget. This widget can be considered the best widget for Android among media players. The user has two widget options: large and compact. Using the widget you can start or stop playing music. The user can also go to the next or previous song.
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Do you know any other good widgets? Tell us about it in the comments and perhaps your information will be added to the article.
Learn how to get the most out of Android widgets and how to create your own widget yourself, no coding required!
Not so long ago, in the 90s (already the last century), there was a certain boom in all kinds of small technical devices that could be carried with you to perform certain tasks and, of course, demonstrate your “coolness” :) Montana watch with alarm clock on 16 melodies, pagers, Tetris for "999 games", Tamagotchi and other electronic useful and useless devices, which were called the fashionable word "gadgets" (from the English "gadget" - "thing", "device")...
By the beginning of the new century, the boom had died down a bit. Mobile phones came onto the scene and were able to replace several gadgets at once (for example, a communication device, a calculator, a portable gaming platform...) and at the same time emphasize the status of the owner. However, the craving for small and beautiful “useful things” has not disappeared at all and has fully embodied itself in the concept of so-called “widgets”, first for Windows Vista, and then for the Android and iOS mobile platforms.
Widgets are virtual analogues of real gadgets. They implement additional functionality in the form of displaying certain information or controlling any actions of the operating system without the need to launch full-fledged programs.
Widgets have become especially popular in the Android mobile OS. A large (sometimes with various decorations) clock on the desktop, a quick switch for WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS operating modes, a weather or exchange rate informer - all this is implemented by widgets. As already mentioned, they are constantly visible, which makes them accessible literally in one click.
The main advantage of widgets is their information content and convenience. For example, with a standard mail widget, we can quickly view the headers of incoming emails without opening them in an email program, or dial the phone number we need with one touch without launching the standard dialer.
There are a lot of different widgets, so it’s simply unrealistic to classify them in any way. To perform literally any action, you can choose a suitable visual gadget. Therefore, I offer you a short overview of ready-made free widgets for Android and applications that allow you to create them.
Android has a native widget called "Power Management". It allows you to place a number of switches on the desktop that can enable/disable WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, updates and adjust the brightness of the screen backlight. Without a doubt, the widget is useful, but its main drawback is that the set of its buttons cannot be changed in any way. For those who want more convenient control over their device, there is an application Power Toggles:
With this application, you can add widgets to the desktop and notification panel, similar to the standard “Power Management”, but customizable in the way you need! There are several dozen switches to choose from that can be used in the created widget:
In addition, you have the opportunity to create so-called “Folders with switches”. Unlike a regular widget, such a folder occupies only one cell on the desktop, but can contain an unlimited number of buttons and shortcuts! Quite a convenient alternative to regular folders. But that's not all! Power Toggles widgets can be placed not only on desktops, but also in the notification panel:
An additional advantage of Power Toggles is the ability to display a small additional informer in the notification line. For example, you can display the remaining battery percentage (if your firmware does not allow you to activate it normally), the current date, the type of Internet connection, or the Android version. Little things, but useful :)
New versions of Android have begun to introduce standard applications and widgets for displaying various notes on the screen. However, if you do not have any, then they can be successfully replaced ColorNote:
This application takes up only a little more than 1 megabyte, but brings quite a lot of benefits. With its help, you can, for example, create shopping lists, reminders about things to do, or plan your actions in the calendar.
The application has 3 types of widgets:
There are two types of notes available in the application: “Text” and “List”. The first one is convenient to use for storing various pieces of information, and the second one is for conveniently storing all kinds of lists. By the way, in list mode you have the opportunity to cross out unnecessary (or already completed) items.
All notes in ColorNote can be linked to specific dates, protected with a password, synchronized and transferred over the Internet. In addition, it is possible to highlight individual entries in different colors, as well as set various types of reminders (one-time, recurring, with output to the status bar, etc.) for them.
All versions of Android have a built-in Calculator application. With its help you can perform any basic calculations. But, if you need to calculate something more complex than ordinary arithmetic operations, then I recommend you a good alternative with a gorgeous widget:
The Calculator ++ application widget is a full-fledged calculator that is always available on the desktop without launching full-fledged applications. It allows you to perform all the simplest mathematical operations, as well as:
If you lack some of the capabilities that the widget provides (and they should be more than enough for quick calculations), you can use the calculator of the application itself:
Here you can get access to plotting function graphs, changing the number system (binary, decimal and hexadecimal are available), as well as a small converter module for time, amount of matter, electric current, length, mass, temperature and number systems.
For those who like to change the appearance, there are 4 built-in widget themes to choose from, so Calculator ++ can organically fit into almost any interface and become an excellent tool for those who do a lot of calculations.
One of the most popular widgets on Android is the weather widget. At one time, the trendsetter for such informers was the interface from smartphones from HTC. Since then, many have tried to copy it, but, in my opinion, the benefit of “weather forecasters” is not in their beauty, but in the accuracy of the forecast. And here one of the leaders is a time-tested service Gismeteo:
The application from Gismeteo has a relatively small size (about 8 megabytes), but includes 5 types of widgets of different sizes:
For each widget, you can choose a light or dark background, as well as set its transparency level, which allows you to achieve perfect harmony with the interface of any desktop. In addition, large widgets have additional options in the form of the ability to choose to display hourly weather or a weekly forecast, show current weather, and click actions.
The application itself automatically detects your location and allows you to view the weather in all nearby settlements. By default, the main screen displays the current weather and forecast by day or hour. If we expand the bottom panel, we can see not only traditional data on precipitation and temperature, but also find out the geomagnetic situation, humidity, changes in winds and pressure.
It's no secret that the Android operating system has the not very pleasant property of quickly filling up all the RAM with various processes. In emergency cases, you can free it manually by disabling some applications running in the background, or you can do it automatically with Gemini Taskiller Widget:
The application takes up less than a megabyte and allows you to add a small widget to your desktop that will automatically optimize the RAM used in one click. The application itself, alas, is in English, but does not require any special settings, so anyone can figure it out:
Among the additional functions in the settings, you can activate the mode to enable memory clearing when shaking (the strength of shaking is set by the slide), clear the memory by pressing the "Optimize RAM Now!" button, download the application manager from the authors, and also change the standard funny widget report labels to equally funny ones , but in your native language :)
Android has a built-in widget for quickly calling a contact from the phone book. In principle, it copes with its task, but it looks rather dull and has no additional functionality. If you want an alternative, it exists in the form of an application under the simple name:
Unlike its analogues, this application was initially “tailored” to the ability to work with two SIM cards, has a pleasant appearance, good functionality and at the same time “weighs” a little more than a megabyte!
In total, it has two widget options: “Quick contact” and “BC icon”. The first option allows you to display a scalable widget on your desktop with the selected contact and action buttons (call, SMS or email). The second one is similar to the standard “Quick Call” widget and allows you to add an icon with a single action when you click on it (by the way, icons can be grouped into folders).
Some settings are locked and require the purchase of a premium version, but for comfortable use the basic free functionality is quite sufficient.
Well, for a snack, I offer you a widget that can successfully replace the standard Android digital clock:
This widget has something that the standard Android clock lacks - customizable appearance. In the free version of the application, you have access to a couple of dozen different fonts, the function of scaling, rotating and changing colors, as well as displaying an additional line with the date. An additional advantage is the ability to select an application that is launched by pressing the watch.
The paid version allows you to access a template editor, additional fonts, a weather informer, and a display of the remaining battery charge counter.
There are a great many widgets, but sometimes you want to do something yourself that only you personally need. For such cases, there are, albeit few, applications for creating widgets. Let's look at some of them.
If you don’t like a lot of decorations and you are only interested in the payload in the widget, then you may well like the widget builder:
The logic of working with it is very simple: you add a blank of the required size to the desktop and “hang” the required functionality on it:
After selecting the widget type, you can customize its appearance. Since everything is in the form of plain text, there are not many settings: font color, font type, as well as the presence of shadows and background. Additional features include attaching single and double click actions to the widget, as well as importing and exporting ready-made widgets for backup and sharing with other users.
Another constructor works in a similar way UCCW - Ultimate custom widget:
This application allows you to create widgets not only with text, but also with colorful background images, as well as various effects. In this case, you can first create or download a ready-made widget in the editor, and then add a blank of the required size to the desktop and attach the desired informer to it, which will be automatically scaled.
UCCW allows you to implement the following functionality:
The widget is created and edited in the application's visual editor. You can add any shapes, images or text fragments, place them as desired, and then connect the required functional modules to them and apply the desired effects of changing color, transparency, etc.
The only nuance that I encountered when working with Ultimate custom widget was the not entirely correct display of loaded widgets in the menu for selecting them for editing. If you have created a new informer or downloaded it from the Internet, it will not appear here until you restart the application. Otherwise, there are no complaints (except that the editor “eats” quite a lot of RAM, but the widgets themselves don’t seem to be particularly “gluttonous” :))
Another universal widget editor, which first existed for Windows, but has now been ported to Android -:
Like the previous application, XWidget allows you to create colorful widgets with various functionality, which is implemented thanks to one of 4 cores:
If we compare XWidget with UCCW, then this application has both positive and negative sides. The positives include a much smaller size (4.3 MB versus 12.9), a larger number of ready-made widgets available for download, and the presence of a function for creating shortcuts. The main disadvantage is the lack of Russian language and a core for obtaining information about mail, calls and messages.
As for the editor itself, in my opinion, it is more convenient than in UCCW, much more logical and has no problems with freezing. In a word, if you know English, then, it seems to me. that XWidget will be the best choice in this application category!
Widgets in Android are a very useful thing, however, some users are afraid that using them drains the battery faster. I did a little experiment: I installed several different widgets and measured the battery drain rate. Naturally, the results can be subjective and require additional testing on different devices, but I didn’t notice much of a difference!
The battery drains not from widgets, but from the functions they perform. For example, an ordinary non-animated digital clock will not create a special load on the battery, but some kind of weather informer will, because it will periodically request and download data from the Internet using WiFi or a mobile network, as well as processor and video subsystem resources for processing and outputting this data . True, the load can be significantly reduced by reducing the frequency of updates in the widget settings.
As you can see, widgets, when properly selected and configured, can significantly improve the comfort of working with the device and equip it with new functions that will work without launching full-fledged applications! The main thing is not to abuse them and use them wisely, and then you will be able to get the maximum benefit from them.
P.S. Permission is granted to freely copy and quote this article, provided that an open active link to the source is indicated and the authorship of Ruslan Tertyshny is preserved.
The Month app makes the already wonderful Google calendar even more convenient and beautiful. It synchronizes with the latter and adds a calendar widget to the screen with quick access to the schedule of events.
You can customize the number of visible days and the graphic design of the widget. Month offers nine nice free themes, and you can buy dozens more if you wish. With them, you definitely won’t get bored with the appearance of the calendar.
Chronus is a set of informative widgets that display various data on the screen: from a list of tasks from your Google account to air temperature. Some of them are available immediately, others open after upgrading to the paid version for 120 rubles. For example, it has an excellent full-screen widget that combines several free smaller widgets with a large clock, date and five-day weather forecast.
In addition, Chronus supports extensions developed for another DashClock Widget application. With their help, you can add new information to widgets: system data, missed calls, calendars, messages, and so on. But to do this, Chronus will ask you to download the DashClock Widget and the extensions you need from Google Play.
Multifunctional Chronus widgets, unlike many others, do not slow down the system or abuse battery resources. At least, over the years of use I have not noticed anything like this. In addition, Chronus offers flexible appearance settings, thanks to which its widgets will fit seamlessly into any interface.
The Power Toggles app is a real Swiss army knife for the Android notification bar. It adds two additional rows with your choice of icons for quick access to applications or buttons for switching system settings. For example, if your device's panel doesn't have screen rotation, brightness, or GPS buttons by default, you can add them using Power Toggles. The same can be done with application icons.
Added icons also appear on the lock screen. Thanks to them, you can perform quick actions with the device without entering a password or pattern. What's more, Power Toggles allows you to place additional rows of application and settings icons right on your desktop, so you don't have to lower the notification panel every time. You can customize the appearance of each row both on the notification panel and on the desktop.
What widgets do you use?
One of the first concepts that we come across when we begin to master our first Android tablet or phone is a widget. What is a widget?
A widget is a small program, or part of a program, that is located on the desktop of a device and is designed to display information, control the device’s equipment, and at the same time can launch another program of which it is a part.
For example, there are widgets that can be used to display information such as processor load, battery status, current weather information, and more. There are widgets with which you can quickly turn on or off GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, speakers and control other equipment of your Android device. There are widgets such as weather widgets, which display information about the current weather and weather forecast on the screen, and which can call the weather application of which they are part.
Widgets can have different sizes - from a minimum size of 1x1, in the style of a regular shortcut, to full screen.
As you can see, everything is very simple - a widget is a program that “lives” on the screen of your tablet or phone and allows you to control it, receive the necessary information, and so on.
Now let's figure out how to add a widget to your desktop. It is not enough just to install a widget on your device like any other application; it also needs to be placed on the desktop.
In Android version 3.0 and higher, you can add a widget using fairly simple manipulations:
1. Click on the cross icon located in the upper right corner of the screen
2. In the window that opens, at the bottom of it you will see lists of widgets, application shortcuts, wallpapers and other things installed on your tablet or phone. At the top of the window there is a list of desktops.
3. Tap on the words “Widgets” and select the desired widget from the list below (the list can be scrolled right and left). The widget will be placed on the current desktop.
In addition, you can simply drag the desired widget onto any of the desktops.
In earlier versions of Android, installing widgets on the screen is done a little differently:
1. Press and hold with your finger on an empty area of the tablet or phone screen.
2. In the menu that opens, select “Widgets”
3. A list will open with widgets installed on the device.
4. Select the desired widget from the list by tapping on it, and it will be placed on the screen of your device.
Widgets can be moved around the device screen. To do this, you need to press and hold your finger on it, and then move the widget to a new position. In Android 3.0 and above, you can resize some widgets. To do this, you need to select the widget on the screen with a long tap on it, and then change its size by pulling the frame in the place indicated by the diamond-shaped icon.
