Fill your Home screens with the best widgets for Android
One of the exciting and innovative things about Android has always been its use of widgets, which, to the uninitiated, are best described as little live apps that are embedded into your Home screens.
You can have an animating photo frame that pulls out a selection of pics from your phone's gallery, a serious news ticker, constantly updating share prices, annoying social network status updates from people you hardly know - there's a widgetised version of pretty much any type of mobile app you can think of.
What is an Android widget?
Widgets can cause a bit of confusion among newcomers to Android, as they don't open like normal apps from your phone's big list of applications. Instead, widgets are activated by long-pressing on a space on the Home screen, then installed into the nearest available slot.
There are big widgets, wide widgets, little ones that only take up one standard icon slot, and there are also some absolutely terrible spam ones that look a complete mess. So here are our top 20 Android widgets to brighten up your Android phone's workspace.
1. AudioManager
It can be a little confusing delving through Android's numerous menu
screens to try to find the particular setting to adjust the ring tone
volume - so have it all presented as a nice widget instead.
AudioManager
is nice looking, it lets you see what volume everything's at, and pops
up adjustment slide bars when pressed. You life will get 0.01 percent
easier with it.
2. Quick Battery
A teeny tiny one-by-one size widget, Quick Battery
isn't particularly glamorous - but it does a better and prettier job of
representing your phone's battery status than anything else. Plus, when
installing the widget, you can choose what you want it to link to - so
pressing it can open up the power settings page or... Angry Birds. Anything.
3. Extended Controls
The standard Android power strip is a useful widget that lets you
quickly turn off Wi-Fi, adjust the screen brightness and toggle GPS,
Bluetooth and data syncing, but Extended Controls
adds more. Loads more, from one-touch USB tethering to airplane mode
and even switching your phone's vibration keyboard settings on or off.
Plus it's visually customisable, too.
4. ColorNote Notepad Notes
Everyone loves the classic Post-It note style of thing, and that's what ColorNote
brings to your Android Home screen. Tiny post-its, one icon square,
each linked to either a text note or a simple to-do list. They look cute
and you can change the colours for an extra adrenaline rush.
5. Evernote
The excellent Evernote
comes with a lovely little widget. While it's not visually that
impressive, it adds very convenient shortcuts to your Home screen that
make using the data-syncing, scheduling app even easier to use. Instant
access to notes, searches, voice memos and more. Just don't judge it by
its looks.
6. HTC Bookmarks
One for all the HTC owners out there. Its bookmarks widget is an
excellent way to put one of your empty Home screens to use, with it
giving you a full-size, scrolling list of bookmarks right there in front
of your fingers. It's so useful, it's easier to quit the browser and
select a link from here than navigate HTC's own in-browser bookmark
system.
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