The widget is one of the most important GUI features of Android Jelly Bean, Lollipop, Marshmallow, Nougat or Kit Kat operating system. Without it, your Android tablet or cell phone home screen will look dull.
Widgets make us aware of the climate, important news, remaining battery life, etc. They can be used to perform a search operation on Google, Bing or any other search engines.
If you’re not happy with the performance or look and feel of the existing widgets on your phone or if you want to try out something new, go through our below list of top 10 best widgets for Android.
Top 10 best widgets for Android
11Animated Photo Frame Widget
If you love images, check out the Animated photo frame widget app from Hikaru inc. APF features eight animation effects, and it includes more than 25 stylish frames.
This app doesn’t have complicated settings. All you have to do is select a frame, effect, tap on done button and choose the folder where you’ve saved your favorite photos.
The widget settings will be updated, and it will start displaying photos from the specified directory. To pause the slideshow, tap on the frame and hit the pause button.
10Data counter widget
You won’t be able to download the above best widgets for Android unless you activate the data connection on your device.
If you hate visiting settings or notification panel to turn on WiFi, GPRS or 3G connection, just add data enabler widget to the home screen via this link. To keep a track of the transferred data, download data counter app.
9Flipboard Widget
This is a must-have widget for Android for an avid news reader. Flipboard widget gives you an option to follow your favorite topics before it starts bringing the latest updates from the best news websites. To start reading news content, you should select at least five items.
After selecting the items, you must register an account on Flipboard. If you have a Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus account, you can login into the Flipboard app with its social login feature. Flipboard has an excellent interface. It allows you to follow people, topics, etc.
Download Flipboard Widget for Android.
8Gauge Battery Widget
This widget displays remaining battery life and the current temperature of your tablet or cell phone battery. GBW makes you aware of the discharging speed, last time when the battery was completely charged and the expected charging time for the battery. It also generates a chart using the same data. This widget features shortcuts/toggle buttons to disable or enable network components of the cell phone i.e., WiFi, data connection, Bluetooth.Download Battery Gauge widget.
7Power Toggles widget
Add this widget to your Android home screen if you want to activate or deactivate GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth and other essential utilities faster.
This app allows us to add toggle bar filled with useful shortcuts to our phone’s notification panel. It supports customization. You can quickly change the appearance, location and icon formats of the toggle bar and widgets generated by this app.
Download Power Toggles
6Digi Clock Widget
With an amazing rating of 4.5 on the Play Store, DCW is the best Clock Widget app for Android devices. The app allows you to customize the appearance of the clock. It provides an option to enable 12/24 hour format clock. You can configure it to show seconds.
Digi Clock supports various types of date formats. It enables you to set a color and opacity for the clock widget’s background. It lets users define one of the following click actions:
- Open Android launcher.
- Run an app.
- Open alarm module.
- Switch to home screen interface.
- Do nothing.
If you don’t like the default font of the text content inside the widget, you can easily change it.
5Zooper Widget
This is a free app that allows to create, name and customize widgets. Once you run Zooper on your Android cell phone or tablet after installing it, you’ll be prompted to choose one of the several attractive widget templates after which, you will be allowed customize the layout, background color and text content of your new widget.
If you don’t like the preinstalled skins, you can download templates for Zopper widget from the Google play store. With the Zooper app, users can create widgets that display battery power, weather, system information, calendar, time or any other text of your choice. The app displays advertisements. If you don’t want to see ads, you’ll have to upgrade Zooper to the pro version.
4Google Keep Widget
This is yet another top rated Google app that can be downloaded and used for free. Keep allows users to create, archive, delete and edit the picture, audio notes, and to-do lists.
You can set location or time reminders for your important notes and lists. This is a useful feature. If you’re using this app to maintain a shopping list, add the location of your favorite mall or grocery store to the list. Google keep will make your aware the shopping list when you’re at the store.
To use this feature, turn on the GPS module of your Android cell phone or activate a data plan. Empty notes in Google keep app will be automatically discarded. As data is stored in your Gmail account, you can access all your to-do lists and notes on any phone or tablet.
The Google Keep widget is available in 2 size formats. Try it out; you’ll love this Android to do list and note taking app.
Download Google Keep here.
3Google Calendar Widget
This app has an immaculate, bright and straightforward interface. It allows users to create/edit events or set holiday/birthday reminders. This app supports the month, date, and week views. If you use Google Plus, your friends birth dates will be synced and displayed automatically in each view of Google Calendar.
With this app, users can invite other people, or they can add notes, colors, attachments from their Google Drive account and location to their event. The location supports auto-complete feature, and it will be highlighted on the Google map. Hence, if you’ve lost your way while traveling, you can easily get correct directions by tapping on the map.
New events will be added automatically to the Google calendar widget. Events created in your Gmail account will be automatically synced to your phone. In my perspective, GC is the best Android calendar widget and productivity app available on the play store.
2Weather and clock widget
This is the most powerful and one of the smartest weather and clock widget app available on the Google play store. The widget generated by this app has a black colored transparent background that displays your current location, remaining battery power in percentage, five days weather forecast, time, wind speed, humidity, and pressure. This widget features a refresh button. To update the weather and climate data, just tap this button.
When you install this app, 11 clock and weather widgets of different dimensions will be installed on your phone. Thus, if your home screen is filled with icons and there’s not too much free space available to add a new GUI element, you can still get the weather information by installing a smaller version of the clock and weather widget.
This app includes a settings panel that allows you to turn off or enable automatic updates and GPS system of your handset. You can also change units, theme, language, date formats, animations, maps, etc with the settings. To get free weather alerts, navigate to this app’s settings.
Conclusion: There are plenty of cool Android widget apps available on the play store and the best among them are covered in this article. Don’t clutter the home screen of your phone with widgets. If you do so, the battery of your cell phone or tablet will begin to drain like a flowing river.
