15 Android Widgets to Make Your Home Screen Better

Want to get more from your Android home screen? Just add a few highly useful Android widgets. From weather to education, there’s a widget for almost anything. Plus, it’ll save you a few taps, giving you the info you need immediately.

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1. 1Weather – Best Weather Widget

Price: Free / In-app purchases

1Weather is one of numerous available Android weather apps, but its impressive array of widget options makes it the best option for seeing weather conditions on your home screen. Whether you just want to see the current temperature or go all out to see the weather for the week ahead, there’s a widget for that.

We love that the app lets you customize each widget. Choose the accent color, size, opacity, background type, and more. If you’re following multiple locations, select the location you want and make changes to that specific widget.

The only problem we noticed was that sometimes we had to add the widget multiple times before the opacity setting stayed where we put it. Otherwise, all the different widgets worked perfectly. If you’re looking for an alternative, try Weather & Radar.

2. Countdown Time Event Widget – Best Countdown Widget

Price: Free / In-app purchases

Countdown Time Event Widget lets you create countdowns for any event imaginable. From major holidays to an upcoming vacation, a countdown helps you keep track of important dates. What’s nice about this widget is that you can completely customize the look of each event.

For instance, being big fans of Halloween, we set up a Halloween countdown complete with a jack-o-lantern background (one of many backgrounds available for free in the app).

There’s only one widget available, but you can easily adjust the size to fit your home screen’s available space. While there are some ads in the app, they’re not intrusive, but you can purchase the ad-free version starting at $2.49. For a similar app, try Days Until Countdown Widget.

Tip: wake up to the sound of your favorite tune by setting a Spotify song as your alarm on Android.

Price: Free / $1.49 Premium

For a great mix of digital and analog clock styles, it’s hard to beat Clock Widget. The free version doesn’t have many ads but doesn’t give you access to every widget available either. However, there’s over a dozen free options, so you should be able to find something you like.

If you open the app, you’re free to customize the font color for the date, time, and day. It’s a fairly simple app that does what it’s supposed to: show you the time and date. While a few extra features would be nice, the variety of free clocks is impressive.

Note that It’s well worth checking out the clock widget included with your Android device. While it varies slightly based on the brand, it shows you the date and time as well without having to install anything else.

4. Feedly – Best News Widget

Price: Free / In-app purchases

Feedly lets you create your own customized news feed from seemingly endless sources. While there’s only one widget, it updates frequently and makes it easy to read the headline and see the cover image. A single tap takes you to the next story without opening the app.

When you first add the widget, you can choose which Feedly folder you want to use. This is great if you just want to see the top world stories, local news, or a specific niche, like technology.

While a few more widget options would be nice, it’s a simple, elegant widget that gets the job done. If you have a favorite Android news app already, you may prefer its widget. Alternately, you may want to try Google News, which has a similar widget to Feedly.

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5. FocusTwitter – Best Social Media Widget

Price: Free / In-app purchases

FocusTwitter is a great alternative to the official Twitter app, even without the benefit of widgets. However, if you love Twitter, it’s one of the must-have Android widgets to keep track of the latest tweets and quickly see current unread messages.

The only downside we experienced was that FocusTwitter would occasionally and randomly log us out, and we’d have to log back in. Yet, it also gets rid of pesky ads and other junk.

There are two customizable widgets to choose from: latest activity and an activity bar with unread message counts and a tweet editor. You can set how often things refresh to help save battery life.

6. Google Keep – Best Note-Taking Widget

Price: Free

Google Keep is an incredibly easy-to-use and powerful Android note-taking app. Create lists, draw, and even save voice notes. It’ll send you reminders to help you keep track and make sure you don’t forget important tasks.

It’s completely free to use, and everything syncs to your Google account. If you switch phones, your notes go with you. The app features three highly useful widgets: a list of all notes, a single note, and quick notes to add notes without opening the app first.

While there isn’t much customization with the widgets, they get the job done well. If you have a Samsung device, check out Samsung Notes, an app that is a little more robust. It’s likely already installed on your device. You should also check out these other Samsung apps that you can use even if you don’t have a Samsung Galaxy device.

Good to know: check out more tips you need to know as a Google Keep user.

7. TickTick – Best To-Do List Widget

Price: Free / Starting at $2.99 per month

TickTick is a to-do list, habit tracker, goal planner, and schedule manager all in one. It also has focus features, such as Pomodoro timers. While the basic features, such as creating to-do lists and adding events to your calendar, are free, most other functions are only available in the premium edition.

If you’re looking for a variety of widgets, TickTick has everything you could want. Most widgets are premium only, but you can view all notes, just specific notes, and add tasks directly from your Android home screen.

The free version has everything you need to stay on top of your to-do list, but the cost is well worth the extra features, especially for goal tracking and planning. Plus, the Pomodoro timers and charts are nice. If you already use Todoist, this app offers a few useful widgets, too.

8. Google Calendar – Best Calendar Widget

Price: Free

Google Calendar is clean, simple, and easy to use. It helps create your schedule, along with reminders. Plus, you get to color-code everything based on your preferences. It’s already preinstalled on most Android devices and doesn’t have any annoying ads.

The app syncs across all your devices and includes two widgets: the current day and month. It’s a great way to see your day/month at a glance. While a current week widget would be nice, the calendar widget is large and easy to see.

What’s great about both widgets is that you can tap the “+” to quickly add a new event. You can even scroll from month to month in the current month widget. If you want custom themes for your calendar widget, try Calendar Widget: Month/Agenda instead.

Tip: did you know that Google Calendar can show lunar/moon phases? Check out our article to learn how to add the feature.

9. IFTTT – Best Automation Widget

Price: Free / $3.99/month

Want to quickly automate tasks? IFTTT is the go-to platform for creating automation applets to do everything from backing up your phone to running your smart home more efficiently. Create your own applets, or use official and community-made applets.

IFTTT offers two widgets to let you add applet widgets to your screen for one-tap access. For instance, manually start a smart home routine with a single tap or take photos that automatically back up to Google Drive and Dropbox.

While IFTTT is free to use, many applets and features are only available in the premium edition. If you need more than 20 applets, you’ll want to upgrade. As an alternative, try Automate to create custom automations for your phone and home.

10. Brave – Best Search and Bookmarks Widget

Price: Free

Brave is a major competitor to Google’s Chrome browser and even Google search. It’s a more private browser as well. It’s built on Chromium, so it looks and feels a lot like Chrome. It also features five widgets for bookmarks and searches.

By default, the widgets match your device’s theme, either light or dark. Of course, you’re free to change this in Brave’s Appearance settings. You can also adjust the size and shape of each widget to better fit your home screen.

The most useful widget includes a search bar, voice search, incognito mode, and a list of bookmark icons. Simply adjust the size to show more or less bookmarks. Naturally, Chrome offers similar widgets.

Tip: find more useful Brave features to try.

11. Musicolet Music Player – Best Music Player Widget

Price: Free / In-app purchases

If you have music files stored on your device, you need Musicolet Music Player. It works completely offline and doesn’t require Internet permissions. It lets you easily embed lyrics for offline use as well. Even better, there are no ads ever, and it’s completely free to use.

It’s a seemingly simple music player that allows you to search for all music on your device or just specific folders. Musicolet includes many functions, such as the option to set timers, equalizer and earphone settings, and much more.

There are three widgets available: playlist, currently playing, and simple player. Each lets you choose from your phone’s theme, dark, light, or based on the album art. If you want a streaming music widget, most streaming music apps offer at least a basic player widget to see what’s playing and let you pause, play, and skip songs.

12. Google at a Glance – Best Daily Overview Widget

Price: Free

The Google app has several widgets, but the star is Google at a Glance. To get the full experience, you’ll need a Google Pixel 3 or later. That’s the main downside. Otherwise, you can’t really customize the features and what you see.

However, the widget is available in the Google app for other Android devices. It shows the current date and weather. It’s a simple widget that lets you open either a weather forecast or Google calendar with a single tap.

On Google Pixel devices, you’ll see notifications about calendar events, traffic conditions, various app alerts, and more. You choose what you want to view and what you want to leave out. If At a Glance isn’t quite working for you, try Another Widget, which offers similar functionality.

Good to know: if you love words, check out the best crossword apps.

13. Word of the Day – Best Vocabulary App

Price: Free | $0.99 per month

Word of the Day is the perfect app for anyone who loves learning new words. It’s also great for anyone entering spelling bees or practicing for the SAT. No matter why you want to learn new words, this app gives you multiple words a day from various sources.

It pulls from different dictionary sources across the Internet to give you more variety. Tap any word from the widget to view the pronunciation and definition. You can even save words.

There is only a single widget that shows three words by default, but you can adjust the height of the widget to see more words. It’s a colorful and educational addition to your Android home screen.

14. Chronus Information Widgets – Best All-in-One Widget App

Price: Free / $2.99

Chronus Information Widgets is a collection of widgets. Get news, weather, stocks, tasks, clocks, calendars, and more. If you want to manage all your widgets from a single app, this is one of the best Android widgets for your home screen.

While many of the widgets are free, there are ads in the app itself. Of course, some widgets (4 out of 16) are premium only for a small in-app fee.

The best part is that all widgets are customizable. Select the color, your location, news sources, stock sources, and much more. If you have the premium version, you can even add your own RSS feeds.

15. Device Info – Best System Information Widget

Price: Free / In-app purchases

Device Info is a powerful app that shows you numerous system details, from battery health to CPU usage to storage and much more. Click through to view more information about everything from your apps to which sensors are in use.

If you love to test your device’s performance, you’ll appreciate the numerous tests to analyze your hardware. Quickly see app permissions, activities, and much more – all in one place.

There are several widgets to choose from to see your device’s status at any given point. You can also set how often the widget updates information. This is perfect if you want to quickly check your device’s stats when trying new apps or tasks.

Tip: test your Android’s capabilities even further and compare it to other devices with these benchmarking apps.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I create my own Android widgets?

How many widgets should I add to my home screen?

Use as few as possible. Widgets update frequently to give you the latest information, which is a good thing. However, the more widgets you have, the more processes will be running in the background. This negatively affects your device’s performance and battery life.

Can I have widgets on different screens?

Yes. If you want to have your clock and weather on your home screen, but news on a second screen, go ahead. You can add widgets to any screen you want.

Image credit: Unsplash. All screenshots by Crystal Crowder.