It must be Christmas somewhere on another planet because Google is finally rolling out some improvements to Android’s widget system. Widgets are a neat addition to the Android experience, giving users a glimpse into an app without having to enter it. The feature has been neglected over the past few years, much to our chagrin here at Stuff. That’s changing.
Google eases the widge-hunt
On its Android developers blog, Google announced three new updates to the widget user experience to make finding and interacting with the mini tools slightly easier. The first is a dedicated widgets search filter on Google Play, a neat addition that allows users to screen for apps that have widgets before they even click “Install”, saving them from downloading the app to verify.
The next is the creation of dedicated widget badges on app detail pages. When users enter an app’s page, certain badges indicate that the app is equipped with widgets. Like the previous feature, this eliminates guesswork and saves users time.
Lastly, Android is launching a widgets page, a curated location for Android to showcase the most popular, trending, and relevant widgets to users who might not have heard about them otherwise. What impact this will make on everyday users is doubtful, but at least it’ll promote these underrated tools to new users, to the benefit of the developers who spend hours working on them.
Though Google claims to be partially doing this because it wants developers’ widget work to be worthwhile, the software titan likely recognises widgets’ potential as a fun tool that can deepen a user’s relationship with an app, as well as the potential for apps to be promoted primarily through widgets.
