Why widgets

Ask any tech question at facebook. Facebook Twitter Email. What's a 'widget'? Ken Burns Special for The Republic. Share your feedback to help improve our site! He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com! October 2, Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn to stay in the loop.

Check out our exclusive stories , reviews , how-tos , and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Ben Lovejoy's favorite gear. Intents and intent filters. User interface. Add motion to your layout with MotionLayout. MotionLayout XML reference. Improving layout performance. Custom view components. Look and feel. Splash screens. Add the app bar. Control the system UI visibility.

Supporting swipe-to-refresh. Pop-up messages overview. Adding search functionality. Creating backward-compatible UIs. Home channels for mobile apps. App widgets. Media app architecture. Building an audio app. Building a video app. The Google Assistant. Routing between devices.

Background tasks. Manage device awake state. Save to shared storage. Save data in a local database. Sharing simple data. Sharing files. Sharing files with NFC. Printing files. Content providers. Autofill framework. Contacts provider. Data backup. Remember and authenticate users.

User location. Using touch gestures. Handling keyboard input. Supporting game controllers. Input method editors. Performing network operations. Transmit network data using Volley. Perform network operations using Cronet. Transferring data without draining the battery.

Reduce network battery drain. Transfer data using Sync Adapters. Bluetooth Low Energy. Wi-Fi infrastructure. Discover and connect. Runtime API reference. Web-based content. Android App Bundles. Google Play. Play Asset Delivery. Play Feature Delivery. In-app reviews. In-app updates. Google Play Instant. Get started with instant apps. Get started with instant games. Integrate with Firebase. Play Install Referrer. Play Install Referrer Library.

Application Licensing. Android GPU Inspector. Along with that ability, Apple redesigned widgets and how they work, giving them a modern flair, and some smart features. Nor can you control your podcast or music playback. Turns out, this was all purposeful. That said, in their current iteration, widgets are little more than deep links into apps.