These are the 6 Android widgets I simply can’t live without

From calendars to reminder apps, everyone has their own list of the best Android widgets. For me, widgets help me get overviews of various things without needing to open up the app that they’re linked to.

I recently switched to a new smartphone, and while there are certain things I do whenever I set up a new phone, I also realized that I needed to refresh some of my widget setups. As a result, these ones have become indispensable to my daily routine.

TickTick is the best to-do list app in my opinion, and its widgets also help to keep me organized. On an average day, my executive functioning is impaired — meaning I often forget tasks and need frequent reminders to get things done. But lately, I’ve also been particularly forgetful due to stress.

TickTick’s widgets have become another way I keep on top of tasks without overwhelming myself with notifications. I use two widgets from TickTick: one to quickly create new tasks, and one that gives me an overview of all overdue and upcoming tasks. In addition to the regular reminders that TickTick sends me for tasks, the widgets help me quickly get an overview of what I need to do without needing to remember to open up the app.

While I’ve started using TickTick’s widget to tackle my increasing forgetfulness, Google Calendar’s widget has been a mainstay on my devices for years. It’s not the most attractive widget, but it gets the job done. With the month widget on my secondary home screen, I can get a good look at all my upcoming events and meetings.

This also helps me when I have events I need to prepare for, such as trips to local phone launches. In these cases, a reminder a day before wouldn’t really help me prepare. But seeing the entire month on a small widget lets me ensure that I get the right groceries, shift any recurring appointments, and see which days I will need to put more hours into my work to get it done.

I have been playing around with the Month: Calendar Widget app to see if I can find a more visually appealing look while still pulling the appointments and events that are saved to my Google Calendar. But so far, I continue to rely on Google Calendar thanks to dark mode.

Vocabulary is one of the apps I use to learn something new every day. With notifications enabled, it sends me words that it thinks I’ll be interested in learning. But on days where I receive too many notifications across different apps, I often dismiss all my notifications at once.

The widget lets me reap the benefits of the app even if I don’t open it up. It refreshes once or twice an hour (though the frequency can be set to more regularly), so usually whenever I check my phone I am greeted by a new word.

There are plenty of clock and weather apps to choose from, but the default Weather app on my HONOR smartphone lets me combine the time, date, and weather forecast into a single widget on my home screen. This is especially useful when I’m waking up in the morning and want to get an idea of what the weather is like outside.

I do wish that there was a way to quickly see the forecast for the next few days, but I use a Google automation to send me the next few days’ weather outlook during the evening. I have also set up an IFTTT notification to warn me if the weather is going to be above a certain temperature.

If you’re looking for an app with similar functionality to HONOR’s clock and weather widget, you can try an app like Digital Clock & Weather Widget.

I switched from Chrome to Brave a few months ago, and I am glad I made the change. I love Brave’s features and find its search engine to be better than Google’s ad-ridden rival. When exploring widgets on my new phone, I realized that I can replace the usual Google Search widget with one that uses Brave Search instead.

The widget gives me quick access to a search query in Brave and the ability to voice search. I also prefer using the Brave widget over my usual Brave app shortcut so that I don’t get distracted by my most recent tab — which can sometimes send me down a rabbit hole if it’s a topic I’m interested in.

I was initially excited for Google Home to roll out more useful widgets, but the app is incredibly buggy for me in general. It often shows my devices as offline even when they’re not, so the widgets are of no use to me. Rather, I use Xiaomi Home’s widgets for quick access to my most important smart home devices.

I’ve set up two Xiaomi Home widgets on my smartphone: one for my smart camera, and another for my smart fan. These are the smart devices I access the most, so the shortcuts are incredibly useful. On a recent trip, I used the camera widget to quickly access my home’s video feed to check that everything was fine back home. Easier access to my camera also means that I use the camera more frequently, often to check up on one of my cats when he hasn’t come to bed.

Since it’s winter now, I don’t use my smart fan shortcut as much. But it’s essential in summer to quickly turn my fan on and off at night. It also proved useful during autumn, when the weather was inconsistent and I would only realize after I went to sleep if I needed to turn the fan on or off to keep a comfortable temperature.

While everyone will have their own widget preferences depending on the services they use, these widgets have become essential to the way I use my phone. They save me time and prevent me from getting easily distracted by directly accessing the features I need.