It’s easy to fill up Android home screens with apps and folders, but there’s a better way. Only the most important and frequently accessed apps should live on your home screen. Creating multiple home screen pages with apps you rarely use is a waste of space, and there are more efficient ways of launching apps. Google Pixel phones have a search widget at the bottom of the home screen to help you instantly discover apps, and Samsung Galaxy devices offer a similar Finder widget.
Using the app drawer or search widgets to launch your favorite apps is often quicker than painstakingly placing them on multiple home screen pages. When you realize that only a few critical apps need to reside on your home screen, extra space becomes available for widgets. I’ve experimented with keeping zero apps on my home screen and going all-in on widgets instead, and it makes more sense than you think. These are the widgets I keep on my home screen to maximize space and ensure key information or controls are never out of reach.
Weawow is detailed, but Samsung or Google Weather work too
I’ve lived in a few cities, and they all have one thing in common: you never know what kind of weather you’ll get on any given day. Currently, I live in the desert, where I can expect generally hot weather with the occasional serious storms during the monsoon season. I find having real-time weather updates on my home screen much more valuable than a row of apps, which is why weather widgets are a staple of my Android home screen. You can use the default widgets for your phone’s weather app, like Samsung or Pixel Weather.
However, I recommend finding a third-party weather app purpose-built for detailed and customizable home screen widgets. The one I went with is Weawow, and it’s a completely free Android weather app with zero ads. The app is loaded with widgets made for various “themes,” depending on what weather information you want to see on your home screen. You can choose between Simple, Clock, Hourly Graph, Daily Graph, Currently, Today, Hourly, Daily — or pick a larger widget with multiple metrics.
Weawow widgets are information-dense, allowing you to fit more weather data in a more compact widget than your typical weather app. You can also choose which weather provider you want to use for data, like NOAA or AccuWeather.
- OS
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Android
- Price model
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Free with in-app purchases
- App Type
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Weather and widgets
Weawow is an ad-free weather and widget app that lets you stay informed of the forecast. It supports compact, detailed, and information-dense widgets that can be added to your Android home screen. These widgets are highly customizable, so you can edit them to fit your home screen style.
I use Google Calendar and Home for quick actions and snapshots
Widgets are more useful than apps on your home screen, and there’s a simple reason why. You can use an Android widget to launch an app, matching the functionality of a simple home screen shortcut. So, by adding a widget instead of an app icon to your home screen, you keep the shortcut but gain additional information or helpful controls. They do take up more space, but you get more utility out of one widget than a handful of app icons.
I can’t live without two Google app widgets on my home screen: Google Calendar and Google Home. The full-size Calendar widget shows a complete picture of your month, including any events, meetings, or tasks on your schedule. If you’re like me and can’t keep track of dates, the month widget makes it easy to visualize your week and month. Since this widget is large, I keep it on a secondary home screen, meaning it’s only a swipe away.
Google Home is the smaller widget, but it’s also more useful. This widget stores a few of my most-used smart home controls right on my home screen. For instance, I can tap the shortcut for my Google Nest Doorbell on the home screen widget and instantly jump into the live camera feed. To take things one step further, I could start talking with someone at my door using the intercom feature. Or, I can use a separate shortcut for my Google Nest Thermostat to change the air conditioning setting — all straight from my home screen.
I generally recommend picking a Google app widget or two to add information to your home screen, but you can choose the best ones for your workflows. Google offers Android widgets for Calendar, Drive, Chrome, Gemini, Gmail, Google, Google TV, Home, Maps, Photos, Play Store, YouTube, and YouTube Music. I went with the Calendar and Home widgets — pick the Google app widgets that work for you.
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iOS, Android
- Price model
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Free
- App Type
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Calendar
Calendar is the planning and meeting app for Google Workspace and Android. It features integration with Google Meet for scheduling video calls and virtual meetings. Additionally, it’s a cross-platform calendar client available across iOS, Android, Wear OS, and the web.
Playback control and more, straight from your Android home screen
I’m listening to music most hours of the day, and that’s why having a music widget on my home screen is more useful than any app. I use Apple Music, but you can add a music widget for whichever streaming service you use — Spotify and YouTube Music both offer Android widgets. I have a smaller Apple Music widget on my primary home screen displaying the now-playing song and playback controls. I can start or stop playing music straight from my home screen, or change the song.
If you have room for a larger widget on your home screen, Apple Music lists your recently played albums and playlist for easy access. You can choose an album and begin listening without ever leaving your home screen, which is pretty neat. As an honorable mention, I have a Discogs widget on my Android home screen that randomly shuffles through album art of physical media I own in my collection. It won’t save you time or improve your productivity, but it spruces up your home screen with a bit of personality.
- OS
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iOS, Android
- Price model
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Free with subscriptions
- App Type
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Music streaming service
Apple Music is a streaming service with features like lossless audio and Dolby Atmos support. It’s available on both iOS and Android, with widgets bringing playback controls, favorites, and recently played albums or playlists to your home screen.
Everything else you need to perfect your Android home screen
Apps aren’t the way to maximize your home screen — you should be using widgets instead. The key is to find the apps or widgets that make sense for your life, and to get creative. I keep a Tesla widget on my home screen that lets me precondition the cabin climate before I hop inside, and it’s incredibly handy. Use widgets on your home screen for controls or data you need to keep close, and save launching apps for your system app drawer or search shortcut.