Poor Google. It was an early innovator in mobile widgets as part of the initial version of Android in 2008. But then Apple came long, belatedly adding widgets to the iPhone in iOS 14 in 2020. And as is so often the case, Apple’s slow-boil approach paid off. Widgets were immediately more useful–not to mention prettier–in iOS than they’d ever been on Android–and that gap has only grown since.
This is something I noticed immediately when I began experimenting with the home screen layouts and configurations on my iPhone, iPad, and Pixel, as noted in PT, Phone Home (Premium). I had always avoided widgets for the most part on the Pixel, as they are generally terrible, and even my use on the iPhone and iPad has been minimal, mostly for weather, which is sort of the canonical “at-a-glance” use case. But I’m trying, and my experimentation continues.
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Except on the Pixel. Where, again, I just find the look and feel of widgets to be “off,” which is especially a problem at the display scaling I use. So I was interested to see this morning that Google is making a new push for developers to embrace widgets on its platform.
“Android developers have asked for better ways for users to find and utilize [their] widgets, and we’re delivering,” a new post to the Android Developers Blog notes. “Google Play now offers significant enhancements to widget discovery, creating a prime opportunity to re-engage with your users on a deeper level.”
Google admits that the issue here is adoption: Developers aren’t interested in going to the time and effort to create widgets on Android if no one can find or use them. So Google is updating the Google Play Store on Android phones, tablets, and foldables to better promote this work.
Users will be able to search specifically for apps with widgets using a new filter. They’re adding a new visual badge to the listing page for those apps with widgets so users can quickly identify them. And it is creating a “curated widgets editorial page” that will “actively educate users on the value of widgets,” showcase collections of high-quality widgets, and promote the apps that leverage them.
The goal is to increase user engagement with widgets, open new opportunities for developers to engage with users outside of their apps, and justify the investment that developing widgets requires.
Developers who want to know more about this topic should also check out a related March 2025 post on the Android Developers Blog.
