How to customize your Android home screen with widgets
Your home screen is the screen you see most. With a calm wallpaper, a few well-chosen widgets and a little order, it can look good and show what you need at a glance. Here is how to set it up on any Android phone, step by step.
Start with a clean screen
Before adding anything, make room. Move the apps you rarely use into the app drawer or a folder, and keep only the ones you open every day. On most phones you touch and hold an icon and choose Remove: the app stays installed, only the shortcut goes.
A simple rule works well: one home screen for what you check (the time, the date, the weather, prayer times, today's tasks), and the dock at the bottom for the four or five apps you open most.
Pick a wallpaper that leaves room for widgets
Busy photos make widgets hard to read. A wallpaper with calm areas, a soft gradient or a dark background works best behind widgets, especially glass ones.
- Touch and hold an empty spot on the home screen.
- Tap Wallpaper (on Samsung Galaxy phones: Wallpaper and style).
- Choose an image and set it for the home screen, the lock screen or both.
Wadiget includes more than 70 wallpapers up to 4K, made to sit behind widgets.
How to add a widget on Android
Widgets come from the apps on your phone, and the steps are nearly the same on every Android phone:
- Touch and hold an empty spot on the home screen.
- Tap Widgets.
- Find the app, then touch and hold the widget you want.
- Drag it to where you want it and lift your finger.
To remove a widget later, touch and hold it and choose Remove.
Resize and line up your widgets
Touch and hold a widget, lift your finger, then drag the handles around it to change its size. Widgets snap to the home screen grid, so lining them up is easy.
Leave some space empty. Three or four widgets with room around them look better, and are easier to read, than a screen filled edge to edge.
If everything feels too big or too small, change the grid. On many phones it is in the home screen settings (touch and hold the home screen, then Settings), with options such as 4×5 or 5×6.
Give every widget the same style
A home screen looks designed when its widgets share one style: the same corners, the same colours and the same font. Widgets from many different apps rarely match, because each app has its own look.
In Wadiget every widget can be glass (light or dark), a solid card or a gradient of two colours you pick, with transparency from 0% to 100%. You can also change the corners, the border, the text and accent colours, the font (10 Arabic and 7 Latin fonts), Arabic or Latin digits and 12 or 24 hour time, and a live preview shows how it will look on your screen.
What to put on your home screen
- The time and date: a big digital clock or an analog face, with the date or the Hijri date beside it.
- Prayer times: the next prayer and the time left. See how to add a prayer times widget.
- Today's tasks: a to-do or reminder widget you can tick from the home screen.
- The weather: the coming hours at a glance.
- Something personal: a photo widget with your own pictures, or a verse of the Quran.
For complete layouts you can copy, see Android home screen ideas.
Keep your widgets up to date
If a clock or a prayer times widget stops updating, your phone is most likely stopping its app in the background to save battery. Here is how to fix it on Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, realme and Pixel phones.
Questions
Do I need a launcher to customize my home screen?
No. Every step in this guide works with the home screen that came with your phone. A launcher is optional, for people who want to change icons, gestures or the grid beyond what their phone allows.
Do widgets drain the battery?
A few widgets have very little effect on the battery. Widgets that fetch new data often, such as live scores and weather, use a little more battery and data than clocks, notes or prayer times.
Can I put widgets on the lock screen?
It depends on your phone. On supported Samsung Galaxy phones, selected Wadiget widgets can also go on the lock screen.
