8 Gorgeous Widgets to Pretty Up Your Homescreen

BY GreenBot Staff

Published 18 Mar 2014

I’m always telling my iOS-loving friends that widgets are where it’s at. Who doesn’t want a helpful, informative, productivity-boosting widget right on their home screen? And then one of my iPhone Friends points to my pretty text-based clock, and the minimalist battery meter says. Can’t you get that information from the notification bar? Er yeah. But not all widgets are designed purely with productivity in mind. Because the beauty of Android is that you can customize your home screen however you want. You can make it productive, informative, or just really, really pretty. Sure, some people think that iOS is cute, but it’s all the same lovely. Thanks to aesthetically-minded widget designers, Android can be as pretty, minimalist, or text-based as you like. These widgets may not be super valuable, but they can be breathtaking. Is iOS the pretty platform?

Clock Widget

Price: Free

This is probably the writer in me speaking, but there’s nothing prettier than text. If you prefer words over numbers, Clock Widget is a cool text-based clock widget. That displays the time in writing thinks three thirty-two rather than 3:32. Clock Widget’s default setting features white text against a transparent background, but it’s pretty customizable. You can change the font color, size, and clock style. You can add a semi-transparent black background if your wallpaper is too busy.

Circle Battery Widget

Price: Free

You can always look to your notification bar to check your phone battery status, but that’s boring. Circle Battery Widget embodies the pretty widget philosophy, minimalist, modern, and not super practical. This app shows your device’s battery life as a partial circle with a percentage number in the center. It’s fully customizable, right down to the diameter thickness of the circle. Although it doesn’t add a ton of functionality that you didn’t already have, it looks fantastic in that custom dashboard.

Simple Calendar Widget

Price: Free

Simple Calendar Widget adds a simple, elegant calendar to your home screen. In its default format, the widget displays the current date. With upcoming appointments in white text against a semi-transparent black background. It is customizable, though: you can change the font, background color transparency, and separation line color. You can also switch source calendars and choose how many events to show.

Binary Clock Widget

Price: Free

There are many binary clock replacement widgets for Android, but most pay little, if any, attention to aesthetics. Binary Clock Widget is the opposite: It’s a minimalist binary clock with just a few customizable features. This simple clock widget displays the time in gray-white binary circles or blue-white binary squares. You can add a solid background, white or black, or secondhand if you prefer a clock with visible movement.

Eye in the Sky Weather

Price: Free

Weather apps are everywhere, but most of them are a bit blah. What’s nice about Eye in the Sky Weather is that you can customize it to show minimalist line-drawing icons. Or realistic renderings of the sun and moon. Eye in the Sky Weather gives you several widget sizes to choose from. Including a minor, 1-by-1 circle showing the temperature. You can get pretty weather transitions from Beautiful Widgets, sure. Still, you can’t get anything as clean and uncluttered as Eye in the Sky.

Minimalistic Text

Price: Free

If you like Clock Widget, you want to translate that text-based aesthetic to the rest of your widgets. Minimalistic Text is your answer. This widget features different text-based layouts. Including a battery bar resembling a barcode and a weather widget that spells out the temperature chance of precipitation. Minimalistic Text offers multiple customization options, including a vertical option that looks pretty sweet when displaying the battery bar.

Beautiful HD Widgets

Price: $1.99

Although Beautiful Widgets has long been touted as one of the best, prettiest catch-all widget apps, its skin market has nothing on HD Widgets. HD Widgets are elegant, gorgeous, and customizable. This widget pack features a variety of semi-transparent backgrounds, realistic weather icons, and high-resolution clocks. Different-sized bars can display time, date, weather, and toggle buttons for quickly switching Android features on and off. Such as Wi-Fi and Airplane Mode.

UCCW – Ultimate custom widget

Price: Free

Ultimate Custom Widget is what it sounds like: the ultimate, customizable widget. It’s not a collection of basic widgets, like HD Widgets, nor is it a single clock/weather/calendar widget. Instead, it’s a widget you make entirely on your own. Add clocks, weather, images, phone functions, shapes, and text. Then you customize each item, right down to the position, size, angle, color, and alignment. It’s an excellent tool for people looking for a custom option. Still, it’s also a platform for designers to show off their custom widgets. If you’d instead not do it yourself just yet, you can download gorgeous custom widgets from other designers. Some of my favorites include Minimal KWGT and Magic Widgets.