Your new command center on your Android home screen – Computerworld

Your Android phone’s home screen is your window to the world – and in a different way Other mobile operating system, this little platform of ours brings all the power your hands to make the landing site look and function properly as You want.

This could mean replacing the standard home screen interface with something completely tailored to your way of doing things, or even supplementing the standard Android app drawer with one you can access from anywhere.

But it can also mean using cool tools to add important information to whatever home screen setup you’re using – because Android allows developers to perform clever and creative feats that other smartphone ecosystems simply don’t allow.

And this is where the idea comes in that I want to share with you today.

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An information-heavy approach to the Android home screen

One of the things I’ve always appreciated about Android is that the home screen can be so many different things for so many different people, and that the Google ecosystem on which it is based offers so many opportunities to transform that space into something that makes the most sense for you.

For some people, this may mean transforming the home screen into a simple, minimalist collection of key shortcuts to apps, contacts, and other frequently used items. For others, it may be creating a vast series of grouped icons for every possible application. For others, it may be a carefully curated command center that allows them to view and respond to important information quickly.

This latter approach is the one we’re focusing on today – because I just came across a really interesting Android app that lets you expand your home screen to present some of the most urgent incoming information in any smartphone scenario. All this information relates to notifications on your phone.

Check it out:

JR Raphael, IDG

The widget at the top is the widely available Google Android At a Glance widget, which shows the weather along with information related to your calendar (both personal and AND linked to your work profile), optimal departure times for upcoming events (based on your current location and nearby traffic data), advance warnings for your next commute (based on typical patterns observed over time), and updates on any upcoming trips (based on information available in your Gmail inbox).

But look below it and you’ll see a cool new creation called, aptly enough, Notification widget. This delightfully simple beauty brings all your active notifications directly to your home screen, so you can easily view and interact with them – without having to swipe down from the top of the screen to bring them up. This is a perfect combination with the Google At a Glance offer.

After all, the information contained in your notifications is always current and important, right? (This is especially true if you use my Android notification filtering trick to keep the noise to a minimum and make sure you only see the alerts you really need). Instead of keeping it out of sight and constantly moving it around, this setup puts it front and center – where you’ll always see it and can reply or mark things as done when needed, along with the smart contexts that the Google At a Glance widget provides .

Aptly named notification widget Also provides on-demand, one-touch access to an expanded view of Android’s notification history – with a complete list of all notifications from the last hour, in the regular free version of the app, or from the last three days if you pay four dollars for the premium version. This can be extremely useful when you put something aside only to later realize you still need to refer to it.

Setting it all up couldn’t be much simpler.

Configuring the notification widget on Android

Alright – ready to launch Command Center on your Android home screen?

First, we need to make sure all the basic fundamentals are in place:

• Download the notification widget from the Play Store. It is free in its basic form and does not require any disturbing permissions or data access (including the ability to access the Internet, which gives an extremely strong assurance that it will not collect or share any personal data).
• Open the app once. If you see a prompt to allow notifications, click “Allow.”
• From the app’s main screen, tap “Check Notification Access” – then find “Notification Widget” in the list of options that appears, tap it, and tap the toggle to grant the app this ability (for reasons that I hope are obvious).

I see? Good. Now go back to the main setup screen and:

• Click “Add new widget”.
• Click “Header,” then uncheck the boxes next to “Show” under the “Time,” “Date,” and “Battery Level” headings. This will significantly tidy up the appearance of the widget.
• On a related note, go back to the main setup screen and tap “Appearance,” then tap “Buttons.”
• Uncheck the box next to “Buttons at the bottom of the widget.”
• And uncheck the box next to “Hide Button” under the “Pin Button” heading.

Finally, on the main setup screen, scroll all the way to the bottom and tap “OK.”

Then, if you don’t already see the widget on your home screen, press and hold your finger on any open area and select the option to add a widget – then find “Notification Widget” in the list of options and tap or press and hold your finger on it to select it. From there, you should be able to place it anywhere and resize it to your preferred dimensions (something you can always change later by pressing and holding the widget again).

If you want the At a Glance widget to sit above it to get the full effect as I showed above, simply press and hold your finger again on any empty spot on your home screen, select the option to add the widget one more time, and look for ” At a Glance” in the At a Glance section “Google” option, then touch or hold it to put it in place.

And that’s it: Your command center on your Android home screen is now officially open. Information should automatically appear in the At a Glance widget at the top as soon as it becomes relevant, and notifications will appear in the notification widget, er, widget as they are received.

You can dismiss any notification in the list by tapping the red “x” in its upper right corner. All available options for interacting with the alert – such as replying to a message or marking a task as completed – will appear as a button on the associated notification tab. In the meantime, if you want to go to your notification history, you can simply tap the small clock icon at the bottom edge of the widget.

So much useful information at your fingertips, right? All that remains is to think about what you will do with all the once wasted seconds that you successfully used in your day.

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