Survey reveals the one Android widget our readers cannot live without

In my past life, I ran Android home screens with an abundance of widgets with quirky use cases. Think history lessons, sun and moon times, word-of-the-day, and countdown timers. More recently, given that I use AIO Launcher as my preferred launcher, I’ve reduced the number of third-party widgets by some margin to focus on the most pertinent information in my life.

However, some of my colleagues still rely on these home screen adornments. Pankil, for instance, recently shared a list of must-have widgets on his devices, including Brave, Gemini, and Google Maps. But what about you? What is the one Android widget that you simply cannot live without?

Naturally, to chip away at the answer, we ran a poll on Pankil’s piece, asking readers this question. The results are now in, and there’s one clear winner in the Android widget space.

The Android widget that most respondents can’t live without displays their “Weather” info. Racking up 46% of the nearly 3,200 votes, it’s far and away the most popular home screen attachment for our polled readers.

We didn’t specify that readers claim their preferred weather app and widget. Regardless of the weather app used, pinning this information to the home screen is convenient and saves valuable time throughout the day.

Some weather widgets act as aesthetic accessories, too, and mesh perfectly with Android’s UI. Weather Master and Breezy Weather both offer widgets that would look right at home on a Google Pixel. Then, of course, there’s Pixel Weather itself.

Not everyone sees the weather widget as fundamental as these users, though.

Around a quarter (25.9%) of respondents couldn’t live without the “Calendar” on the home screen, while a further 22.9% wouldn’t dare go without Google Search. Given that the latter is a fixture on the Pixel Launcher, it perhaps explains why Google refuses to remove it — a surprising number of users rely on it daily.

Finally, a 5.5% portion of voters see other widgets as more important than the three mentioned above. Some shoutouts in the comments include Todoist, Duolingo, Musicolet, family contact icons, and Gemini. Others prefer to run their home screens entirely sans widgets.

What is your current Android widget loadout? Is your weather widget indispensable on your device? If so, what is your preferred weather app? Let us know in the comments below.