Google will start classifying all Android widgets in three quality tiers based on their adherence to best practices and widget guidelines, helping creators improve the user experiences of their widgets.
The three quality tiers defined by Google aim to help widget makers understand what makes a great widget. Google also aims to provide guidance for users, helping them identify which widgets are more useful, visually cohesive, and adaptable across devices.
The three widget tiers build on one another. In the lowest tier, Tier 3, Google classifies undifferentiated widgets that fail to meet any quality standards and offer a suboptimal user experience.
A step above them, in Tier 2, Google places widgets that are helpful, usable, and provide a great user experience. These widgets follow best practices for layout, color, discovery, and content. For example, Tier 2 widgets must fill the bounds set by the launcher grid, use text and icon buttons with sufficient color contrast to improve accessibility, and show accurate and consistent previews in the OS Widget picker.
Tier 2 widgets must also meet functional requirements, including displaying updated content, allowing users to manually refresh content, avoid cropping, and more.
In Tier 1, Google places differentiated widgets, that meet all criteria for Tier 2 widgets and additional requirements. For example, Tier 1 widgets must support distinct color palettes for light and dark modes, brand color, or device-based content theming. They must display a loading state and/or transitions when launching and exiting. Additionally, they need to provide rich metadata, and their content must fill the entire grid bounds.
Google's recommended approach to building a great widget is using one of the Canonical Widget layouts, which include prebuilt layouts for widgets using lists, grids, toolbars, or simple text.
A key mechanism to create widgets that adapt to different sizes is breakpoints, which enable defining size thresholds where the widget layout changes significantly, such as switching from a list to a grid.
Widgets enable users to personalize their home screens with interactive elements that perform specific functions related to an app's content and refresh periodically. Additionally, they allow users to interact with the app directly without needing to launch it.
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