This app makes Android's "At A Glance" widget very useful

Google’s At a Glance widget is great. Plan your day by viewing calendar events, tracking connected devices, viewing the current day’s date and weather information, and getting alerts for natural disasters and package deliveries. Helpful. And while casual users might think it’s already feature-rich, At a Glance is actually quite limited. You’re limited in how many things you can display, how many third-party apps you can connect to, and how many overall customizations and complications you can use at once. That’s where Smartspacer comes in. This is an app that extends the default At a Glance and makes it more customizable.

What is a smart spacer?

Smartspacer is Google’s enhanced version of At a Glance. This is an open source app developed by Kieron Quinn that allows a lot of customization with Google’s At a Glance widget on Pixel and regular Android devices. This is done by exploiting an option in Google’s Smartspace service that overrides the Smartspacer service instead of the default At a Glance immediately after restarting the system UI. The best part is that it doesn’t require root.

In layman’s terms, users can see unlimited customizations, widgets, and alerts at a glance. The app also has a plugin section to feed data into Smartspace, including data from Amazon, Uber, Tasker, and more.

Smartspacer has a large number of targets and complexities. The former is the main information placed at the top like the main overview widget that displays all information, while the complications are additional information such as the battery of a particular connected device or step count information from Health Connect. is. If you don’t understand, look at the image above and it should become clear.

Widget to see at a glance how Smartspacer has improved

The default implementation of At a Glance is quite limited, at least for my set of apps and my region. The default At a Glance customization options have many options, but only a few are available or visible, such as Torch, Connected Devices, and Bedtime. Features like home delivery, fitness, food, and home ordering have never worked for some reason, at least for me. As someone who has been eagerly waiting for assisted calling to land on Pixels in the subcontinent, At a Glance’s further limitations make the Pixel experience much less enjoyable. Well, no more.

Plugins and complications

Smartspacer uses plugins that are available for targeting and compilation. As of this writing, there are a total of 20 plugins available for users to download. Popular services include Amazon, Uber, Google Keep, and Health Connect. Plugins are also open source and can be installed directly into your app from the repository.

Once installed, the user must add them as targets or additions and move them in the list to set their display location. Other than this, most widgets do not require any special attention, with the exception of the Amazon widget, which requires you to sign in to start viewing your order status.

The Google Keep widget allows you to select one of your notes and always view it as a page At a Glance. Similarly, there is a Music target that displays the current track that is playing. You can also target notifications and select notifications from specific apps to display as At a Glance pages.

The plugins I use include Greeting, Music, Amazon Deliveries, Health Connect, Samsung Health, Google Keep, and Notifications for X (Twitter), and they all work perfectly. It’s easy to set up, but it takes time to get it exactly where you want it.

I like the battery complication that shows the battery percentage of the Pixel Buds Pro directly on the home screen. This eliminates the need to use the Pixel Battery widget and gives your home screen more space and a cleaner look. Other targets and complications I use include time remaining until sunset, number of steps, distance walked, current weather, and Google Finance.

One issue with Smartspacer (not Android)

Although Smartspacer does not require root and does require Shizuku (only if you want to enable enhanced mode for more features), one of the big problems with Smartspacer is rather due to Android limitations. It’s something that needs to take effect every time you restart your device. when the app is updated. There are only a few steps required to get started with Drops, but it can be a pain for some people. For those who don’t know, Extended mode is especially great on Pixel because it allows you to integrate Smartspacer into the Pixel launcher and lock screen.

Overall, Smartspacer is a very good app and what Google’s At a Glance widget should always be. If you’re intrigued and would like to request a new plugin, you can do so by opening an issue in the project’sofficial GitHub repository . You can also join our official Discord server to stay up to date.