How to tick off tasks from a home screen widget
Whether you keep using a task app usually comes down to how many taps a tick costs. Find the app, open it, pick the date, find the row, tap — that's four or five. Tick it on the home screen widget and it's one. Over a week, that difference decides things.
Most planner widgets only read
Plenty of apps advertise a widget that turns out to only display a list. There's a checkbox drawn on it, you tap it, the app opens, and you have to find the same item again inside the app. Hence the request that keeps reappearing in reviews: "it would be so much better if the checkbox in the widget actually worked."
The reason is technical. An Android widget isn't a normal screen, and responding to a tap inside it without opening the app takes extra plumbing: the widget has to modify the data itself and keep its state and the app's state in agreement. That's more work than drawing a list, so many apps punt to "open the app" instead.
From the user's side the difference lands in one place. A read-only widget saves you checking. A tappable widget saves you logging. The thing that actually derails a study plan is almost always the second one.
Plannote's two widgets
Plannote offers two, and they're for different habits.
- 4×2 list: today's tasks as a list, each row with a checkbox. Read today's plan from the home screen and tick items off in place.
- 2×2 counter: just how many are left today, large. For when a full list on the home screen is too much and you only want to know whether anything's outstanding.
Adding it and ticking a task
These steps follow the stock Android launcher; manufacturer launchers use slightly different wording.
- Long-press an empty spot on your home screen.
- Tap 'Widgets' and find Plannote in the list.
- Pick the 4×2 list or the 2×2 counter and drag it onto the home screen.
- On the list widget, tap the checkbox to the left of an item. The app does not open; the status changes right there.
- Open the app later and it matches. Change something in the app and the widget follows — it syncs both ways.
The four states cycle on the widget too
A tick in Plannote isn't on/off. Each tap moves the task to do → in progress → done → later, and the widget cycles the same way. So you can get halfway through a workbook, tap once on the home screen to leave it 'in progress', and move on.
Where that pays off is the evening review. In an app where the only options are done and blank, a half-finished task looks identical to one you never started — which makes your record look worse than your week actually was, and that's usually what makes people abandon the plan.
If you tap the widget by mistake
Home screens get tapped in pockets and missed by thumbs aiming at an icon. If a status changed when you didn't mean it to, keep tapping to cycle back around to where it was — four states, so at most three taps.
Ticking on the widget never deletes anything. And if you do delete something by accident inside the app, the 5-second undo snackbar and the 30-day trash will bring it back.
What to check before trusting a widget
"Has a widget" in a store listing tells you nothing. A minute of testing does.
- Tap the checkbox on the widget. If the app opens, that widget is read-only.
- Tick something on the widget, then open the app and look at the same item. A mismatch means the sync only runs one way.
- Add an item in the app and go back to the home screen. If the widget doesn't show it, refreshing is manual.
- Check that a size you can actually fit exists. Without room for a 4×2, a list widget is one you won't end up using.
A study planner you tick off from the home screen
Get Plannote on Google Play