Desktop Gadgets - Clocks, Weather, Map, Sensors, Device Status and More

Touch and hold an empty square on the desktop, tap Add an item.. and choose Gadget. A list of every gadget your device can show appears.

A gadget whose sensor your device does not have is not offered at all - a tablet without a compass simply has no Compass in the list.

Clock shows the local time in large digits with seconds. It starts four squares wide and two high, and you can shrink it down to two squares by one. Tap it to open your alarms; touch and hold it to open your calendar.

World clock shows the time in another place next to your local clock, not instead of it. When you add it, a searchable list of every time zone your device knows opens - type a city and pick it. The square is captioned with the city and how many hours it is ahead of or behind you. Tap it to open your clock app; touch and hold it to pick a different time zone. Add several to follow several places.

Weather shows the current weather for a place you choose. A new square says Long press to choose a place: touch and hold it and type the city. No location permission is needed, and the data comes from Open-Meteo. Metric or US units follow Unit system in Settings, General.

Add as many Weather squares as you like - each keeps its own city, even after a restart. Under the reading the square shows when it was last brought up to date (Updated and the time). Without a connection it keeps the last reading marked Last known, and if nothing arrives it says Weather is unavailable right now. Tap it to open your weather app; touch and hold it to change the place.

Sun and dew point shows today's Sunrise and Sunset and the Dew point for a place you pick from the same searchable list. The dew point uses the same temperature unit as Weather. Tap it to refresh the reading, and touch and hold it to change the place. Several squares can show several places.

Map draws your current position on an OpenStreetMap map and writes the town and country under it, or the coordinates when there is no name. Tap it to open the map app of your device.

The first time, Android asks whether the app may know the location - allow it. Without the permission the square says Location permission is off; without a connection it keeps the last picture it had, marked Last known. The map pieces are kept on the device, so a familiar area appears quickly. To find the place name, the app asks only about the centre of the map piece it already shows, never about your exact position.

These gadgets use the sensors and the location of your device:

• Compass - the heading in degrees with the direction written out (for example North), and the height above sea level. If it asks you to Wave the phone in a figure eight, do it once to calibrate.
• Speed - how fast you are moving, in km/h.
• Speed chart and Altitude chart - how speed and height changed over time. Each chart collects readings since you last tapped its Reset button, and keeps them after a restart. The altitude chart also shows the distance travelled.
• Altitude and Satellites - the height alone, and how many satellites are used out of how many are visible.
• Steps - the steps counted by your device, from its own step counter. Only in the sideload version (the noLegal edition), because only that edition asks for the physical activity permission this square needs - see The seven editions of FastMediaSorter.

While the device looks for a position, the square says Waiting for a position... If you refused the permission, the square stays on the desktop and says Location is off. Allow it in app permissions. Location and steps are read only while the square is on screen, never in the background, and nothing is sent anywhere.

Four gadgets tell you how the device itself is doing:

• Network - the kind of connection, the Wi-Fi or mobile network name when Android shares it, and whether the internet is reachable: connected or no internet.
• Battery - the charge in percent and about how long it will last (About 5 h left), or Charging. The time is an estimate: Android does not report one of its own.
• Storage - free and total space on the device, and on the memory card when one is inserted.
• Resources - free memory and how long the device has been running since it was last switched on.

All four look the same, ask for no permission, and refresh only while they are on screen. A value the device does not give is shown as Unknown, never as zero. With TalkBack on, each square reads out both the number and what it means.

Translator is an offline translator right on the desktop. Its caption shows the language pair from the app's translation settings; tap the caption to change it, or swap the two languages for the moment. How languages are chosen and downloaded is in Translating extracted text.

The square is always at least two rows high, so the text field and the result both fit. The first time a language is used, its language pack is downloaded; when the first translation is ready the caption says Translated by Google.

The list holds more squares that bring your own content to the desktop:

• Search - a web search field that opens the results in your browser.
• Audio window, Video window, Document window and Image window - play or show a file from one of your resources inside the square.
• Stream window - a live channel playing inside the square.
• Playlist, Streams, Folder preview and Favorites - your playlists, channels, a folder as a small show, and your favorites.
• YouTube, YouTube Music, YouTube channel window, Google Maps Live Frame, Google Keep Live Frame and Google Calendar Live Frame - the web pages of these services inside a square.