Enhance your widget

This guide includes details for optional widget enhancements that are straightforward to implement and improve your users' widget experience.

Add a name to your widget

Widgets need to have a unique name when they are displayed in the widget picker.

Widgets' names are loaded from the label attribute of the widget's receiver element in the AndroidManifest.xml file.

<receiver
    ….
   android:label="Memories">
     ….
</receiver>

Add a description for your widget

Starting in Android 12, provide a description for the widget picker to display for your widget.

Figure 1. Sample widget picker showing a widget and its description.

Provide a description for your widget using the description attribute of the <appwidget-provider> element:

<appwidget-provider
    android:description="@string/my_widget_description">
</appwidget-provider>

Note: Be concise. There is no character limit, but the representation and available space for the description might differ depending on the device.

You can use the descriptionRes attribute on previous versions of Android, but it is ignored by the widget picker.