How to Troubleshoot a Problematic Widget

Widgets aren't all rainbows and unicorns. Like full Android apps, sometimes things go wrong. Here are a few common problems and what to do to troubleshoot them: My phone is super slow now! Phones may be able to handle widgets better than they used to, but widgets still use resources. If your entire phone starts running slowly after adding a bunch of widgets, figure out which one it is the same way you'd narrow down a regular app: Go to Settings and open up Apps. View all running apps. If available, select "Show Cached Processes." Close each app one at a time to see if performance gets better. The advantage to this method is that if it's an app that's causing the problem and not a widget, you'll figure it out just the same. You can also check individual apps' cache. While a well-written app shouldn't take up a ton of space without a reason for it, you can occasionally find that one that balloons up to a GB or more unintentionally. My phone is fine, but my home screen lags like crazy. If your home screen is still slugging along, start by disabling your live wallpaper if you're using one. These can eat up precious resources really fast and they're much less practical than a widget. If that doesn't solve the problem, start disabling the least useful widgets. Yes, I know, I just told you to put them there. However, all devices have a limit. If you've reached yours and you can't swipe to another screen without lag, it may be time to dial it back. Jeez, my battery plummeted! You promised this wouldn't happen! Well, technically, I said widgets can improve battery life. A poorly written widget, or one that checks for updates too often can still cause problems for your battery. Fortunately, there are ways to check this. For starters, find out which one is causing the problem. In the Settings app, tap on "Battery" to see a list of what's using up your precious power. Hopefully, this will point you in the right direction. Once you've figured out which widget is tearing through your battery, you have a couple options: uninstall it entirely (obviously less than ideal), or check that widget's settings to see if you can turn down how often it queries for new data. RSS or social widgets in particular can be huge battery drains if they're checking for updates every 30 seconds. Drop it down to five or ten minutes and see if that helps. Ultimately, widgets aren't really that different from regular apps on Android: some are written well, some are written poorly, but overall they're incredibly helpful when done right. Particularly in Android 4.0 and up, they're a lot smoother and nicer than they used to be. If you haven't played around with the ones already on your phone or available in the Play Store, now's the time.