Ryan Haines / Android Authority
I often find myself suffocating between phones – sometimes as often as switching on handsets every week. And I make sure to reproduce the arrangement of my home screen on each Android phone so that I do not feel unknown during the change and that my muscle memory does not act either.
But each of these Android phones teases my interior desire to look visually organized. When you have a bunch of widgets – all different shapes and sizes – plastered on several reception pages, it ends up appearing at random, no matter how much you try.
I start every time I look at my home screen on Android, and that’s a great reason why I dread to return to a pixel as a main phone.
The iPhone is known to be very controlling on how things appear on the screen, even for third party applications and widgets. And in this case, I honestly think it’s a good thing. My home screen on the iPhone seems much more organized and pleasant to the eye just because of a functionality: stacked widgets. With them, I can do much more on the same screen size instead of filling ten reception pages to house all my widgets.
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
Yes, I am a widget monster. But more than that, I am someone who is an aspirant for a clean aesthetic – and I swap every time I look at my home screen on Android. This is something that you look at all day, and that’s a great reason why I fear returning to a pixel like my main phone – even if Android 16 seriously attempted me.
Do you want to see widgets stacked on pixels?
24 votes
Android vs iOS: widget edition stacked
The stacked widgets are an ingenious way to save space – and to avoid having to slip into endless pages. I check the traffic using the Google Maps widget twice a day and I pass my robot vacuum once in the morning. I need these shortcuts, but they don’t have to be in my face all the time, right?
On my pixel, each widget occupies a permanent place, which I need for the moment or not. And the inconsistency is just shocking, with different shapes, sizes and angle rays that transform the whole screen into visual size. My LG AC widget is awkwardly finds in a 1 × 1 slit while another intelligent home control eats a 2 × 2 grid – both doing the same. It is unbearably chaotic, at least in my eyes of cicking.
In comparison, the configuration of my home screen on the iPhone 16 Pro Max looks cleaner and soothing to my nerves. All my Smart Home products are stacked in a single widget – whether it is an LG device or an unnamed intelligent socket. I just scroll the battery to find the one I’m looking for. The same goes for my search battery. I use several research and IA – Google, Perplexity and Chatgpt tools – and I can browse them to start an instant search without each of the pocket screen space separately.
Most importantly, I can transform them into smart batteries – something that iPhones have managed well before AI even becomes a cool word. My phone now surfaces the world clock widget at the same time every day before calling my loved ones halfway through the world, while the stock market widget disappears quietly after the evening frenzy of checks during a market accident.
This does not mean that Apple’s implementation is impeccable. For example, I want Apple to offer a smaller size (for example, a 2 × 1 grid, vertically or horizontally), especially for widgets that only need a single tap. But still, there is so much value in the stacked widgets that I have not fully understood until I have them – and now I just want Google to bring its own version to pixels.
What should pixels do?
The stacked widgets may seem simple, but on Android, they would be painful to implement, mainly because of the fragmentation. Google should occupy the Herculean task of aligning its millions of developers to make widgets in standardized sizes. But even it will not solve everything, because Android allows you to customize the grid sizes on your home screen, which more complicates things.
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
Frankly, if Google has not been able to bring the application developers to adopt thematic application icons – with a lot of stubbornly clinging to their colorful logos – I am not too confident that it can achieve the dimensioning of universal widgets, at least early enough.
But there is still hope. Third -party developers have found bypass solutions, which makes me believe that I am not the only one frustrated by this gap.
Your current options
Regarding Android, I am married to pixel phones for their own experience (read: superior) and updates to the operating system of the day. So I want widgets stacked on my default pixel, without using launchers or user interface hacks.
But if you are not as stubborn as me, you have a lot of options. Samsung has added the native management for widgets stacked a few user interface versions – so technically, Android has this functionality for some time now. It’s just the pixel that is missing in the action.
Andy Walker / Android authority
And others are not entirely without luck. You can install third -party launchers such as action, the smart launcher or Niagara to get a stacked widget experience of which I want pixels. Just know that most of these solutions allow you to stack only widgets of similar size – or to stretch them awkwardly to adapt, causing zoomed content or excessive padding. These solutions are therefore far from perfect, but they are even better than nothing.
There is so much value in the stacked widgets that I have not fully grasped until I have them – and now I just want Google to bring its own version to pixels.
Until it happens, I will continue to sigh each time I slide the visual disorder on my pixel while quietly enjoying the careful command on my iPhone.
