Question

I would like users to install the widget component of my app. Currently my “mainactivity” simply pops up a textview saying that there is a widget and to see their widget list.

Unfortunately right now, this requires them to open the mainactivity at all. If they want to see the widget in their list of widgets.

I don’t want to do anything annoying, but there does seems like there are a lot of hurdles to actually getting and using a widget right now.

Things I could do: setup an onboot service that checks to see if the widget is on the launcher screen. It could remind users once or twice (ever) via some kind of notification. The widget can turn off that service using its onUpdate method or other lifecycle commands. I personally hate erroneous notifications.

One thing I’d like to do is programmatically open up the widgets list. is that possible? any other best practices? Since we can’t have widget only apps anymore, I’d still like the main component of my app to be a widget.

Answer 1

setup an onboot service that checks to see if the widget is on the launcher screen

That will require the user to launch your activity, anyway, on Android 3.1+. Your “onboot service” will not run before then.

One thing I’d like to do is programmatically open up the widgets list. is that possible?

No. After all, the user has to indicate where on the home screen the app widget goes first.

any other best practices?

An app that is purely an app widget, unless it is blindingly obvious that it is only an app widget, is going to have these sorts of issues. That is why many app widgets are simply one piece of a more substantial app, so that if the user elects not to use your app widget, or does not notice that it is there, it is not that big of a deal.