I’m addicted to customizing my home screen with KWGT

One of the reasons why fans persist for so long Android is better than iOS It’s because the platform allows for customization. Google in particular is really leaning into the concept with its Material You design efforts, where Android can look, feel, and operate in almost any way a user wants. Although Apple is finally starting to give iOS users have ostensibly control With the ability to move icons and change colors (that kind of courage), there’s no doubt that Android is the more flexible operating system.

Ever since I bought my first Android phone (a Samsung Galaxy S2 because I’m a Very Old Man™), I’ve been experimenting with customization. Installation is very simple Graphic packagechange the system color, and then install Live wallpaperI’ve been interested in this for a long time. However, it wasn’t until I discovered KWGT that things got really complicated.

In fact, I’m so obsessed with KWGT that I’m constantly changing the look of my home screen. Once you get the hang of KWGT, there’s no limit to what you can do. So much so that when I finally settle on any design, I say to myself, “But what if I did this…” and then I change it again.

KWGT has a large community of well-known designers and offers many excellent troubleshooting resources for budding tinkerers. Despite this, I’ve found that most Android users – even the truly “techy” ones – don’t know what KWGT is. Even if they do, most people never try it. So, let me explain what KWGT is and what I do with it. As the holidays approach, maybe you’ll delve into it and become as obsessed as I am.

KWGT is the abbreviation of Kustom Widget Creator. Kustom is a company that makes a variety of custom apps, including KLWP (Kustom Live Wallpaper Creator), KWCH (Kustom Watch Face Creator), and KLCK (Kustom Lock Screen Creator). Although their functionality is different, they operate similarly and allow you to create custom elements for the Android operating system.

You can start with a blank slate in KWGT and build a gadget from scratch using preset code snippets. However, designers around the world have also created KWGT Gadget Kit Content they sell (or sometimes give away) on the Google Play Store. These packages come with any number of pre-made widgets that you can use according to your needs. Additionally, with some trial and error, you can take something someone created and tweak it to better fit your aesthetic or functionality in a slightly different way.

When you combine something like KWGT with other Android Customized applications and use them on third party launchers like Novayou can do almost anything with your phone’s layout.

My colleague Andy Walker (who also really likes KWGT) has a post explain how he Used KWGT to create his dream Google gadget. If you want to learn more about the steps to build a custom widget from scratch, I highly recommend reading his article at the nexus.

Even though I’ve built widgets from scratch in KWGT, I’m usually not particularly eager to go that route. Instead, I scoured widget packages that others had made and used their creations as a starting point. I put together a few layouts this way that didn’t require any adjustments at all – I just placed the widgets where I wanted them and called it a day.

Most of the time, though, I pull widgets from different places and change them to make them more unified. Here’s a great example. The city and weather widgets (which change based on the phone’s location) come from one package, but the battery and music player widgets come from another package. The music widget is also more colorful, but I changed it so it fits the minimalist red/white theme:

Lately, I’ve been trying to add more color to my look. The layout I made below involves some widgets from a couple of “neon” packages and a tool called outline. The cool thing about this widget is that each widget pulls its color scheme from the music player’s album artwork. So when I move from one track to another in my playlist, my home screen design moves with it:

As you’d expect, the various widget tiles are linked to the app relevant to the information displayed within them (open a map for a location, open a calendar for a date, open Pixel Weather for weather, etc.). The exception here is the one with the cruise emoji: This is a countdown timer until my cruise vacation in March. 82 days, baby!

The squiggly line below the music widget is an active progress bar so you can see how much time is left on the track. The icons are the standard Pixel versions, although I did use Nova to force all icons to be round for a nice, unified look. Also, while I want the colors to all match the Hazel theme, all the widgets use Material You, so I can just change the wallpaper to make them look different:

If you want to recreate this yourself, I used Nova Launcher for the overall layout and icon placement, Hazel wallpaper from This Reddit post, and widgets found in pixel pack (you’ll need to tweak them quite a bit to get them to look like what I’ve done here). If you’re new to KWGT, check out the next section for tips on where to start.

I completely understand that KWGT can seem intimidating to someone who has never used it before. This is not an easy thing to figure out. Thankfully, there are plenty of helpful resources online to help you learn more.

First of all, I again recommend that you give Articles by Andy Walker Worth reading as he covers a lot of ground. I also recommend that you download KWGT and start using the pre-installed gadgets. They’re very simple and haven’t changed over the years, so they’re a great way to learn how code and layout work.

Once you start wanting to dig deeper, the best place to ask for help is Customize Reddit subreddits. Thousands of passionate designers are happy to give newbies tips and tricks on how to create the home screen of their dreams.

If you’ve practiced a lot and understand how everything works, but lack inspiration on what to do, go to r/Android topic. While not everyone creates with KWGT, the vast majority do, and most will tell you about all the packages they use to create layouts. Even if you don’t copy a design you find there, I often get inspired by what others are doing, which started me on the path to redoing my home screen…again.

If you’re a seasoned professional in the Kustom world, please head to the comments and post any other tips or helpful resources you’ve found along your journey!