Joe Maring / Android Authority
Widgets have been a part of the Android experience for a long time, and I use them every day. From controlling my earbuds and smart home devices to showing my agenda or to-do list, they’re an essential part of any mobile OS I use. One of my favorite widget features is widget stacks, something Samsung added to its phones in One UI 5 back in 2022. Google phones lack the feature, and it’s been a sticking point since I switched to a Pixel 10 Pro. Thankfully, I’ve found an alternative.
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What are widget stacks?
Before I talk about the new app that I’ve found, I should clarify what widget stacks are. On a Samsung phone, you can long-press a widget that’s already on your home screen and tap a Create stack button. This will pull up all of the widgets on your phone that fit in the same grid size as the one that’s already there. Once you’ve selected the second widget, One UI stacks it on top of the one that was already on your home screen. Now, you can scroll horizontally through those widgets.
The reason I love widget stacks so much is that it keeps my home screen looking neat while also providing high information density. I can have all the widgets I want without needing multiple home screens.
Expanded smartspace meets my widget needs
On my Pixel 10 Pro, I found my ideal workaround with Smartspacer — an app that opens up Google’s At a Glance widget and makes it infinitely customizable. One of its features, Expanded Smartspace, lets you tap on At a Glance to open a list of user-selected widgets. It isn’t quite the same as Samsung’s widget stacks, but it’s more than close enough for me. Now I can keep my home screen free of oddly shaped and inconsistent widgets while being able to summon everything I need with a single tap.
To use Expanded Smartspace, you’ll need to download Shizuku and mess around with some developer options. Thankfully, that process is straightforward and explained well in the app itself.
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