We’re releasing a beta of our Android widget today. It should work on any phone running Android 2.0 or higher.
There are three widgets to choose from, depending on your needs. You can setup one or more widgets for every site in your account. The widgets are very battery friendly, even when set to pull every 5 minutes. I’ve been testing it for several months now with very aggressive settings and it’s had zero impact on my battery life.
Why a widget and not a full blown app? We don’t believe our resources are best spent maintaining an app that tries to do (almost) everything our web site does. Apps are much costlier to write and keep up to date. We are constantly adding new features and reports and tracking new types of data, etc. A simple widget living on your desktop (still one of my favorite Android features) that lets you keep up with your basic stats with a quick glance, with a few more details available when you click the widget (as shown here), fits the bill perfectly for us.
Handy dandy installation guide
- Since this is a beta, we’re not releasing it through the official marketplace just yet. So you’ll need to enable the option to install apps from “unknown sources” in order to install this on your phone.
- – Android 4.0+, go to Settings -> Security -> Unknown sources (checkbox).
- – Android 2.0+, go to Settings -> Applications -> Unknown sources (see a small guide here)
- Download this file onto your phone!
- Once completed, click the item in your notification bar (screenshot) and install.
- Setup a widget! The first time you do this, it will prompt for your username and password but you’ll only have to do that once.
Important note: Widgets don’t have icons you click to open them up like standard apps do. Instead, you must install the widget onto your Android desktop before it can be used.
In Android 4.0+, there is a new dedicated widgets area in your app drawer, so go into there and long-press on the widget you want, then place it on the desktop. Older versions of Android, you’ll need to long-press on your desktop until a menu pops up, then select “widgets” then find Clicky. There are three widgets to choose from.
- Android 4.0 potential installation bug – sometimes, on Android 4.0, you have to install the downloaded file twice before it will show up in your widget drawer. This only happens on 4.0 and only sometimes, we’re not sure what causes it yet, but if you don’t see the widget after installing it, install it again and it will show up.
That’s all there is to it. As mentioned above, you can add one or more widgets to your desktop for every site in your account, and data is pulled in a very battery friendly manner.
This is a beta so we want your feedback and bug reports. We hope to have an official release on the marketplace within 1 month!
