Android widget for main screen?

Features
1

New user, studying how to replace Evernote by Joplin in my day-to-day usage.

A feature that I miss is a widget to add on the home screen, which would at least:

  • let me quickly create a new text note with a pop-up editor, or a picture note by opening the camera
  • show the most recent notes edited (or any other custom filter of notes, eg notes with a specific tag or from a specific notebook)
  • give one-tap access to search function

Cheers,
Daniel.

6 Likes
2

Laurent told us earlier that it was not possible due to electron limitations
May be that changed but I doubt.

3

You probably meant React Native (Electron is used for the desktop app). Apparently there are proof-of-concept demos like this one, doesn’t seem very mature.

1 Like
4

yes you are right, thanks :slight_smile:

5

Personally, I would be pleased if we could get the to do list in a widget.

6

Still no easy way to do this at the moment (pretty much only hacks) so a full native widget would have to be developed, which is out of scope.

7

Hello first, I have no idea of the programming with software. Is the software programmed with the problem being to create the widget, or lacking ideas on how a widget might look like? I’ve been working with GTask before and the widget was the most important for me for review. For this app that manages ToDo’s and notes would be a widget as it offers Microsoft’s ToDo app, that can switch between to-do’s and notes in the widget. Is it even planned to create a widget?

Kind regards
Miron

8

Joplin on mobile uses react-native which is a framework that allows a single code base to be used across devices (Android, iOS). This framework does not have an option to create widgets.
Therefore one would have to manually create a widget for Android. Then another one for iOS/iPadOS/watchOS. This is - as Laurent already mentioned - out of scope for this project. (Too time consuming in development and maintenance.)

9

Thanks for the info, now I understand it. That’s a shame for the project, of course.

10

Also would love widget - especially for To-do items.

11

Yeah a widget would be extremely useful. Others who've made the switch,how did you compensate for the lack of a widget?

1 Like
12

I'm paying yet another software just to have a todo-list widget on my home screen. Please consider prioritizing this, it is a must have!

13

Just set up joplin server in home lab and using joplin android app. Most of the comments about seem to suggest it is necessary to extend the joplin so functionality.

I don't see it that way: it should be possible to create a standalone widget app that (for me) communicates with the joplin server, shows the markdown content (thus is a standard right) and any actions would involve the more in the joplin app.

This relies on:

a. The markdown aligning to some open standard for which a library exists you render it and

b. The joplin app having intents that enable you to call it and open up a give note or for some given functionality.

I might have a go at this - did anyone know those answers?

14

I had an idea for this:

  1. Internet bookmark on android home screen, directs to specific Joplin web page, logged in, 'make new note'. Y'all might need to configure a special page for this.
  2. Clicking that opens your default browser (Firefox for me).
  3. Once that starts loading, it's an autoforward to another link which triggers the 'open in app' functionality. On first use, it'll probably ask the user to confirm you wanna open in Joplin.
  4. It thus opens in Joplin but carrying a switch/parameter/trigger which spawns a new note to open.

LMK if this is viable, hopefully so. A bit convoluted but once setup, should be relatively indistinguishable?