Enrich your “Richer” Notification Shade...

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Enrich your “Richer” Notification Shade with Widgets

Enrich your “Richer” Notification Shade with Widgets

Jelly Bean is now ranked as the number two most adopted Android version in the current market. While Gingerbread is still ranked first, many are convinced that these devices are mostly older devices or budget devices launched in more remote areas of the world. Hence, in the modern world where people root, customize and tinker with their Androids, Jelly Bean is king.

One of the most key features of Jelly Bean is the “Richer” Notification Shade. In case you don’t know what a “Notification Shade” is, it is what you pull down when you swipe down from the black or grey notification bar at the top of your display. The Notification shade lets you view your notifications in more detail, and with Jelly Bean, you can interact with that notification in more ways than just launching the app involved.

What you probably didn’t know is the fact that the Notification shade can offer so much more than just notifications. Now, much like your home screen and lock screen, you can use the notification shade as your app launcher or as a place for widgets. Here are some cool apps you can use to truly enrich that richer notification shade you got with Android Jelly Bean.

Notification Weather

By Or Bar

Notification WeatherEver wanted to be reminded of the weather every time you pull down the notification bar? Say you like keeping the home screen simple with no apps and no data hogging widgets, but you still want a sort of “widget” to show you the weather. Notification Weather might just solve your little problem. Since it resides as a notification in the Notification shade, it doesn’t consume as much resources as a home screen widget and it doesn’t require as much memory.

The notification also features a 4 day forecast, which is accessible by a single finger swipe down if you are running Jelly Bean 4.2, but if you are running Jelly Bean 4.1, you are likely going to require a 2 finger swipe or a 2 finger pinch.

Quickly Notification Shortcuts

By Decad3nce

QuicklyAt one point or another, you probably wanted to place an app shortcut in your notification shade. Now, this customization dream has become a possibility thanks to Quickly. Quickly is an app designed to create a maximum of 12 shortcuts in the notification shade. These shortcuts could either be an app launcher, a direct dial, a direct message, or even a link. It is pretty much an extension of the home screen hidden away in the notification shade.

The developer is very open to requests and any cry for help. The app isn’t free, but it is very cheap and well worth the price tag since it does the job pretty well with a very low memory footprint.

Informer

By Global Developers

InformerInformer is a nifty little app. It allows you to quickly spy on your phone’s data and processes by simply pulling down the notification shade. You can check out data like temperature, RAM, available memory, battery stats and uptime, and even the current voltage. It can even have some custom toggles and shortcuts like for the Wi-Fi on and off as well as other radio toggles.

The app is totally free but there is also a donate version. Do take note that having an app like this to monitor your data constantly will also drain some resources like battery and CPU processes along the way. Use as you see fit.

Notable: Quick Reminder

By Yu Chen Hou

NotableHere is something very useful. There comes a time when you may have written a note or task but end up completely forgetting it anyway thanks to the fact that you didn’t happen into the home screen page where your note widget was. Well, as it turns out, we check out the notification shade more often than any other part of the smartphone. So why not keep the most important notes and reminders in the shade? Notable does exactly that in a lightweight and intuitive overlay app.

The app is very neat and very light, so there isn’t any trouble with system resources. It may bog down your notification shade if you have a lot of notes and reminders, but you can easily swipe them away if you no longer need them. The point here is to have something quick to create and quick to dispose, unlike something you keep on the home screen.

Notif Pro

By Eric Carboni

Notif ProMuch like Notable, this nifty app can help you add some custom notifications inside your Notification Shade. While Notable seeks to be simple, Notif and Notif Pro seek to be highly comprehensive and highly customizable. The app allows you to add notifications of varying types. There is the simple text notification, a list notification and a photo notification. Each notification can be assigned a custom notification icon as well as a custom priority.

Notif Pro may be a bit confusing at first, but it is definitely very useful once you get the hang of it. It is packed with so many ways to make the notification shade more useful than just displaying normal notifications.

Power Toggles

By Painless Death

Power ToggleIf you have ever demoed a Samsung Galaxy smartphone, you would notice that they have a very cool list of toggles in their notification tray.  These toggles are very convenient since they allow the user to switch features and radios on and off without having to dig through the settings or leaving the current task or app. A lot of people are envious of this feature while completely hating the Touchwiz skin that Samsung keeps using.

Now, you can have that convenient little tool without having to resort to buying a Galaxy phone and putting up with Samsung’s custom skins. Power Toggles does exactly that and more by allowing you to either place the toggles in the home screen or in the notification tray. You can customize the toggles to feature whatever system setting you want and even include multimedia and custom toggles with them.

notiShare – Notification Share

By Mike Tamanti

notiShareFeeling social? Don’t you just hate it that you have to go to an app or keep a widget of your social network just to be able to share your thoughts to your adoring public? It’s such a hassle having to leave your current task to make that quick Tweet or Facebook Status. What if I told you that you can now do that in your notification shade, anytime you like?

NotiShare is the innovative app developed for those social network lovers who would love to have a unified social network updating widget that is accessible through the always available notification shade. This app is free, but you can donate to the developer by simply getting the donate version for a minimal cost.

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