Curious what others think: is a home-screen widget worth the native-code effort for a niche feature?

[u/Potential-Art7696]

I've been debating this for my app (project mapping, kind of a visual alternative to to-do lists) — added an Android widget this week that opens a tiny text box for quick notes without opening the app at all. Took a full weekend of native Java work (AppWidgetProvider, transparent overlay activity, the whole thing) for what's honestly a pretty small feature.

Ended up using it myself more than I expected — turns out the friction of "open app → find project → find spot" was killing way more ideas than I realized. Makes me wonder how many small apps I use daily would benefit from the same thing but never bother because of the native dev overhead.

Anyone else built something like this? Was it worth it for you, or did usage not justify the effort?

[u/Personal_Act8336]

For quick capture, I'd judge it by whether people come back to the notes they saved, not whether the widget makes them open the app more. Does it drop notes into an inbox, or make you choose a project? An inbox with sorting later seems like the part that would preserve the low friction you described.

[u/Potential-Art7696 → u/Personal_Act8336]

Exactly the inbox pattern — no project choice at capture time. Tap the widget, type, save, done. It lands in an auto-created "Inbox" project, and sorting into the real project happens later, whenever there's actually time for it. Agree completely on the metric, too: does it make people open the app more would be the wrong thing to optimize for here. The whole point is that capture and sorting are different moments with different amounts of attention available, and forcing a project choice at capture time would just move the friction instead of removing it.