A friend of mine was very interested in a pet project I had started a while ago when I got sick of having no compact version of Google’s switch bar available. The Market only has single toggle widgets and Google’s built in widget is quite large. I don’t toggle all those switches often enough for something like that to be useful.

After several stops and starts, I finally settled on something I could not only live with, but it is something that replaces several widgets on my phone, freeing up a lot of room for something more valuable like a memo widget, clock, pic, app shortcut, etc. etc. etc. My idea was to create a 1×1 cell widget that popped up with several toggle switches after pressing it. By doing so, it allowed for several to be grouped up together into one tiny package. The amount of “clicks” increases by one, and that will put off some people, I’m sure, but I don’t care so much for adding a click if it saves me a ton of room on my Home screen(s).

My friend also suggested I make some of the switches auto-enable themselves if the phone got plugged in as well as turning them back off once you go back on battery. I have found that plugging/unplugging the phone is usually the reason I toggle anything in the first place, so that seemed like quite a handy feature to implement.

I found the challenge to create Swidget quite enjoyable and am pleased with the outcome. I decided that there may be others like my friend and I who would like the option of a compact set of switches rather than a large set of individual ones taking up valuable Home screen real estate. Swidget is now available in the Android Market, AndAppStore, and SlideME for only $1.49.

Enjoy and take care!