Building Photos Widget for home screen photo viewing

The Motivation Behind the Project

Photos Widget is meant to put images directly on the home screen in a form that feels light and useful. Instead of making the user open a gallery app, the widget keeps photos visible with as little friction as possible.

Core Features and Design Goals

• Google Photos and local sources: the widget can show photos from cloud or device storage.
• Slideshow mode: a passive viewing option that makes the widget feel alive.
• Background auto-rotation: content changes without the user needing to step into the app.
• Photo management: controls that keep the widget practical instead of purely decorative.

Technical Implementation

• Built native Android home screen widgets using react-native-android-widget, rendering React Native components into RemoteViews that update independently of the app process, with a dedicated WidgetConfigurationScreen for per-widget photo source selection.
• Implemented Google Photos OAuth integration via @react-native-google-signin/google-signin and expo-auth-session, with token persistence in expo-secure-store and automatic album/photo fetching from the Google Photos API.
• Designed a background auto-rotation system using expo-background-fetch and expo-task-manager that periodically cycles the displayed photo even when the app is killed, downloading and caching new images from the selected source to the local filesystem via expo-file-system.

The Technology Stack

Built with Expo SDK 54, Expo Router, and TypeScript. Uses react-native-android-widget for native widget rendering, @react-native-google-signin for OAuth, expo-secure-store for token persistence, and expo-background-fetch for scheduled widget updates. The photo picker supports both Google Photos API albums and local device media.

Final Reflections

Widgets are a good reminder that good UX can be about seeing less, not more.