The Style tab
A widget's screen has two tabs under one live preview. Settings decides what the widget shows. Style decides how it looks, and every change you make shows in the preview at once. To get there, open a widget's settings from the dashboard, then tap Style.
- The preview is your widget with your own events. It stays in place while you scroll and change things under it.
- Settings and Style are the screen's two tabs. Swipe sideways or tap a name to change tab.
- Presets are always in view: a row of cards you scroll sideways. One tap changes everything below it.
- Panel holds two groups: Background and Shape.
- Text & colors holds four: Text colors and Text size, Color bars and Calendar colors. With Pro and a Google Tasks account connected, a fifth follows: Task colors.
Every group is closed when you arrive. Its row says what it is set to, with its colours as dots. Tap the row to unfold it in place.
One look, or one per widget. Without Pro, all your widgets share one look: change it here and every widget follows. With Pro PRO each widget keeps its own, so the one you open is the only one you change.
Style is not Theme. The dashboard's Theme row colours the app's own screens and never changes a widget. A widget's look comes from this tab alone.
Presets
A preset is a whole look in one tap: the panel, the text colours, the bar colours and a finish. There are sixteen and all of them are free FREE. They come in this order, dark ones first:
Ink is where a new install starts: black at 40% opacity, so your wallpaper shows through, with white text. Every other preset is opaque.
A preset's finish
Picking a preset sets its colours and its finish: the texture, the texture's strength and the depth's strength. Six presets have a finish of their own; the other ten take the plain one. So a texture never follows you onto the next preset.
| Preset | Texture | Texture strength | Depth strength |
|---|---|---|---|
| Obsidian Gold | Leather | 2 | 2 |
| Cognac | Plaster | 3 | 3 |
| Cyberpunk | Glitch | 3 | 3 |
| Ocean | Weathered | 2 | 2 |
| Mono | Linen | 3 | 2 |
| Sand | Leather 3 | 5 | 2 |
| The other ten | None | 3 | 3 |
What stays when you change preset
- Your edits are kept per preset. Change Ocean's text colour, try Forest, come back to Ocean: your Ocean is as you left it, colours and finish.
- Corners, and whether Depth is on at all, are yours: they stay the same across presets.
- Text sizes, Compact view and the colour bars' switches are not part of a preset, so they stay too.
- The colours you gave single calendars belong to the preset you set them on.
Background
The panel is the widget's background: one colour or a blend of two, as solid or as see-through as you like. The group's row says which, for example Solid · 40% or Gradient · 100%.
Background, unfolded, without Pro
- Fill FREE steps between Solid and Gradient. Each fill remembers how you left it.
- The colours. Under Solid, one row, Color FREE. Under Gradient, Start color and End color PRO. Each is a colour picker.
- Direction PRO turns the gradient through eight directions, clockwise with one arrow and back with the other.
- Balance PRO moves the point where the two colours meet half and half, from 15% to 85%. At 50, the default, they share the panel evenly.
- Opacity PRO runs from 0 to 100%. It belongs to both fills, and each fill keeps its own.
Without Pro the rows marked PRO keep the values of the preset you are on. That is why Ink stays at 40% and every other preset stays opaque.
Reset appears beside the first colour row once anything in the group differs from the preset. It puts the whole background back: fill, colours, direction, balance and opacity.
Shape
Shape is the panel's form: how round its corners are, whether it looks lit, and the material it seems made of. All of it is free FREE. The group's row sums it up, for example Corners M · Depth 3 · Leather.
| Row | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Corners | Steps through None, S, M and L. | M |
| Depth | A switch. On, the panel is lit: a light top edge, a sheen and a shaded foot. | On |
| Depth strength | How strong the effect is, from 1 to 6. Greyed while Depth is off. | 3 |
| Texture | Steps through ten finishes: None, Linen, Canvas, Leather, Leather 2, Leather 3, Glitch, Weathered, Wood and Plaster. | None |
| Texture strength | How much of the texture shows, from 1 to 6. Greyed while Texture is None. | 3 |
The defaults above are the plain finish. A preset with a finish of its own sets the texture and the two strengths when you pick it.
Text
Two groups set the writing: its two colours, and the size of each kind of line. There is one typeface, the widget's own, and it can't be changed.
Text colors
- Primary colours the event names, and NextUp's Now and Next.
- Secondary colours the times and the dates.
Both start as the preset's, and the group's row then reads From the preset. Change either and it reads Custom. Each is a colour picker, free FREE.
Text size
Five sizes, each a step from 1 to 10. A step is relative, not a number of pixels, so the text keeps its proportions on any screen.
- Title: the name of every event and task. Default 8.
- Start / end time: the line of times under a name. Default 5.
- Today / Tomorrow: the headings of today and tomorrow. Default 8.
- Dates: the date beside a heading. Default 6.
- Later days: the headings of the days after tomorrow. Default 6.
- While all five are at their defaults the group's row reads Default sizes; otherwise Custom sizes.
- NextUp has no Later days row: it never lists a later day.
- A Week and a Month take the text of their grids from the same sizes.
- How text sizes work is a short reminder of the above, inside the app.
Compact view
Compact view is a switch at the end of Text size, off by default. On, it makes every size a little smaller and tightens the space between rows and days, so more fits in the same widget. The group's row then adds Compact view to what it says.
Colour bars and calendar colours
The bar beside each event and task says at a glance which calendar it is from. Two groups decide whether it shows, how it is drawn and which colour each calendar gets.
Color bars
| Row | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Color bars | Shows the coloured bar beside each event and task. | On |
| Gradient bars | Draws each bar as a gradient of its own colour instead of one flat colour. Greyed while Color bars is off. | On |
| Events | The colour of every calendar that has no colour of its own. | The preset's |
| Tasks PRO | The colour of every Google Tasks account that has no colour of its own. The row is only there with Pro and a Google account connected. | The preset's |
The group's row reads Gradient bars, Plain bars or Off.
Calendar colors
To begin with, every calendar's events are drawn in the Events colour, and the group's row reads All default. Unfold Calendar colors to give a calendar a colour of its own.
- There is one row per calendar on your phone, each a colour picker.
- The calendar's own colour is among the swatches: the one it has in your calendar app. Tap it to make the widget match. Here Work and Family use theirs.
- Reset sends a calendar back to the Events colour.
- The group's row counts what you changed, for example 2 custom.
- With Pro PRO and Google Tasks connected, your accounts have a group of their own under this one, Task colors, which works the same way: one row per account, and Reset sends it back to the Tasks colour.
Colours go by calendar or by account. A single event can't be given a colour of its own.
Choosing a colour
Wherever this tab asks for a colour, it shows the same picker: a row of ready colours, and three ways to a colour that is not in the row.
- The swatches. The default comes first, then a few colours that suit the row. One tap picks one.
- + is a custom colour. It opens a square to drag in for the shade, a Hue slider, six greys from black to white, and a Hex box to type a code into.
- Your phone’s theme colors lists the colours of your phone's own theme, to match the icons and menus around the widget.
- Pick from a screenshot takes a colour out of a picture: see the recipe below.
- Reset shows once the colour differs from its default, and puts the default back.
Match your wallpaper
- Take a screenshot of your home screen.
- On the Style tab, unfold Background and find Color (set Fill to Solid first).
- Tap the last button in the row, Pick from a screenshot. The app asks you to Choose a screenshot of your home screen: pick the one you took.
- Touch the color, then lift to use it: slide your finger to the exact spot, and the colour under it is taken when you let go.
- Do the same under Text colors or Color bars to pick an accent from the wallpaper.
Your style goes with the widget
The sheets a widget opens over your home screen wear that widget's look: quick add, the event and task sheets, the calendar and Move. You style the widget once and everything it opens matches.
- The panel is the widget's colour or gradient, at the widget's own opacity.
- The text is in the widget's two text colours.
- The corners are rounded as the widget's are.
- A see-through widget gives see-through sheets. Where the phone can blur, the home screen is blurred behind the sheet, so the text still reads. Where it can't (battery saver, some phones), the sheet is solid in the preset's colour.
- With Pro, each widget's sheets follow that widget. A sheet that no widget opened, such as one from a reminder, takes the shared look.
Recipes
See-through glass over your wallpaper PRO
- Pick a dark preset, for example Dark Frost.
- Unfold Background and drag Opacity down to about 30%.
- Under Shape, keep Depth on for the light edge.
- If the text is hard to read, set Primary to white under Text colors.
Without Pro, Ink gives you this at its own 40%.
A small, dense widget
- Unfold Text size and turn on Compact view.
- Step Title down from 8 to 7 or 6.
- Step Today / Tomorrow down to match.
- Under Shape, set Corners to S, which suits a small panel.
One look for work, one for home PRO
- Place two widgets and open the first one's settings.
- On Style, pick a sober preset such as Charcoal.
- Tap the cog on the second widget. You land on its Style tab.
- Pick a warmer one such as Cognac. The first widget keeps its own.
Which calendars each one shows is on the Settings tab.
High contrast on a busy wallpaper
- Pick a solid dark preset that is opaque: Dark Frost or Charcoal.
- Under Shape, leave Texture on None.
- Unfold Text size and step Title up to 9 or 10.
- Keep Color bars on, so calendars stay easy to tell apart.
Free and Pro
Most of this tab is free. Pro adds the freedom to mix your own panel, and a look per widget.
| On the Style tab | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| The sixteen presets, with their gradients and finishes | Yes | Yes |
| Fill, and a solid panel's Color | Yes | Yes |
| A gradient's Start color, End color, Direction and Balance | The preset's own | Yours to set |
| Opacity | The preset's own | 0 to 100% |
| Shape: corners, depth, texture and their strengths | Yes | Yes |
| Text colors, Text size and Compact view | Yes | Yes |
| Color bars, Gradient bars, the Events colour, a colour per calendar | Yes | Yes |
| The Tasks colour, and a colour per Google Tasks account | No: tasks are Pro | Yes |
| The colour picker, with the phone's colours and the screenshot | Yes | Yes |
| How many looks | One, shared by every widget | One per widget |
A locked row carries a PRO mark. Tapping it opens the Pro screen, on what Pro adds to the style.