Android - Widgets not updating anymore

Here's how I tried a solution on huawei cam L21 based on the answers above, and it worked.

Settings -> apps -> app_of_widget -> battery -> keep running after screen off...


This happened to me quite time ago. Make sure you're not using Greenify or some other app to hibernate your apps. If you hibernate those apps then they won't be able to update because they are not running in the background

Clear the cache and the data for the widget apps in the settings and also for the launcher you're using. Set them up again and they will work just fine. Hope this helps !!


Possible solutions you could try if you have the same problem as me (as mentioned by rajatpunkstaa; I just repeat them to be complete but give a vote up there too):

  • Make sure any battery saving apps are disabled. Or at least aren't interfering with the widgets;
  • Try to clear the data of the launcher. Best is to delete both cache and app data.

But in the end, this didn't work for me. So I got into the Android widget documentation to find out what made the widgets tick. Or in my case, why they didn't tick. So I found out, that one widget can actually block the updating of the other widgets. Not on purpose, but by accident.

So by adding every widget seperately, with a lot of time in between, I could notice that the problem occurred after a while. The time in between was rather important, because if I did it immediately there was no problem. But after a time the widget would probably crash or something (not visible though), and other widgets stopped too.

So the best solution for me was:

  • Remove all widgets;
  • Add about one widget a day (giving the faulty widget time to crash);
  • As soon as you see the widgets misbehaving, you know the culprit widget; probably the one you last added.

Some tips on this solution:

  • Best to take a widget that updates regularly as the first widget. So you have an idea when something goes wrong really soon;
  • For some reason the stock clock widget keeps working, even though the other widgets stopped working. So probably that widget uses a different updating mechanism or something.