Smart V8 Widgets

[SimonWilding]

I appear to have lost all my widgets. I noticed that the BBC weather widget had disappeared from my home screen. I long pressed the screen and selected add widgets but instead of the several options I had before I've only got 2, power options and search bar.

Anyone got any ideas how to get them back? I've had no software updates recently to cause the problem......

[BandOfBrothers]

Can you / have you tried a soft reboot by turning the device Off and On @SimonWilding ?

[SimonWilding]

Yes tried that, and I've also downloaded a couple of widgets from the play store, they just get added to the home screen like an app as opposed to having to be selected from the list of widgets and they don't even appear in that list.

[hrym · Accepted solution]

Before we get the the (inevitable) suggestion of a factory reset, let's try a couple of things.

1. Clear recent apps.

2. Go into Settings|Storage and tap on Internal (or Phone, or whatever it calls itself), then tap clear cache.   That just clears app caches and you won't lose anything.

If you still have no luck, make sure your storage isn't nearly full and free some up if it is (move content to an sd card, delete any apps you don't really need, etc).

And, if you still have no luck ... factory reset (sorry!)

[SimonWilding]

Well b*gger me, clearing the internal memory cache and restarting the phone has brought back all my widgets!

Before I cleared the cache I had 15GB out of 29GB free in the phone memory and 10GB free on memory card, (so there was no shortage of memory) after clearing the cache I now have 17GB free.

I can understand lack of cache memory causing widgets to stop running but to disappear totally? Very odd,

Anyway at least I know the answer now, cheers!!

[hrym]

App caches themselves aren't really a problem as the OS manages them quite well.   However, if your storage is nearly full, even 1gb can consume a high proportion of what's available, leaving the device with limited workspace.   In your case, it may be clearing recent apps that did the trick (I find it fixes a lot of resource-led issues).   Doing that is a quick way of clearing out RAM, which is what I suspect was the root of the issue here.

If the problem was mild corruption, it probably won't happen again, at least for a long time.   If it's a regular occurrence, it's possible that you have a rogue app that isn't handing memory back properly when it's finished with it.