Recent apps widgets

Two widgets, one history

Two widgets show your recently launched apps: a resizable grid of app icons, and a fixed 1×1 tile that shows the same recents as a read-only folder. Both update as soon as you launch another app.

On a cold start — right after your phone boots, or Tailwind Launcher restarts — the grid widget’s icons now appear about as quickly as the rest of your home screen, instead of trailing a second or more behind it.

By default, both count launches you make through Tailwind Launcher itself. Granting Usage access in Settings → Permissions widens that to apps opened anywhere on the device — from a notification, from Recents, or from a link. Work and private-space apps are always counted from launches through this launcher only, whether or not Usage access is granted.

Hiding apps you’ve already placed

Settings → Widgets → Recent apps has two independent switches, both off by default: “Hide apps already on the home screen” and “Hide apps in home screen folders.” Turning on the first hides an icon you’ve placed directly on a page or in the dock — the dock counts here too, since what this switch cares about is being placed in the open, not which surface that is. Turning on the second hides one you’ve filed inside a home-screen folder. Each icon sits in exactly one of those two places, so the two filters are independent rather than a three-way choice — turning both on reproduces what used to be a single combined filter.

Scoping to one page

“Only count this widget’s page,” off by default, changes what the two hide switches above mean rather than adding a third filter: with it off, an app placed anywhere on the home screen is hidden from every recent-apps widget; with it on, a widget only hides apps placed on its own page. An app in the dock counts as being on every page, so a docked app stays hidden from all widgets regardless of this setting.

placement = DIRECT if app sits on a page or in the dock
            FOLDERED if app sits inside a home screen folder

hide = (hide_direct and placement == DIRECT)
    or (hide_foldered and placement == FOLDERED)

if hide and only_count_this_page:
    hide = placement_page == EVERY_PAGE or placement_page == widget_page

recents = launch history, most-recent-first, excluding apps where hide is true

The icon ring

“Outline dynamic app icons,” on by default, draws a thin ring around each icon in the grid widget so its slots aren’t mistaken for icons you placed yourself — without the ring, the widget is designed to look identical to a hand-placed row of icons. The ring only appears on the grid widget; the folder-style tile doesn’t use it.

The “Apps in recents folder” slider, ranging from 4 to 24 apps and defaulting to 12, controls how many recents the folder-style tile holds.

Limits

Long-pressing the grid widget shows the standard widget drag, resize, and remove handles, not the usual app popup menu. If fewer apps have been launched than the widget has room for, the extra slots stay empty rather than filling with something else.

The folder-style tile is read-only: sorting, selecting apps, and removing apps are all unavailable from it, and dragging inside its open folder does nothing. With only one recent app to show, tapping the tile launches that app directly; with none, the tile does nothing.

Both hide switches read a snapshot of your home-screen layout that isn’t refreshed the moment you rearrange things — an app you drag onto the home screen can keep showing in a widget until you launch something or the layout reloads.