Emojify!

Emojify is a simple Android application that showcases your personally chosen daily emoji on your home screen via a Glance App Widget. It is of course carefully hand-picked by the universe for you and totally not loaded from a list at random. For astrology-defying cheaters, it also allows you to manually refresh the emoji displayed on all placed widgets directly from the main app.

Features

• Daily Emoji Widget: A sleek home screen widget that displays an emoji. Not much else.
• Widget Customization:
  • Attempts to maintain a square aspect ratio.
  • Configured for automatic updates approximately every 2 hours (via updatePeriodMillis).
• In-App Widget Update: A button within the main application to instantly update the emoji on all placed widgets.

Project Structure

• app/src/main/kotlin/dev/obnx/emojify/: Main application code.
  • data/EmojiRepository.kt: Responsible for fetching emoji data (currently reads from a local JSON in assets).
  • ui/: Jetpack Compose UI for the main application.
    • EmojifyApp.kt: Main Composable screen with the update button.
  • widget/: Glance App Widget related code.
    • DailyEmojiView.kt: Composable function for the visual representation of the emoji in the widget.
    • EmojifyAppWidget.kt: The GlanceAppWidget implementation.
    • EmojifyWidgetReceiver.kt: The GlanceAppWidgetReceiver.
    • EmojiGlanceStateDefinition.kt: Manages the state (current emoji) for the widget using DataStore.
• app/src/main/res/: Android resources.
  • xml/emojify_widget_info.xml: AppWidgetProviderInfo configuration for the widget (size, update frequency, etc.).
  • layout/: Includes preview layouts for the widget.
• app/src/main/assets/emojis.json: The JSON file containing the list of emojis.

How it Works

1. Emoji Source: The EmojiRepository reads a list of emojis from assets/emojis.json. The getRandomEmoji() method selects one from this list.
2. Widget Display:
   • The EmojifyAppWidget uses EmojiGlanceStateDefinition to manage its current emoji state.
   • This state is persisted in Jetpack DataStore (CURRENT_EMOJI_KEY).
3. Widget Update Mechanisms:
   • Automatic (Periodic): The android:updatePeriodMillis in emojify_widget_info.xml tells the Android system to trigger an update for the widget approximately every 2 hours. When this happens, the EmojifyWidgetReceiver's onUpdate method is called.
   • Manual (In-App):
     1. The "Update all placed widgets" button in EmojifyApp.kt is clicked.
     2. A new random emoji is fetched using EmojiRepository.
     3. This new emoji is saved into DataStore via EmojiGlanceStateDefinition.
     4. EmojifyAppWidget().updateAll(context) is called.
     5. This prompts Glance to re-render all instances of the widget. Each widget instance then reads the new emoji from DataStore (via EmojiGlanceStateDefinition.currentState()) and updates its display.

Building and Running

1. Clone the repository.
2. Open the project in Android Studio (latest stable version recommended).
3. Let Gradle sync and download dependencies.
4. Run the app configuration on an Android device or emulator.
5. After installing, long-press on your home screen, navigate to "Widgets," find "Emojify," and drag it to your home screen.

Future Enhancements / To-Do

• Add widget configuration options (e.g., background color, emoji size).

Dependencies

• Jetpack Compose (UI, Material3)
• Glance (AppWidget, Material3)
• Jetpack DataStore (Preferences)
• Kotlin Coroutines

Contributing

I made this as a fun side project to learn how Android widgets work. No value to be gained.