[drinfernoo]

Have you ever been scrolling your homescreen widgets, wishing you didn't have to change them manually just to surface different content? Have you ever wondered why it seems like the "big box" streaming services never show you the same list of movies twice? Why can't Kodi work like this? It turns out... it can. 

AutoWidget

Basically, AutoWidget lets you define your own custom "groups" of widget paths, and then point any widget at that group, in order to get a widget that automatically changes its content every so often. In this way, you could have a widget that shows movies of a random genre... or one that shows shortcuts to each genre. You could have only a few widgets, but let them cycle through a large number of playlists or library nodes, allowing you to more easily surface more varied content, automatically.

You can also set up "shortcut groups", which function very much like a "submenu" or "category" widget, but completely managed by AutoWidget, and almost endlessly customizable.

I've made a video introducing it and running through most of the features of the add-on, as well: (OUTDATED VIDEO FROM 1.2.5, BUT LEFT HERE FOR POSTERITY)



To install it, simply add my GitHub URL as a file manager source: https://drinfernoo.github.io/
This source contains both the "stable" and "dev" repos for AutoWidget, but I only recommend installing the "stable" repo, in order to get official releases, rather than WIP builds.

For some useful shortcuts to use: https://github.com/drinfernoo/plugin.pro...-Shortcuts

As far as I'm aware, AutoWidget should be able to function in any skin, in any instance where a widget can be displayed, but there are a couple of skins that are not as easy as the others.

Skins I'm aware of that require special attention: (OUTDATED QUOTE, NEED TO UPDATE)

Embruary: To get the widget correctly, I had to first add the "Random Path (nonsense widget ID)" endpoint to my Favorites, then add that favorite to a custom widget, and then finally add that custom widget to the homescreen. After that, I clicked "Initialize Widgets" on the widget itself, and the widget initialized itself and loaded the first path. After that, I was able to force refresh the widget successfully, except for the label (which I was also able to fix easily in this case, but needs fixes in AutoWidget to be working reliably).

Xonfluence: If anyone's struggling, this also appears to be the way you have to do it in Xonfluence: Add the "Random Path" folder to your Favorites, and then create a widget from that favorite.

For more information on Paged Widgets, see the documentation: https://github.com/drinfernoo/plugin.pro...ed-Widgets

For more information, check out: https://www.github.com/drinfernoo/plugin...utowidget/
To report bugs or request features: https://www.github.com/drinfernoo/plugin...et/issues/
For full (ish ) documentation: https://www.github.com/drinfernoo/plugin...dget/wiki/

Enjoy!

[bsoriano]

Have you ever been scrolling your homescreen widgets, wishing you didn't have to change them manually just to surface different content? Have you ever wondered why it seems like the "big box" streaming services never show you the same list of movies twice? Why can't Kodi work like this? It turns out... it can. 

Introducing: AutoWidget

I've been at this for a few months now, so AutoWidget is currently sitting at version 1.2.5, but I've had plenty of testers, and I think it's finally ready for a wide release, so let's get to it!

Basically, AutoWidget lets you define your own custom "groups" of widget paths, and then point any widget at that group, in order to get a widget that automatically changes its content every so often. In this way, you could have a widget that shows movies of a random genre... or one that shows shortcuts to each genre. You could have only a few widgets, but let them cycle through a large number of playlists or library nodes, allowing you to more easily surface more varied content, automatically.

You can also set up "shortcut groups", which function very much like a "submenu" or "category" widget, but completely managed by AutoWidget, and almost endlessly customizable.

I've made a video introducing it and running through most of the features of the add-on, as well:



To install it, simply add my GitHub URL as a file manager source: https://drinfernoo.github.io/
This source contains both the "stable" and "dev" repos for AutoWidget, but I only recommend installing the "stable" repo, in order to get official releases, rather than WIP builds.

For more information, check out: https://www.github.com/drinfernoo/plugin...utowidget/
To report bugs or request features: https://www.github.com/drinfernoo/plugin...et/issues/

Enjoy!

@drinfernoo , this is awesome, thank you! Will this work with any skin?

Regards,

Bart

EDIT: Never mind, you answered the question in your video

[drinfernoo]

Have you ever been scrolling your homescreen widgets, wishing you didn't have to change them manually just to surface different content? Have you ever wondered why it seems like the "big box" streaming services never show you the same list of movies twice? Why can't Kodi work like this? It turns out... it can. 

Introducing: AutoWidget

I've been at this for a few months now, so AutoWidget is currently sitting at version 1.2.5, but I've had plenty of testers, and I think it's finally ready for a wide release, so let's get to it!

Basically, AutoWidget lets you define your own custom "groups" of widget paths, and then point any widget at that group, in order to get a widget that automatically changes its content every so often. In this way, you could have a widget that shows movies of a random genre... or one that shows shortcuts to each genre. You could have only a few widgets, but let them cycle through a large number of playlists or library nodes, allowing you to more easily surface more varied content, automatically.

You can also set up "shortcut groups", which function very much like a "submenu" or "category" widget, but completely managed by AutoWidget, and almost endlessly customizable.

I've made a video introducing it and running through most of the features of the add-on, as well:



To install it, simply add my GitHub URL as a file manager source: https://drinfernoo.github.io/
This source contains both the "stable" and "dev" repos for AutoWidget, but I only recommend installing the "stable" repo, in order to get official releases, rather than WIP builds.

For more information, check out: https://www.github.com/drinfernoo/plugin...utowidget/
To report bugs or request features: https://www.github.com/drinfernoo/plugin...et/issues/

Enjoy!

@drinfernoo , this is awesome, thank you! Will this work with any skin?

Regards,

Bart

EDIT: Never mind, you answered the question in your video

Currently, the only skin I know it won't work with is Aeon TAJO, as it's integration with Skin Shortcuts is... shaky at best

I'm also aware that it probably won't work with the "fallback" and/or "global" widgets many skins allow you to set... but I had an idea earlier today in how I can get around that in the near future

EDIT: For what it's worth, between myself and my testers, I know it's been tested successfully with Aura, AuraMOD, Aeon Nox: SiLVO, Arctic Zephyr 2, Arctic Horizon, and Titan BINGIE. I have suspicions that it may not work with Estuary Mod, but I haven't tested it

[dm21912]

Just having a play around now.

One request. Possibility to toggle the hiding of watched items in widgets. 

(This is something Skin helper service widgets can do which Is why despite my best efforts to move on - as im not sure its maintained that much anymore - i find myself still relying on them)

[drinfernoo]

Just having a play around now.

One request. Possibility to toggle the hiding of watched items in widgets. 

(This is something Skin helper service widgets can do which Is why despite my best efforts to move on - as im not sure its maintained that much anymore - i find myself still relying on them)

That is a per-skin feature that I have no control over. If your skin has a "hide watched" option, it should affect AutoWidget-fed widgets just the same as any other. Autowidget has no interaction with the actual content in the widgets, only which widgets are shown.

[bsoriano]

Have you ever been scrolling your homescreen widgets, wishing you didn't have to change them manually just to surface different content? Have you ever wondered why it seems like the "big box" streaming services never show you the same list of movies twice? Why can't Kodi work like this? It turns out... it can. 

Introducing: AutoWidget

I've been at this for a few months now, so AutoWidget is currently sitting at version 1.2.5, but I've had plenty of testers, and I think it's finally ready for a wide release, so let's get to it!

Basically, AutoWidget lets you define your own custom "groups" of widget paths, and then point any widget at that group, in order to get a widget that automatically changes its content every so often. In this way, you could have a widget that shows movies of a random genre... or one that shows shortcuts to each genre. You could have only a few widgets, but let them cycle through a large number of playlists or library nodes, allowing you to more easily surface more varied content, automatically.

You can also set up "shortcut groups", which function very much like a "submenu" or "category" widget, but completely managed by AutoWidget, and almost endlessly customizable.

I've made a video introducing it and running through most of the features of the add-on, as well:



To install it, simply add my GitHub URL as a file manager source: https://drinfernoo.github.io/
This source contains both the "stable" and "dev" repos for AutoWidget, but I only recommend installing the "stable" repo, in order to get official releases, rather than WIP builds.

For more information, check out: https://www.github.com/drinfernoo/plugin...utowidget/
To report bugs or request features: https://www.github.com/drinfernoo/plugin...et/issues/

Enjoy!

@drinfernoo , this is awesome, thank you! Will this work with any skin?

Regards,

Bart

EDIT: Never mind, you answered the question in your video  

Currently, the only skin I know it won't work with is Aeon TAJO, as it's integration with Skin Shortcuts is... shaky at best

I'm also aware that it probably won't work with the "fallback" and/or "global" widgets many skins allow you to set... but I had an idea earlier today in how I can get around that in the near future

EDIT: For what it's worth, between myself and my testers, I know it's been tested successfully with Aura, AuraMOD, Aeon Nox: SiLVO, Arctic Zephyr 2, Arctic Horizon, and Titan BINGIE. I have suspicions that it may not work with Estuary Mod, but I haven't tested it  

@drinfernoo , I maintain Amber.  I just tested shortcuts widgets with Amber and it works great, thank you! I will be testing a lot more in the coming days.  

Regards,

Bart

[drinfernoo]

@drinfernoo , this is awesome, thank you! Will this work with any skin?

Regards,

Bart

EDIT: Never mind, you answered the question in your video  

Currently, the only skin I know it won't work with is Aeon TAJO, as it's integration with Skin Shortcuts is... shaky at best

I'm also aware that it probably won't work with the "fallback" and/or "global" widgets many skins allow you to set... but I had an idea earlier today in how I can get around that in the near future

EDIT: For what it's worth, between myself and my testers, I know it's been tested successfully with Aura, AuraMOD, Aeon Nox: SiLVO, Arctic Zephyr 2, Arctic Horizon, and Titan BINGIE. I have suspicions that it may not work with Estuary Mod, but I haven't tested it  

@drinfernoo , I maintain Amber.  I just tested shortcuts widgets with Amber and it works great, thank you! I will be testing a lot more in the coming days.  

Regards,

Bart

Good to hear! For the record, I would expect shortcut group widgets to work in any skin with widgets. Widget group widgets are the ones that have a certain degree of "maybe, maybe not", since they have to make direct edits to Skin Shortcuts' metadata files.

[dm21912]

Just having a play around now.

One request. Possibility to toggle the hiding of watched items in widgets. 

(This is something Skin helper service widgets can do which Is why despite my best efforts to move on - as im not sure its maintained that much anymore - i find myself still relying on them)

That is a per-skin feature that I have no control over. If your skin has a "hide watched" option, it should affect AutoWidget-fed widgets just the same as any other. Autowidget has no interaction with the actual content in the widgets, only which widgets are shown. 

hmmm interesting. SHS has it built into the widget settings.. maybe it wasnt actually doing anything, or only in some skins..



whats more likely is this lockdown has made me stir crazy. I spent most of today thinking it was sunday

[drinfernoo]

Just having a play around now.

One request. Possibility to toggle the hiding of watched items in widgets. 

(This is something Skin helper service widgets can do which Is why despite my best efforts to move on - as im not sure its maintained that much anymore - i find myself still relying on them)

That is a per-skin feature that I have no control over. If your skin has a "hide watched" option, it should affect AutoWidget-fed widgets just the same as any other. Autowidget has no interaction with the actual content in the widgets, only which widgets are shown. 

hmmm interesting. SHS has it built into the widget settings.. maybe it wasnt actually doing anything, or only in some skins..



whats more likely is this lockdown has made me stir crazy. I spent most of today thinking it was sunday

To be fair, I typically don't bother with SHSW settings, as they don't really affect the way my setup works. The way I understood it was that it's controlled by the skin, but you mentioning Skin Helper made me realize it's probably on both sides... In any case, it's out of my scope, but any skin that supports it should have it working the same on AutoWidgets as it does with any other widgets.

[Rijs43]

Hi,

Great addon.. one suggestions.. I have lets say 10 lists as a 'Movie widget'.. possible to have for each list a 'sort by' option? i.e. (years descending). Because if I point 10 widgets on home page to this 'Movie widget' I can only sort all of the 10 lists the same but not individual..

[drinfernoo]

Hi,

Great addon.. one suggestions.. I have lets say 10 lists as a 'Movie widget'.. possible to have for each list a 'sort by' option? i.e. (years descending). Because if I point 10 widgets on home page to this 'Movie widget' I can only sort all of the 10 lists the same but not individual..

Unfortunately, not at this time. I'm exploring ways to be able to set that type of information on a per-path basis, but for now we are stuck with each AutoWidget having the same parameters for each path that gets filled into it.

EDIT: You could set up Smart Playlists, Trakt lists, or something similar, that have the sorting built in to them, and then put those into a widget group. That would work.

[jdig4240]

Would this possibly work in skins like Xonfluence? In Xonfluence you would add a widget by adding the section to favorites then choosing the favorite as a widget in skin settings.

[drinfernoo]

Would this possibly work in skins like Xonfluence? In Xonfluence you would add a widget by adding the section to favorites then choosing the favorite as a widget in skin settings.

Hard to say for sure until I try it out, but you're welcome to try! What I will say, is that if the skin doesn't have Skin Shortcuts as a dependency, it 99.99% won't work.

[jdig4240]

Would this possibly work in skins like Xonfluence? In Xonfluence you would add a widget by adding the section to favorites then choosing the favorite as a widget in skin settings.

Hard to say for sure until I try it out, but you're welcome to try! What I will say, is that if the skin doesn't have Skin Shortcuts as a dependency, it 99.99% won't work. 

Close, but errors when initializing widget. https://vimeo.com/401772937

[drinfernoo]

Would this possibly work in skins like Xonfluence? In Xonfluence you would add a widget by adding the section to favorites then choosing the favorite as a widget in skin settings.

Hard to say for sure until I try it out, but you're welcome to try! What I will say, is that if the skin doesn't have Skin Shortcuts as a dependency, it 99.99% won't work. 

Close, but errors when initializing widget. https://vimeo.com/401772937

Yeah, it appears that skin isn't using Skin Shortcuts at all. I can't tell what the error is without a log... but I'm not surprised it doesn't work.

Once again, AutoWidget does not work without a skin that uses Skin Shortcuts.