Making widgets

A widget is a small folder: a manifest that says what it is and what it may touch, a view that says how the phone draws it, and, if it needs one, a collector that fetches its data on the PC. Every widget, however it was made, is that same folder, so anything you make can be shared in the gallery.

Three ways in

Most PC-stats widgets are pure bindings and need no code at all, which also makes them the quickest to review.

Two halves

1. A collector runs on the PC on a timer and returns plain JSON. It's optional: a widget that only shows PC data doesn't need one. See Collectors.
2. A view draws that JSON on the phone. It's JSON too, a tree of ShiftPane's own components, so no code a widget author wrote ever runs on the phone. See Views.

Where the data comes from

• System sources: the PC's CPU, GPU, memory, network, what's playing and more, read once by the app and shared with every widget that declares them. See System sources.
• The web: a collector's fetch can reach the internet hosts the manifest lists, and no others.
• Apps on your PC or network: LibreHardwareMonitor, OBS, Home Assistant, Ollama and the like, at an exact address and port, after asking you.

The folder

gpu-ring/
  manifest.json      what it is, and what it may touch
  view.json          how the phone draws it
  sample.json        example data, for previews and review
  collector.js       optional: code that runs on the PC
  icon.png           optional: 256 × 256
  README.md
  LICENSE
  screenshots/*.png  optional

Package format has the rules and limits, and manifest.json every field.