The volleyball widget on your home screen: iPhone and Android
You pull your phone out of your pocket and really you want to know just one thing: is there practice tonight, and what time does Saturday's match start again. Opening the app, picking the right team and scrolling to the calendar are three actions too many for that. The widget puts that answer on your home screen, so you have already read it before you tap anything.
What is on the widget
The Koach widget shows two things and nothing else: the next practice and the next match of the team you have open in the app. At the top is the team name, so you can see at a glance which team it is about. Below that come at most two blocks, and they sit in a fixed order: the practice on top, the match underneath. That is not a timeline — if the match falls earlier in the week than the practice, the practice still stays on top. That way you always know where to look.
Each block consists of three little lines. First a small grey word saying what it is: Training or Match. Below that, in the largest type on the whole widget, is when: Sat 12 Sep · 19:30. And if there is anything useful to add, a third little line comes underneath. For a match that is the opponent — vs Lycurgus H2. For a practice it is the focus you filled in for that session, for example Serving and reception. If you left that empty for a practice, the third line simply stays away; there is no filler text standing around taking up space.
If there is nothing left on the schedule — the summer break, or a season that has not been drawn up yet — there is one calm line: Nothing planned. No empty white card, no error message.
Tapping the widget opens the app. Where exactly you tap makes no difference: the whole widget is one button, and you land in Koach on the screen where you left it.
Putting the widget on your iPhone
The widget comes with the app you downloaded from the App Store. If you use Koach in your browser there is nothing to add — install the app first, as described in installing and setting up Koach on iPhone. Then open the app once and pick your team; only then does your phone know what belongs on the widget.
After that it is four steps:
- Press and hold an empty part of your home screen until the icons start to jiggle.
- Tap the plus button that appears in the corner of the screen.
- Look up Koach in the list or in the search field at the top.
- Swipe between the two sizes, pick one, and tap the button to add the widget.
You can then drag it to wherever you want it, and a tap somewhere else on the screen confirms that you are done. You are also allowed to place it twice, for instance a small one at the top and a medium one on a second home screen.
You choose between two sizes. The small widget is a square the size of four app icons and has room for one item: the next practice, or — if no practice is scheduled at all — the next match. That is a deliberate choice. Squeezing two items into that square gives you two lines you can no longer read at arm's length, and then the time on it is of no use to you.
The medium widget is the same height as the small one but twice as wide — it takes up the full width of your row of icons. Both blocks fit in there: you see the practice and the match at the same time. For most coaches that is the size you want, because the combination is exactly what you want to know on a Thursday evening.
Key point: the small widget shows one item, the medium one shows both. If you coach a team that practises more often than it plays, the medium size is worth it — otherwise you only see Saturday's match once Tuesday's practice has been and gone.
Putting the widget on an Android phone
On Android it works slightly differently. There is one Koach widget that you make bigger or smaller yourself, instead of two fixed sizes. Here too: you need the app from the Play Store, and you have to have opened it once. If it is not there yet, start with installing the volleyball app for Android.
- Press and hold an empty part of your home screen.
- Tap Widgets at the bottom.
- Scroll to Koach — the list is alphabetical, so it is under the K.
- Hold the Koach widget and drag it to the spot where you want it.
When you let go, handles appear around the widget that let you make it wider or taller. Feel free to give it the full width of your screen: the text does not get any bigger, but the line with the date and the time then does not have to be cut short. The Android widget always shows both items, even at its smallest size — so there is no choice to make as there is on the iPhone.
Manufacturers build their own home screens, so on your phone the button may be called something slightly different or the menu may look different. The order stays the same: press and hold, widgets, Koach, drag.
Why it never says anything different from the app
A widget is a small program that stands apart from the app. It would have been obvious to let that widget work out for itself which item comes next. That was deliberately not done, and it is the most important thing to know about this feature.
The app writes away one ready-made, already translated line — Sat 12 Sep · 19:30, in your language and in your date format — and the widget only draws it. It works nothing out, does not look online and knows nothing about dates. The result is that the widget says the same thing as the card at the top of your dashboard by definition. They draw from exactly the same source.
That has one consequence you notice straight away: a cancelled item does not count. Set a practice to cancelled because the gym is taken, and the widget moves on to the practice a week later — just like the dashboard. That is precisely why cancelling is better than deleting, something a separate article covers. Delete a practice and it is gone from your history; cancel it and it stays visible in the calendar but stops sitting at the top.
The same goes for your language and your team. Switch the app to another language and the app writes the lines away again in that language, so the widget is in it too. Switch to another team in the app and the widget switches along. The widget follows the app, always, and never the other way round.
Light, dark and the small stuff
The widget looks at your phone's setting, not at a setting in the app. If your device is in dark mode the widget goes dark with light lettering; during the day in light mode it is white with dark lettering. If your phone switches that over automatically at sunset, the widget follows by itself.
On the iPhone you see a thin coloured bar to the left of each block: teal for a practice, orange for a match. That is the only place where the two kinds differ in colour. More colour on a surface a couple of centimetres across would only start fighting with itself.
The widget is updated while the app is running, and only if something has genuinely changed about those two lines. Change the start time of the match and the new time is on your home screen right away — you do not have to close the app first. On the iPhone there is a safety net on top of that: if nobody opens the app, the widget checks about once an hour by itself whether anything has changed, so a practice that has been and gone does not sit there forever. There is no refresh button and there is nothing to set up.
If you also want your practices and matches in your ordinary calendar app, that is a different feature; it is described in the team calendar in your own calendar app.
For players and parents too
The widget is not just something for coaches. Anyone with their own account in the app sees their own team with their own next practice and match. For a player that is arguably even more useful than for the coach: a coach usually knows his own schedule, while a seventeen-year-old with something else on three evenings a week mostly wants to know whether it is tonight and at what time.
The same applies to parents. If a parent is linked to the team as a parent, they see their child's team schedule on their home screen. What a player can do in the app besides that is in the app for players.
If the widget stays empty
If it keeps saying Nothing planned while you are sure there is something in the calendar, go through these four things.
- Has the app been opened at least once since you installed it? The widget cannot fetch anything itself. As long as the app has not run, there is nothing to show.
- Are you in the right team? The widget follows the team that is open in the app. If you coach two teams, you only see that one. Switch in the app and the widget switches along.
- Is the item set to cancelled? Then the widget rightly skips it and looks for the next one that is going ahead.
- Are you running an old version of the app? The widget has only been there since one of the more recent versions. Update the app in the App Store or the Play Store and open it once afterwards.
If that does not help, take the widget off your home screen and put it back down. That costs ten seconds and cleans up everything around it. You lose nothing by doing it: all the data is in the app, and the widget is only a window onto it.
Frequently asked questions
Can I put the widget on my lock screen as well?
No, the widget is made for the home screen. On the iPhone you choose between the small and the medium size, and both belong among your app icons; on Android it sits in your home screen's widget list. So Koach does not appear in the rows on your lock screen.
Does the widget work when I have no internet?
Yes. The widget never fetches anything itself: it draws the text the app last put into it. In a gym with no signal your next practice and match simply stay there. If something changes in the meantime, you only see it once the app has run with a connection again.
Could someone who sees my phone lying around read sensitive team data?
What is on the widget is the team name, the date and time, and the opponent or the focus of the practice. Player names, attendance, notes and ratings never appear on it. If you do not want even that visible, take the widget off your home screen; the app itself stays behind your phone's passcode or face recognition.
Does the widget cost extra?
No, it is part of the app and you pay nothing for it on top of what you already have. You do need the app from the App Store or the Play Store: if you use Koach in your browser there is nothing to add. Remove the widget later and you lose nothing, because all the data is in the app.
