New Rich Widget Styles: Living Weather Cards and Real Watchfaces

Start Page HQ 2.2.0 introduces a new Rich style for five of the most-used widgets on the dashboard. Weather cards now carry an atmospheric background that matches the sky outside your window, and the analog clocks - Date & Time, World Clock, Stopwatch, and Pomodoro Timer - get filled watchface dials that look like the real thing. The daily AI widgets - Story Snippet, What If, and AI Diary - join in with a fresh cover image generated every day. Here is what each one looks like.

#Weather That Looks Like the Weather

The Weather widget gets a new Rich item style, and it is now the default. Each location card wears a background image that matches its current conditions: a golden glow for clear skies, falling rain streaks, drifting snow, or a stormy night sky. Every condition comes with separate day and night variations, so a sunny afternoon in San Francisco and a cloudy night in London each get their own mood.

Weather widget with Rich style showing three location cards with atmospheric backgrounds

One glance at the widget and you know what it feels like outside in every city you track - before you even read the numbers. Prefer the previous look? The Clear, Outline, and Solid styles are still there in the widget settings.

#World Clock That Shows Day and Night

The World Clock watchface gets a Rich item style too, and it works like a real watch. While it is daytime in a location (6:00 to 18:00 local time), the clock shows a white dial with black numbers and hands. At night, the dial inverts to dark with white hands.

World Clock widget with Rich style showing dark night dials for New York and London and white day dials for Tokyo and Sydney

The result is a row of clocks that tells you two things at once: the time in each city, and whether your teammates there are in the middle of their workday or fast asleep. No mental timezone math required.

Read more in the World Clock widget docs.

#A Real Watchface for Date & Time

The Date & Time widget's analog watchface gets a new Rich Dial setting that swaps the flat dial for a filled, real-watch look:

Day - a white dial with black numbers and hands
Night - a dark dial with white hands
Auto (default) - picks the dial that matches your color theme
Off - keeps the regular flat dial

Date & Time widget showing an analog watchface with a rich dark dial

Read more in the Date & Time widget docs.

#Stopwatch, Now With a Proper Dial

The Stopwatch watchface gets the same Rich Dial treatment. The seconds hand sweeps around a filled dial with printed markers, while the precise digital readout stays visible in the center. Laps still work exactly as before, in both digital and watchface modes.

Stopwatch widget showing a rich watchface dial with a digital readout in the center

#Pomodoro Timer on a Watchface

The Pomodoro Timer's watchface style also supports the new Rich Dial. The rotating hand tracks your progress around a filled dial, and the phase colors - work, short break, long break - stay visible on top of it, so you always know where you are in the cycle.

Pomodoro Timer widget showing a rich watchface dial with an orange work-phase hand and countdown

Read more in the Pomodoro Timer widget docs.

#Daily Cover Images for Story Snippet, What If, and AI Diary

The daily AI widgets get some art of their own. Story Snippet, What If, and AI Diary now come with a cover image generated alongside each day's text - a new illustration every morning, created to match that day's micro-story, hypothetical scenario, or diary entry. The image sits right at the top of the widget, and everyone sees the same one, just like the daily text itself.

Story Snippet pairs each daily micro-story with a cover in a style that fits its genre:

Story Snippet widget with an AI-generated cover image above the daily story

What If illustrates the day's hypothetical scenario:

What If widget with an AI-generated illustration above the daily scenario

And AI Diary sets the scene for its daily field observations:

AI Diary widget with an AI-generated illustration above the daily diary entry

If you prefer the text-only look, each of the three widgets has a Show Image toggle in its settings to turn the cover off.

Read more in the docs for Story Snippet, What If, and AI Diary.

#How to Enable Rich Styles

For Weather and World Clock, Rich is the new default for freshly added widgets. If you already have one on your dashboard, switch it over in Widget Settings → Item Style. For Date & Time, Stopwatch, and Pomodoro Timer, the new Rich Dial setting is on by default in Auto mode, which matches the dial to your current color theme - existing watchfaces get the new look automatically. Pick Day or Night in the widget settings to lock in one dial, or Off to return to the flat style.

All of this is live now. Open your dashboard to try the new styles, or play with the demo if you do not have an account yet.