The majority of the applications Google Creative Lab launches on Android aim to showcase just what can be done on our favorite operating system. Sure, there are fun (and creepy) applications like Lip Swap or Tunnel Vision, but the development team has also put out useful apps like Photowall for Chromecast. Now there’s a new application from the team that aims to be both fun and useful.
Meter is a new live wallpaper that essentially turns your device’s homescreen into a live dashboard, showing you real-time statistics from your Android device. There are three different wallpapers to choose from, and you can deselect any of them if you don’t want them displayed. Shown off in the first screenshot above, the handy notification wallpaper will show you just how many missed notifications you have. It doesn’t give you any information regarding which types of notifications you’ve missed, but it does display the number of missed alerts below the box.
Perhaps the most useful out of the three is the battery wallpaper, shown off in the second screenshot above. This displays your battery percentage as a big pink circle that diminishes as your battery level decreases. It also shows the battery percent below the circle. Last up is the Wi-Fi/Cellular wallpaper, which is in the third screenshot above. Although you can’t really see it from the image above, the triangle will fill up as your signal gets stronger and will deplete as your signal gets weaker.
See also: Google unveils Android Experiments – a showcase of inspiring projects on Android1
One of the coolest parts of the live wallpaper is that it moves around thanks to your device’s accelerometer, so the shapes shift a tiny bit as you move your device. Additionally, it will switch between the three different wallpaper options as you wake/lock your device, so you won’t have to choose between the three if you don’t want to.
Meter is now available in the Play Store for free, so head to the link below for the download.
Download Meter from Google Play