Widgets

Your NAS on the home screen

Q: What widgets does Syno Manager have?

Three: System Status at 2x2 for health at a glance, Storage Overview for volume usage, and Quick Actions at 4x1 for jumping straight into a screen. All three are available on Android and iOS.

Q: What does never updated mean on a widget?

That the widget has not managed a single successful reading yet - usually because it was only just added, or the app has not been opened since. It is shown as never updated rather than as a zero, because a zero would read as a real measurement.

Three widgets on both Android and iOS - and each one tells you when its numbers were taken, which turns out to matter more than the numbers.

The three

What each widget shows

Widget	Size	Shows
System Status	2×2	NAS health at a glance - the state of the machine, without opening anything.
Storage Overview	-	Volume usage, so a volume filling up is visible from the launcher.
Quick Actions	4×1	Straight into a screen you use often, without going through the home screen first.

All three appear under Syno Manager in your launcher's widget picker, which is where the sizes above come from.

The launcher widget picker showing Quick Actions, Storage Overview and System Status under Syno Manager

Adding one

How to place a widget

Android

Long-press an empty part of the home screen.
Tap Widgets.
Find Syno Manager in the list.
Drag the widget you want onto the home screen and resize it.

iOS

Long-press the home screen until the icons wobble.
Tap the plus at the top.
Search for Syno Manager.
Pick a size and tap Add Widget.

The important part

Why every widget carries a timestamp

A widget only refreshes when the operating system lets it. Android and iOS both ration widget updates aggressively to save battery, so a figure on your home screen can be hours older than it looks - and a stale reading that looks current is worse than no reading at all.

What it says	What it means
just now	Read within the last minute.
12m ago	Under an hour old, in minutes.
5h ago	Under a day old, in hours.
2d ago	A day or more. Treat as historical.
never updated	No successful reading yet - freshly added, or the app has not run since. Never shown as a zero, because a zero reads as a measurement.

Anything older than six hours is treated as stale and marked as such, rather than presented as the current state of your NAS.

The distinction this preserves is a real one: a quiet NAS and a stale widget look identical without a timestamp. "CPU 4%, taken 3 minutes ago" and "CPU 4%, taken yesterday" are different facts, and only one of them is worth acting on.

Keeping them current

If a widget is not refreshing

Open the app. The surest refresh is the app running and reading the NAS.
Check battery optimisation on Android. An app restricted in the background gets fewer widget refreshes. Excluding Syno Manager from optimisation helps.
Check Background App Refresh on iOS. Settings, then the app - if it is off, iOS will rarely wake the widget.
Remember the NAS has to be reachable. A widget cannot read a NAS the phone cannot reach - on mobile data with a local-IP-only entry, it will not update until you are home.

Neither platform guarantees a refresh interval. No app can force one, which is exactly why the timestamp is there instead of a promise.

Common questions

Widget FAQ

What widgets does Syno Manager have?

Three: System Status (2×2) for health at a glance, Storage Overview for volume usage, and Quick Actions (4×1) for jumping straight into a screen. All three are available on Android and iOS.

Why does my widget show an old number?

Because the operating system decides when a widget may refresh, not the app. That is why each widget shows when its data was captured - so an old reading looks old instead of looking current.

What does never updated mean?

That the widget has not managed a successful reading yet - usually because it was just added, or the app has not been opened since. It is shown as never updated rather than as a zero.

How do I add a widget?

On Android, long-press the home screen, choose Widgets, find Syno Manager and drag one across. On iOS, long-press the home screen, tap the plus, search for Syno Manager and pick a size.