How to use Pokemon GO egg hatching widget (July 2023)

Throughout the years, Niantic has made and taken away many quality-of-life features for Pokemon GO. One of the more underappreciated features the developers have added to the popular mobile game to make players' lives easier is the home screen add-on that you can use to track the hatching progress of the eggs you currently have in your incubators.

The egg hatching widget is a fairly new addition to the mobile game, and not one Niantic advertises frequently. As such, it is entirely possible that long-time players may not even know that they have access to this useful tool. Thankfully, enabling this feature is very easy for those adept at using their smartphones.

Enabling this feature is not difficult but requires more steps than you may expect. As such, having a detailed explanation regarding how to enable this feature will be helpful for both new and experienced players.

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How to enable Pokemon GO's egg hatching widget

Ash holding an egg that appears similar to a 5 km egg in the anime (Image via The Pokemon Company)

The first thing you need to ensure before using the egg hatching widget is that Adventure Sync is enabled in the Pokemon GO application. This allows the game to track your movements when the app is not open. As such, enabling both of the game's available widgets is crucial.

This can be enabled through the game's settings menu, which can be brought up by tapping on the Settings option from the menu that opens after tapping the Poke Ball icon on the map view. Once you find the Settings menu, scroll down to find the Adventure Sync checkbox. Tap the box, and the feature will be enabled.

After enabling Adventure Sync in Pokemon GO, you can then access the widgets menu of your mobile device. This can be done on both Apple and Android devices, but it is slightly easier to find on Android phones. For both devices, you will need to tap and hold your finger down on an empty part of their home screen as you would if you wanted to move an application around the screen.

Once your device's home screen is in edit mode, you will want to select the Widgets option if you are on Android, or tap the small plus icon at the top right of the screen if you are on iOS. After that, a list of widgets you can access will be shown. There will also be a search bar you can utilize to make finding the widget much easier.

Typing Pokemon GO into the search bar or scrolling down until it appears will reveal the desired egg hatching widget you have been searching for, as well as the Buddy Pokemon progress widget that is also available. Once you have found the egg hatching widget, simply tap and hold it to drag and place it onto your home screen. If Adventure Sync has been enabled, the widget will immediately be ready to use.