Widgets on your screen take up space that you would otherwise dedicate to your favorite apps. While many beautifully crafted widgets greatly compliment your screen, having way too many can make it look quite cluttered. Widget developers therefore have to get creative with how they design their widgets, and keep a lot of aesthetic details in consideration. If you are a minimalist who wants to keep monitoring key stats of their Android device such as battery level, signal strength, Wi-Fi strength, unread messages, missed calls, memory, processor consumption, internal/external storage space, give PowerLine a shot. It is an Android app that adds on-screen indicators for all these stats in form of entirely unobtrusive colored lines along the edges, meaning you don’t have to use any widgets to clutter up your screen for viewing this info at a glance. These lines show whether the item in question is on a healthy level, riding low, or in the danger zone. With the free version of the app, you can add any two indicators on your screen at a time, while the paid version removes this restriction.

By default, PowerLine adds one indicator for battery charge to the top edge of your screen. The app runs in the background and can be set to start on boot. To edit the indicator, tap battery. You can tap the plus sign to add a new indicator. In the screenshot below, you can see the blue line at the top indicating the battery charge.

An indicator can be positioned along any edge of the screen, and also along the lower edge of the status bar. You can also change how its aligned in its respective area, and how transparent the line is. The thickness and color of the line can also be customized.

Not only can you select the default color and thickness for the line, you can also select the color it will change to when it the stat it is representing gets into a very low (or high) zone. To change what an indicator is measuring, tap ‘Type’ and select one from the list of items that the app supports. You are shown the same screen when you add a new indicator.

The free version of the app only allows you to add two indicators at a time. To add more indicators, you will have to purchase PowerLine Unlock from within the app.

In the screenshots below, you can see the app indicating processor usage and the varying state between low and high usage. The app adds a small line to the status bar to indicate it is running in the background, but it can be disabled on some devices from the app’s home screen. The notification drawer icon has its benefits, though, since it allows you to quickly pause the app with one tap.

The app also lets you dock two indicators of varying thickness to the same side of the screen but how well you can read them will depend on their colors and the apps that you’re running. Overall, it’s a great app that every minimalist out there with an obsession for keeping an eye on their device’s stats is going to love!

Download PowerLine for Android