What is Year Progress, and Why You Should Track It

May 2026 · 1 min read

A year-progress widget shows what percent of the current year is gone. That's the entire feature. It is the most useful widget on most people's phones, and almost nobody installs it.

What it actually shows

On 1 January it shows 0%. On 31 December it shows 100%. On 15 May it shows about 37%. A bar, a circle, a number — same idea, different visual.

Why it works

Time we're not measuring feels infinite. A year feels long in January and short in October because we don't track the middle. A widget that shows the year progress quietly in the corner of your Home Screen collapses that distortion — you check it without meaning to, and slowly your sense of "what's a reasonable amount of time" recalibrates.

How Left does year progress

Left's Time Left feature covers life, year, month, week, day, and hour — all as widgets. The YearWidget is the year-progress one; it ships as a bar, a ring, or a dot grid. Most of them work on Home Screen, Lock Screen, and StandBy.

What to pair it with

Year progress alone is decorative. Year progress + a habit + a countdown is a complete planning surface that fits on one Home Screen page.

Try it

Download Left and add a year-progress widget. Give it a month.