A quick note on widgets:

The idea is nice, and some folks might make more use of widgets than I do, but I've never been wild about them. Most of them are pretty bad at managing how much space they take up versus the amount of information they provide.

I use the following widgets:

Direct dial and direct text a contact: puts an icon on my home screen to call one person, or an icon to text one person, and I gather these all into one folder that holds all my most frequently dialed people (pretty much just family members)

Google Keep: this one isn't that necessary, but it puts all my notes on the screen for easy and direct access, really only saving one screen tap.

Chrome Bookmark: just a link to a site. I was using this for the Wells Fargo mobile site until they finally put their app on the Nexus 5X. I still use it for Facebook because the Facebook app is a resource hog.

InControl scene shortcuts: this won't be any help to you, but I have 10 small widgets on their own screen to initiate lighting scenes on my home automation system.