Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google discussed the importance of widgets at Google I/O 2024.
- During the session, there was a slide that showed first- and third-party widgets.
- Included in the slide was what appeared to be a widget for Google Home.
It has been a busy week with a ton of announcements, as expected for any Google I/O event. The company unveiled tons of new AI stuff, as well as news on Android 15, Wear OS 5, and more. If you were following the event closely, you may have even noticed a couple of things that seemed like sneakily quiet announcements, such as a potential widget for Google Home.
During the Build beautiful Android widgets with Jetpack Glance session, which is meant more for developers than consumers, Google discussed the importance of widgets. The company explained that great widgets are helpful, simple, adaptive, cohesive, and discoverable. However, it was a slide that showed up near the end of the session that was particularly interesting.
The slide above features a collection of first- and third-party widgets for Android. All of these widgets are live except for the one on the right with the 3×3 grid. This particular widget appears to belong to Google Home.
You can see in the widget, there are cards for your lights, doorbell, kitchen, thermostat, and more. These cards also show the status of these automations. On top of that, we can see the Google Home icon above the cards, as well as the home name.
It would be great if Google Home was given such a widget. You probably wouldn’t even need to open the Home app anymore. However, since this widget isn’t live, the design could change, or it may not come out at all. We’ll just have to cross our fingers and hope that Google rolls this widget out soon.
This wasn’t the only thing that seemed like a potential sneaky announcement this week. If you remember, on day one, Google showed off an AI feature called Project Astra. During the demo, the firm appeared to show off a pair of smart glasses working with Project Astra, but never said anything about those glasses. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely these glasses belong to Google as it killed off its AR glasses project last year.
