As part of the sweeping design changes coming to Android 12, Google also has a new Widgets platform to help modernize how they look.
On top of changing the look, Google has also made them better to interact with so devs can add things like checkboxes and radio buttons, and users can interact with them without entering the app.
Google is also expecting developers to add new widgets to Android with rounded corners and padding so they look more cohesive across the OS. If I had to bet, most developers won’t implement this, but I still hope they do since I really like the look of the widgets Google has shown off thus far during I/O.
Most importantly Google is trying to convince people to add dynamic colours to their widgets. This means that the widget could adopt accent colours based on the other colours that are being used in Android.
Two of the cooler widget features that the tech giant shared in a blog post are the possibility for widgets in Android auto and within Google Assistant.
These Google Assistant-based widgets can integrate with the virtual assistant so that if you ask it something like “Hey Google, what are my Strava stats.” you can see a visual representation of your stats as a widget instead of just getting a vocal response.
This is actually a really smart implementation of widgets and I hope Google Assistant gets increasingly more visual as the years go by.
Google also added a new widget picker to Android 12 so hopefully, all this added emphasis that Google’s placing on the widgets will spur more developers to adopt the new Material You design principles.
Source: Google, XDA Developers, Android developers
