The “At a Glance” widget that Google won’t let us turn off on Pixel phones is finally going to do more than show you the weather and your commute times and calendar appointments. It was previously rumored to be getting a sizable list of new integrations and those have now begun to rollout to devices, including the Pixel 6.
Likely thanks to a Google app update that rolled out earlier in the week, the At a Glance options have started to show three new “features” for you to toggle on or off. Those new options are “Timer & stopwatch,” “Bedtime,” and “Fitness.” They should be mostly self-explanatory, but let’s talk briefly about each.
- Timer & stopwatch: Google lists it as pulling timer and stopwatch info from the Clock app on your phone. We hope this means it’ll pull up timely shortcuts to previous timers and stopwatches depending on your usage.
- Bedtime: Google explains it as “your upcoming bedtime from the Clock app.” For those who use the Bedtime setting, we assume this is going to show as a reminder that your Bedtime schedule is about to kick in and potentially change settings.
- Fitness: For this option, Google says it’ll simply show “activity info from your fitness app.” This really should just show you recent activities, like a run or workout, which is a piece of info I’m not sure anyone needs there.
These aren’t the only features we are expecting, though. As I mentioned above, a previous report had 8 new features on the way and this is only 3. The others include an integration of shopping-related cards or lists when at a store, summary of connected devices, notifications from something like your doorbell, a flashlight reminder, and a safety check.
Here’s what we wrote about those other 5 features previously:
- At a store: If you are at a supported store, you could see shopping lists, Google Pay rewards cards
- Connected devices: When Bluetooth devices are connected, it could show you battery. I’d still rather have this widget.
- Doorbell: You could see a notification or shortcut to view your doorbell when it rings
- Flashlight: A home screen reminder that your flashlight is on
- Safety check: A safety check countdown from the Personal Safety app
Again, I’d really like to turn this entire area off and reclaim it for use with my own widgets, but if Google is going to force it on us, new features could get us to appreciate it once again.
// 9to5Google