Google’s new Material 3 Expressive design language contains a pleasant surprise for Pixel owners: the mandatory At a Glance home screen widget has been shrunk to make room for a number of additional apps.
The new look is included in the latest Android 16 beta. Once installed, Pixel owners will receive a pop-up notification on the home screen.
The new design not only shrinks the Quick Look widget, but also removes some of the dead space between the other rows, compressing the entire screen. This leaves room for a full additional row of apps below the updated widget.
The bad news is that Google still doesn’t allow you to turn off the widget, which is a mandatory part of the Pixel home screen, just like the Google search bar at the bottom. Reducing the size of the widget will at least give some peace of mind to Pixel owners who have long hoped for the same home screen flexibility as other Android phones.
Material 3 Expressive is a colorful, vibrant new aesthetic for Android that Google introduced last week. Yesterday, it became available in the new Android 16 beta and should be widely distributed later this year, after the full launch of the OS update next month.
