Google News to get fresh Material You widgets

Google has updated each one of its apps in terms of the Material Design principle. We may state that the Google News app is one of the few apps that rarely receives updates due to the vast volume of apps available. The app’s single widget has been replaced with two new ones in the most recent version, though.

The most recent June Android feature drop, which should not be confused with the Pixel-only Pixel Feature Drop, was just revealed by Google. Three new Google application widgets are part of the former. The Google TV app is adding a new widget to make it simple to find recommended shows, joining the one that already exists in the Google main app to track market prices. The third is the most recent Google News app update.

According to Nail Sadykov of the Google News Telegram channel, two new widgets with a Material You style have been added to the Google News app in version 5.82. One news headline is displayed at a time on the first widget, known as a Quick View widget, which occupies a 2×2 space on the home screen. If the headline piques your attention, the widget also offers a Full Coverage button that will access the complete news story.

The second source Your Google News widget occupies a larger 4×3 area and can spread out more on your home screen. It loads a limited number of headlines at a time, and as its name implies, List View shows two headlines at once, each in its own card. You can tap any story to read it or scroll down in the widget to see other headlines. At the end of the list is a More news for you button, tapping which launches the Google News app in the for you tab.

These two new widgets take the place of the lone 4×2 widget seen in earlier iterations of Google News, which required you to cycle between the headlines using the arrow keys in the lower right corner. Additionally, according to Sadykov, you can expand the new widgets so that they overlap, which would combine the two into a single object. We were unable to test how that appears in use, which is unfortunate.

The most recent build available through the Google Play Store is still version 5.81. The more recent version 5.82 is planned for release and will include the Material You widgets. You can try sideloading the new version from APKMirror if you can’t stomach the wait.