ChromeOS could gain Google Pixel-style contextual widgets
Google offers a widget called At a Glance which offers all kinds of essential information right on your home screen ranging from commute time to weather data. Recently, Google has stepped up efforts to make the widget more useful for Pixel users throughfrequent Feature Dropswith theinclusion of air quality alertsandNest Doorbell video feeds. A similar “glanceable” widget tailored for larger screens could be in the works for devices running ChromeOS.
AChromium Gerritposted this week (via9to5Google) reveals Google is working on “Glanceables” for your device’s home screen. Aprototype Gerrit recordhas also been spotted, offering a glimpse into what Google might be up to.
The feature’s design draft isn’t publicly visible, so we don’t have a clear idea of Google’s plan for these Glanceables, but two examples seem to be in the cards — a weather tile and a clock. Just like on Android, Google’s implementation on ChromeOS should allow you to snap-position widgets in a grid, with each glanceable taking up at least one tile on it. The weather tile resembles the weather information display on ChromeOS’s current screensaver, but Google could cook up new layouts, designs, and widgets to make the most of the (usually) larger screen real estate ChromeOS devices have.
Clock and weather as seen on the ChromeOS screensaver
Unlike other mainstream operating systems like Windows, macOS, and major Linux distros, ChromeOS doesn’t really have a desktop — all it really shows you is your wallpaper. Glanceables could be the first addition to the operating system which actually makes use of the blank space.
Don’t take a Gerrit listing for granted, though — new features can take a long time to work through the development pipeline if they make it through at all. But if and when Google does bring Glanceables to ChromeOS, we just hope they’ll bring as much breadth and usefulness as At a Glance does on Android, much less a Pixel.
Thanks:Nick
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