Google’s At a Glance widget for Pixel 6 series is on the cusp of a big update

By Rahul Srinivas November 23, 2021

It has almost become a custom for Google to debut several exclusive features every time it announces new Pixel smartphones. This year, for example, we saw the company revamp the popular At a Glance option with a host of new feature additions, some of which are already live on the Pixel 6 series. Now, it seems there are more features on the way.

The usually trustworthy folks at 9to5Google recently performed an APK teardown of the beta version of the Android System Intelligence app for the Pixel 6 series. After closely examining the various lines of code within the APK, they were able to deduce that Google intends to soon enhance the At a Glance feature with several new capabilities.

Pixel 6 quick access options. — Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

The likely additions to At a Glance include a new At a Store option that displays your shopping lists and Google Play reward cards. Interestingly, this only happens when the phone detects that you’re inside a supported store. There is also the Doorbell option, which will let you quickly check who’s at the door after your doorbell rings. Google is also likely to include a Connected Devices feature that will let you continuously monitor connection status and battery information of all connected Bluetooth devices in one place.

For fitness enthusiasts who can’t be bothered to open their fitness app every time they want to take a quick look at their stats, the upcoming Fitness at a Glance feature will display all the info you need on the At a Glance widget when required. A feature that we particularly like is simply called Flashlight, and its sole purpose is to remind you that your flashlight is left on.

While Google may have originally intended to launch all features of At a Glance alongside the Pixel 6 series back in October, we now know things didn’t exactly go as planned. This could mainly be because the app itself wasn’t completely ready and was riddled with bugs. It is also unclear if the updated At a Glance features will officially make it to older Pixel devices from the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4 series.

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Rahul is a smartphone buff turned tech journalist who has been tinkering with all things mobile since the early 2000s. He has…

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