Material You weather widgets go live on Android 12 with latest Google app beta

Abner Li | Oct 18 2021 - 9:43 pm PT

In a very welcome change from what we previously expected, the Google Weather Material You widgets are now live on existing Pixel phones with the latest Google app beta.

Earlier today, Google app 12.40 fixed At a Glance weather in the Pixel Launcher on Android 12 Beta 5. The 12.41 beta enables the two Google Weather widgets with Material You that we’ve been tracking for the past few weeks.

There are two available designs — both named “Weather” — measuring 3×3 by default. That said, both can shrink down to 3×2 though neither shape actually grows. Users only get to adjust the padding.

The square with rounded corners starts by displaying the current condition in the top-left. Your location — an abbreviation is used for longer city names, is in the top-right. You then get the current temperature and high/low. There’s also the diagonal pill with just the temperature and condition icon. It’s quite large and very glanceable, with both respecting Dynamic Color theming.

Meanwhile, there are peculiar landscape orientations that squish the widgets into pills, and no settings to show locations besides your current one.

They were first spotted in advertising for the Pixel 6. This is not a server-side update with version 12.40 not triggering, while Android 12 is required.

In enabling last month, we observed that the widgets checked whether your device was a Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro before appearing. We also noted that support for other Google phones was being prepared, but believed that the first requirement implied some initial device exclusivity.

As evidenced by today’s launch — on a Pixel 5 in our case, the original speculation was incorrect or something changed in development over the past three weeks. Whatever the case, the wider launch is much appreciated by current device owners.