The Google News Material You widget(s) are here

Abner Li | Jun 13 2023 - 1:41 pm PT

As announced at the start of this month, Google News is getting updated Material You widgets that are now rolling out.

Modernization and adopting Material You are the obvious goals here. The 3×2 “Quick view” features a modified icon in the top-left corner, followed by “Google News,” which opens the For You tab when tapped. You then get the headline, with the publication and timestamp appearing at the bottom. Tapping takes you to the article, while a “Full Coverage” button in the bottom-right corner opens that feed.

If you make “Quick view” bigger in any direction, it turns into the “List view” widget. That widget lets you scroll through seven articles like before, complete with cover images. It can be resized to take up the entire screen.

Basically, there’s one new widget that Google News is deciding to surface in two ways by default. The old “Google News” widget does a better job of showing stories in less space without requiring users to manually scroll.

Meanwhile, the main advantage of Quick View is its small size, but you don’t get that much space back. It’s a bit text heavy (on phones) and should really include a cover image, which was the case in Google’s earlier mockup on a tablet. In our brief usage, this widget does not appear to cycle.

Version 5.82 of Google News for Android is rolling out today. Meanwhile, the stocks widget was briefly available as part of the Google app but has since been pulled, and we’re still waiting for the Google TV widget.