Google Drive debuts new circular Material You widget design on Android tablets

Abner Li | Sep 12 2022 - 3:11 pm PT

Last week, Google announced that it was optimizing widgets for Android tablets. The updated Google Drive widget is now rolled out with an interesting circle design that’s new for Material You.

Google is specifically updating “Drive quick actions” with shortcuts to quickly start a new document in Docs, Sheets, or Slides. This replaces the plus icon in the bar layout that just opened the bottom creation sheet.

This new shortcut joins others to quickly open Drive, search, upload, and launch the camera. By default, everything is arranged in a 3×2 configuration.

However, making the widget taller makes the Google Drive widget a circle that’s more than reminiscent of a rotary dial. This is a new shape for Material You widgets, with the previous unique look being an x-shape (or flower petal). It’s definitely eye-catching and only really works for apps with a lot of shortcuts.

On tablets, you can find this new circular widget configuration with version 2.22.357.1 of Google Drive on tablets. This new design does not appear on Android phones.

Landscape vs. portrait

Since last week, Google has also rolled out the modified Keep widget that switches from a sidebar to bottom bar. We’re still not seeing the dual-pane view widely available yet.

Meanwhile, Google is also rolling out multi-instance support for Docs, Sheets, and Slides on Android. This lets you have two windows open side by side and will be fully launched over the coming days. Google Drive was already updated with something similar.