Update 1 (09/21/2021 @ 2:06 PM ET): An update to the Google App brings a new Assistant weather widget — the one teased at Google I/O. Click here for more information. The article, as published on September 14, 2021, is preserved below.
After years of neglect, widgets will finally be getting the much-needed overhaul in Android 12. Google showed off the redesigned widgets coming to Android 12 at Google I/O 2021. Over the past couple of months, we have seen many of these widgets going live in Android 12 beta releases. The last Android 12 Beta 5 that rolled out last week brought the revamped clock widgets along with a "Paint Chips" widget and partially working "Live Space" widget. Now ahead of the Android 12 public release, we have spotted evidence of a brand-new Assistant weather widget.
An APK teardown can often predict features that may arrive in a future update of an application, but it is possible that any of the features we mention here may not make it in a future release. This is because these features are currently unimplemented in the live build and may be pulled at any time by the developers in a future build.
Google App 12.36.15 beta just rolled out on the Google Play Store, and it contains strings for a new Assistant weather widget.
<string name="assistant_weather_widget_config_dialog_enable_btn">Get Started</string>
<string name="assistant_weather_widget_config_dialog_exit_btn">No Thanks</string>
<string name="assistant_weather_widget_config_dialog_location_rationale">"Please grant the location permission \"Allow all the time\" for accurate weather info.
App info > App permission > Location permission to \"Allow all the time\""</string>
<string name="assistant_weather_widget_config_dialog_title">Location Permission Required</string>
<string name="assistant_weather_widget_no_location_permission_text">Location Permission Required</string>
<string name="assistant_weather_widget_offline_text">"You're offline. Check your connection."</string>
<string name="assistant_weather_widget_oops_text">Oops, something went wrong</string>
The Assistant weather widget doesn't seem to have rolled out yet, but we manually enabled the receiver and got it to show up in the widget picker. Here's what it looks like:
As you can in the screenshots above, the design seems to be Material You-inspired. It doesn't support dynamic colors yet though it does seem to respect the system-wide dark theme. The widget displays the current weather, your location, and high and low temperatures. It doesn't quite match what was shown off at Google I/O, so there may be other forms of the widget in the works.
That's all we know about the upcoming Assistant weather widget in Google App for now. We'll be sure to let you know if we learn anything new about the widget in the coming weeks.
Update 1: New widget
Thanks to a new version of the Google App — version 12.37.19.29 to be precise — we now have access to the new oblong-shaped weather widget that was shown off at Google I/O. Furthermore, the weather widgets now support dynamic colors.
The new Assistant weather widget still hasn't rolled out to users yet, but we'll let you know when it does.