Google developing Pixel’s At A Glance-like widgets for ChromeOS users – Times of India

Google’s inclusion of “At A Glance” widgets on the home screen has been one of the signature features of the devices in the Pixel series. This particular space has shown some significant growth in 2021 after it was equipped with options for grocery deliveries, commuter information, and air quality alerts. According to a report by 9to5Google, Google has started working on a new project that aims to bring “glanceable” widgets to the ChromeOS desktop. These new additions are expected to act like a large-screen version of Pixel’s At A Glance widget, the report claims,
What are “glanceable” widgets for ChromeOS
As per the report, Google is planning to bring at least some of these handy widgets to Chromebooks. A new code change which was discovered recently has introduced the concept of “glanceable” for ChromeOS, the report mentions. Apart from that, an early prototype of this feature is also available that is likely to offer a more complete picture of what to expect, the report suggests.

How these widgets are expected to work on ChromeOS
The report states that ChromeOS is expected to align widgets to a grid, where each “glanceable” acts like a tile on the grid, quite similar to how it works on the Android home screen. Moreover, the report has also discussed two examples of what might appear in these desktop widgets — a clock and a weather tile. As expected, the weather tile is likely to look quite similar to the weather information shown in ChromeOS’s screensaver feature, the report mentions.
However, since the feature’s design draft is private, the report couldn’t share more information about what broader intentions Google might have for “glanceable” on ChromeOS. The report mentions that the inclusion of this feature could range from a full, Android-like widget system to an automatic arrangement of what you need to know, like “a large screen version of the Pixel At A Glance” widgets.
How will these “glanceable” widgets be placed
In most desktop/laptop operating systems, like — Windows, Mac and Ubuntu, users are allowed access to the actual “desktop” as a place to keep things like — files, program shortcuts, and more. However, ChromeOS has always been the exception, as its “desktop” is effectively nonexistent, which serves only the purpose to show users their current wallpaper, the report states.

Nonetheless, the recently discovered code reveals that the new “glanceable” widgets can be the first major use of the ChromeOS desktop. The report also explains that since the code for these desktop widgets has only started to arrive in ChromeOS, it’s likely for users to not see the feature in action for a few more weeks/months. Moreover, as these widgets are in their developing phase, they might never get released to the general public.