Google is shrinking Pixel phones’ At a Glance widget

Google’s new Material 3 Expressive design language includes a welcome surprise for Pixel owners: the mandatory At a Glance home screen widget has shrunk, leaving space for an extra row of apps.

Enjoy more space for apps

Good news! Your home screen has a new layout, which means there’s space for more apps & widgets

The new design both shrinks the At a Glance widget and removes some of the dead space between the other rows, compressing the entire screen. It leaves room for a full extra row of apps below the redesigned widget.

The bad news is that Google still won’t let you turn off the widget, which is a mandatory part of the Pixel home screen, just like the Google search bar at the bottom. Making it smaller will at least go some way to appeasing Pixel owners who’ve long hoped for the same home screen flexibility as other Android phones.

Material 3 Expressive is a colorful, bouncy new aesthetic for Android that Google unveiled last week. It was made available in the new Android 16 beta yesterday, and should roll out widely when the OS update launches in full next month.