Google’s latest feature drop for Pixel phones adds yet more features to At a Glance, a widget designed to surface important information on home and lock screens. There’s also a new shortcut that offers easier access to vaccine cards and a new music remix app created in collaboration with Teenage Engineering. The update will begin rolling out today for the Pixel 4 and up.
The At a Glance widget is one of the Pixel’s signature features, offering a quick summary of important information on the home and lock screen. With this latest update, it’ll be able to display a video feed from a connected Nest Doorbell directly on the lock screen, so you won’t have to open a notification to see who’s calling. It’ll also be able to remind you to turn off your phone’s flashlight if it’s left on, and Google adds that it’s working on an update to offer air quality alerts when you’re in a polluted area. These join other recently added At a Glance features, like earthquake alerts and improved battery info for Bluetooth devices.
Vaccine cards stored on Pixel phones are also easier to access, with a new option to add a shortcut to view screenshots of them on the homescreen. Vaccine information can already be added to Android devices and accessed via a shortcut where supported, but the new feature should work across any vaccine card that can be screenshotted, meaning support should be much broader.
Next up, Pocket Operator for Pixel is a new app that’s designed to let Pixel owners remix video content by layering sounds and adding visual effects to create beats and patterns. It’s been designed in collaboration with Teenage Engineering and named after the Swedish electronics company’s lineup of pocket synthesizers. The app can be downloaded from the Play Store here.
There are also a couple of more minor additions. Conversation mode, an accessibility feature that attempts to amplify important sounds and filter out background noise for people with hearing loss, is leaving beta after launching last December. The Google Photos filters announced at Google I/O that are designed to more accurately depict different skin tones are now releasing. Three LGBTQ+ wallpapers are being released for Pride Month. And finally, features like car crash detection and chat translation in messages are expanding to more countries (Canada for the former; traditional Chinese, Dutch, Korean, Thai, and Turkish for the latter).
