Google might soon let you remove the At a Glance widget from your Pixel’s home screen. The widget has been a staple Pixel feature for years now, but not everyone wants or needs it to be visible at all times on their home screen.Android 14QPR2, released this week, is adding experimental support for removing the widget, allowing you to use the space for apps orother great widgets.
Right now, the option to turn off At a Glance on your home screen isn’t readily accessible. It was spotted under development byAndroid expert Mishaal Rahman on X(formerly Twitter). He was able to activate the corresponding settings using hidden system flags. If Google sticks with the current implementation, a newAdd At a Glance to home screentoggle shows up in the home screen settings. Toggling the option off makes At a Glance disappear from the home screen, with the space freed up for other widgets or apps.
TheGoogle News Telegram Channelalso dug into the matter and suspects that two hidden flags are responsible for adding the toggle: ENABLE_SMARTSPACE_REMOVAL and SMARTSPACE_AS_A_WIDGET. Changing these requires root access, though.
By default, the At a Glance widget is available on the lock screen and home screen on Pixel phones. It shows you the date and current weather conditions at all times and contextually changes to give you key information ahead of time, like upcoming calendar events, weather alerts, traffic warnings for commuters, package tracking information, timers and stopwatches, a flashlight toggle, and more.
The widget is integral to the Pixel experience, but it’s understandable that not everyone wants it on both the home screen and lock screen. It sits at the top of the firstmost home screen, effectively preventing you from adding apps and widgets to the dedicated space, shaving off one row of extra space you could otherwise customize to your liking. Based on our understanding, flipping off the toggle leaves the widget intact on the lock screen.
Given that the toggle is still under development, it’s not clear when exactly it will launch. Since it’s part of QPR2’s code, it’s likely that we will see it in March 2024 the earliest, which is when QPR2 should launch in stable as the Android 14 March Feature Drop. However, given that the toggle still isn’t user accessible, it’s possible that Google will postpone it even further or that the company will scrap the experiment and not launch it at all.
