What you need to know
- Google Translate now has new Materials-themed widgets on Android.
- The “Save Translation” widget provides quick access to recent translations.
- Another widget gives you access to quick actions such as voice translation, talk mode, and camera-based translations.
The Google Translate app on Android received a smart Material You facelift late last year, giving it a more modern look and interactive design, but its widget was left out in the cold. That’s changing now with a few new Materials themed widgets for the app.
Google announced the new update on Twitter, where it showed what the new widgets for the home screen look like. They provide faster ways to interact with the various features of the service without having to open the app first, saving users a few taps.
The “Translate Quick Actions” widget has voice, conversation, transcription, and camera modes. In the meantime, the “Save Translation” shortcut shows your most recent translations in one place.
In addition, you can resize widgets. Their options also change dynamically depending on their size. For example, the Translate Quick Actions widget displays all four actions when expanded. The second shortcut shows the current language pairing at the top of the screen with a clipboard shortcut on the right side.
Prior to the update, the widget was only offered as a bare-bones 1×1 shortcut that you could add to your home screen to access quick actions like camera and call mode.
The new widgets also loosely match the dominant shades of your wallpaper thanks to the dynamic color theme of Android 12.
It’s the latest widget to get a makeover after years with Google’s cold shoulder against shortcuts on the home screen. The search giant previously rolled out similar treatments for Android widgets in Google Maps and Gmail, among others.
The latest visual and functional changes to the Translates widget should make it much more useful and interactive, although they do not seem to be widely available with the latest version of the app.
It is possible that the new widgets will find their way to many of the best Android phones as part of a future release in the Play Store, but an update on the server side is also an option. However, it will most likely require Android 12 or later.