Google Arts & Culture is the latest Android app to introduce a homescreen widget. This one celebrates the birthdays of famous artists by showcasing their artwork.
Since the launch of Android 12 and Material You, Google has been steadily ramping up the availability of widgets in its many apps. Today, we have an ever growing ecosystem of widgets, ranging from practical and informative to the purely aesthetic. This latest Android widget, arriving in the Arts & Culture app, falls firmly in the latter category.
Once you update to version 9.4 of Google Arts & Culture, rolling out now via the Play Store, the new widget should be immediately available to use. The design is pretty simple, mimicking a framed painting, beneath which is the artist’s name and the museum where that artwork is kept.
Each day, a new artist will be featured in the Google Arts & Culture widget, selected based on birthdays. For instance, today’s featured artist, Diego Rivera, was born on December 8, 1886. Tapping on a featured work of art opens the Arts & Culture app to share more information about it and its artist.
Cleverly, the widget doesn’t feature one lone artwork from the day’s artist, but multiples. As you resize the widget on your homescreen, a different work will appear, to better match the current shape. Like every other recent widget from Google, the Arts & Culture widget also changes its background color, in Material You style, to be clearly visible against your current wallpaper.
All in all, the Google Arts & Culture widget should make for a pretty delightful way to keep your Android homescreen feeling fresh with new surprises each day. Tying the chosen artwork to the artist’s birthday is also a fun way to remember the person behind each piece.
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