{"id":237570,"date":"2026-04-30T15:46:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T19:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/30\/android-auto-home-screen-widgets-look-nearly-ready-to-go\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T15:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T19:50:08","slug":"android-auto-home-screen-widgets-look-nearly-ready-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/30\/android-auto-home-screen-widgets-look-nearly-ready-to-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Android Auto home screen widgets look nearly ready to go"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/android-auto-home-widgets-3662452\/\">Android Auto home screen widgets look nearly ready to go<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/android-auto-home-widgets-3662452\/\">https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/android-auto-home-widgets-3662452\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-04-30 15:46:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.androidauthority.com\">www.androidauthority.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Andy Walker \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n<p>TL;DR<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Android Auto currently only has limited taskbar widget support.<\/li>\n<li>Last year we spotted Google working on new home screen widget support, codenamed \u201cEarth.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>The rough UI we saw at the time has received a major overhaul, hinting that it\u2019s nearing completion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Android Auto has been stepping into the spotlight a little more frequently than usual lately, finding itself on the receiving end of big changes like its recent Gemini rollout. Another major upgrade we\u2019ve been tracking for a while now concerns efforts to bring support for Android widgets to Auto\u2019s dashboard. And while that\u2019s still not quite ready to go, we\u2019ve got some updates to share on Google\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n<p>When we brought you a preview of how widget support was coming together last fall, everything was more than a little rough around the edges \u2014 honestly, as we should only expect from what\u2019s still a very much still in-development feature. Besides many widgets themselves not behaving correctly on the Auto dash, the interface we had for setting them up was really awkward, and felt like the sort of cobbled-together UI we\u2019d never expect to see the light of day in a finished feature. The good news there: It won\u2019t, and Google has already crafted a much more refined interface.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don\u2019t want to miss the best from Android Authority?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img class=\"e_Kg\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" sizes=\"9.375rem\" title=\"google preferred source badge light@2x\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/google_preferred_source_badge_light@2x.png 676w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/google_preferred_source_badge_light@2x-64w-20h.png 64w\" alt=\"google preferred source badge light@2x\" src=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/google_preferred_source_badge_light@2x.png\"\/><img class=\"e_Kg\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" sizes=\"9.375rem\" title=\"google preferred source badge dark@2x\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/google_preferred_source_badge_dark@2x.png 676w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/google_preferred_source_badge_dark@2x-64w-20h.png 64w\" alt=\"google preferred source badge dark@2x\" src=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/google_preferred_source_badge_dark@2x.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Looking through Android Auto version 16.8.161804-release.daily, we\u2019re able to see a lot of progress. For starters, at last check-in, Google hadn\u2019t even given this support a proper name, and was still referring to it by its codename, Earth.<\/p>\n<p><img class=\"e_Kg\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" sizes=\"calc(min(calc(100vw - 1.875rem), 51.25rem) \/ 2)\" title=\"android auto new car widget ui 1 old\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-old-scaled.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-old-29w-64h.jpg 29w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-old-1000w-2222h.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-old-648w-1440h.jpg 648w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-old-486w-1080h.jpg 486w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-old-389w-864h.jpg 389w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-old-171w-380h.jpg 171w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-old-540w-1200h.jpg 540w\" alt=\"android auto new car widget ui 1 old\" src=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-old-scaled.jpg\"\/><img class=\"e_Kg\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" sizes=\"calc(min(calc(100vw - 1.875rem), 51.25rem) \/ 2)\" title=\"android auto new car widget ui 1 watermarked\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-watermarked-scaled.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-watermarked-29w-64h.jpg 29w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-watermarked-1000w-2223h.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-watermarked-648w-1440h.jpg 648w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-watermarked-486w-1080h.jpg 486w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-watermarked-389w-864h.jpg 389w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-watermarked-171w-380h.jpg 171w, https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-watermarked-540w-1200h.jpg 540w\" alt=\"android auto new car widget ui 1 watermarked\" src=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/android-auto-new-car-widget-ui-1-watermarked-scaled.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s now replaced by the much more sensible \u201cCar widgets\u201d label, complete with a nice description.<\/p>\n<p>Once we tap through to that, we\u2019re now presented with a widget picker that looks and feels much more like the one we\u2019re familiar with from our Android home screens, including both a featured section and a complete list of available options. Selecting any of those opens up a&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/android-auto-home-widgets-3662452\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Android Auto home screen widgets look nearly ready to go https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/android-auto-home-widgets-3662452\/ Publish Date: 2026-04-30 15:46:00&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":237571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/android-auto-underrated-apps-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[70],"class_list":["post-237570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-android","tag-google"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237572,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237570\/revisions\/237572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}