Evolving Pixel At A Glance Into An Android OS Feature

Some vehemently want the ability to remove At a Glance from the top of the Pixel homescreen. I personally find it useful as a space for high-priority notifications and think most users also get daily utility out of it. However, I do think At a Glance in 2025 is underutilized and Android should be doing much more with it.

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At a Glance has a prime location at the top of your first homescreen and lockscreen. Upcoming calendar events, Commute, and Time to Leave are good examples of high-priority alerts that benefit from the placement. All you have to do is turn on your phone’s screen or unlock to get information that is actionable. Similarly, Travel provides contextual help by showing what baggage carousel to check after landing. 

If Google does nothing else, I think At a Glance should move away from lines of text and adopt a more graphical interface that takes advantage of the full rectangle. For example, the card that shows tomorrow’s weather could benefit by showing a forecast in 4 or 6-hour increments.

In many ways, I’m describing one-line widgets or Wear OS Tiles. The Pixel Battery widget’s most compact configuration can show three or so devices in a single line and would be a natural fit. Other ideal candidates include the Google Home Favorites widget, the World Clock with up to four cities, a Fitbit version of Google Fit’s Multiple stats, Keep’s Quick capture, and YouTube Music’s Now Playing. All would have transparent backgrounds.

To take things a step further, I think first and third-party apps should be able to plug in and show notification-esque cards in At a Glance. You can easily imagine one for weather that shows the current temperature and a forecast for the next few hours, with a full tap opening the app.

At a Glance can already surface Ridesharing status updates and workout progress from Fitness apps, so there’s precedent for integrations. Opening up At a Glance to other apps could result in very neat utilities and developer creativity.

But to get broad adoption, At a Glance needs to expand beyond the Pixel and become an Android feature in OEM launchers. It already exists as a universal widget in the Google app with a limited subset of capabilities: Weather (including severe Alerts), Upcoming events/reminders, Food and household orders, Commute, Time to leave, and Travel. 

If anything, I think Android 16’s Live Updates for rideshare, delivery, and navigation are better served appearing in the At a Glance space on your home and lockscreen than at the top of the notifications feed. On Pixel phones, there’s more physical separation at the top of your screen.

Looking at the current landscape, Samsung has the “Now Bar” and “Live Notifications.” Compared to At a Glance, it’s also for notifications, but seems more catered towards active controls than high-priority or ambient information. That might have a place, but I wonder whether the focus on having an iPhone-like Dynamic Island — which Apple created more due to iOS not really having interactive notifications — competitor ends up creating a two-tier notification system that might be confusing for Android users.

The main idea here would be to make At a Glance the new Google Now to give all Android users a space where proactive help can appear. If the Pixel team has evidence that people over the years have found At a Glance to be useful, the Android side of the unified division should run with it and create something useful for everyone.

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