In December, Google announced new widgets for Google Photos and YouTube Music and the preview of an updated Material You widget for the Play Books app. Now the new widget for Google Play Books is widely distributed and features an icon that you can tap to instantly open the library, with the ability to navigate through the 24-works grid via the controls at the top right.
The grid is capable of showing four to eight books and audiobooks, the latter marked with the headphones icon, as well as appropriately labeled excerpts, while all covers have rounded corners. The widget can be resized from 3 × 3 to 5 × 3 and features Dynamic Color themes.
The Google Play Books widget embraces the Material You design
Google has launched this new widget via a server-side update with the latest version 5.21.3 of Google Play Books for Android and is available for both Pixel and Samsung mobile devices. However, the Google Play Books app still uses the Material Theme and needs a redesign with the Material You design.
With this widget, all those with Material You that Google had explicitly announced are now available. You can find out which Material You widgets are exclusive to Pixels and which ones are for everyone.