You can now customize your Android home screen shortcut with any widget of your choice

Google is not only passionate about developing innovative apps and services but also about finding fresh ways for you to access them. When the company is eager to promote something new, you can count on shortcuts appearing all over your Android device—ensuring you’re never more than a few taps away. After exploring some early prototypes last year that aimed to deliver another convenient method for accessing that signature Google experience, we’re now finally seeing the arrival of new shortcuts in the Google Search home screen widget.

We first caught a glimpse of this system back in September when we discovered development work on a new “shortcut” option for the 4×1 Google widget—the version you can manually add to your home screen rather than the one in the launcher’s bottom-of-the-screen bar. This feature would let you choose from several options to add a new icon to the widget, quickly launching tools like translation or current weather searches. Later, we spotted an alternative interface with the shortcut separated from the widget’s main search bar, positioned in a circle off to the side.

With this week’s rollout of the latest 16.3.34 build of the Google Android app, 9to5Google has observed that these widget shortcuts are now available to everyone. The interface we’re seeing is the first version we previously previewed, featuring shortcut icons seamlessly integrated into the main search bar.