As Google previewed, the widget shows the traffic state on major routes around you. A blue dot at the center denotes your location, with green, orange, and red lines indicating the traffic state, similar to the main app. A FAB (floating action button) on the bottom right corner lets you zoom one level out from the default view. You can zoom in to the default view by tapping the same button. The Google logo is on the other corner. The idea with this widget is to have an overview of the traffic around you always handy on your phone’s homescreen. “If you’re about to leave home, work, school, or anywhere else, you’ll know at a glance exactly what local traffic might be like,” Google said last month announcing the widget. You don’t have to open the Maps app. However, since it is always active, you must allow location access “all the time”. Tapping the widget directly opens the main app. The new Google Maps widget is resizable from covering the entire homescreen to as small as 3×2. It follows your device’s systemwide dark or light theme regardless of the theme settings for the app itself. The FAB, meanwhile, supports Google’s Material You Dynamic Color theming and automatically adapts to the color scheme of your wallpaper.

The new Google Maps Nearby Traffic widget is now rolling out

Google offers Android homescreen widgets for various first-party apps and services. You will find widgets for Maps, Gmail, Chrome, Calendar, Drive, Weather, Google Translate, to-do-list, Photos, Search, and many more apps. There are multiple widgets for some apps, such as Maps, which already has one to “Quickly find nearby places”. According to Google, the latest addition takes the number of official widgets on Android to 35. As said earlier, the new Google Maps Nearby Traffic widget is rolling out via a server-side update. If you haven’t received it, you should within a few days. You can check for it by trying to add a new Maps widget to your homescreen. While you should not require to update Maps for the widget to show up, it’s good to always have the latest version installed. You can click the button below to download the latest update for Google Maps from the Play Store. DOWNLOAD GOOGLE MAPS