A few months ago, Google announced a new widget that can take care of apps, games, and entertainment recommendations based on your preferences. Now, the company has released the Google Play Collections widget for all Android smartphones and tablets in the USA.
Google Play Collections widget takes care of all your app, game, and entertainment needs
After announcing it in July, Google has widely released the Google Play Collections widget for Android smartphones and tablets in the USA. It could be released in other countries over the next few weeks or months. If you have the 42.5.15 version of the Google Play Store and live in the USA, you should be able to see the new widget in the widgets section on your Galaxy smartphone and tablet.
This widget aggregates content from the Google Play Store, other Google services, and other partner apps.
This widget has two styles (via 9To5Google): Compact Bar and Recommendations Feed. The compact bar version of the widget shows recommendation categories, while the feed takes up almost the entire home screen and shows icons for app and game recommendations and thumbnails for products and videos. You can see both versions in the screenshots below.
Apps recommendations are arranged into five categories: Game, Food, Listen, Read, Shop, Social, and Watch. Tapping any of these categories opens the Play Collections feed in fullscreen mode. Additional apps that you have already installed are showcased at the bottom of the screen. If you use YouTube Music, the Play Collections screen recommends ‘Continue Listening' alongside newly released music and podcasts.
The Food category recommends nearby food joints/restaurants and cooking and recipe videos from YouTube. Recommendations in the Social section include content from the ‘From Your Feed' section of Reddit. There is also an App Library tab that displays all the apps installed on your phone, and they are automatically arranged into various categories.
You can watch the Play Store Collections widget and app in Google's video below.
It isn't clear if Google has plans to release the Play Collections widget in other countries. We think the company is waiting for partnerships with local app developers and services before releasing the widget in other countries.
