Gemini is getting its very own Android widget

The start of May is just hours away, and from here on out it’s just a matter of days until Google I/O 2025 kicks off. This year’s shaping up to be a bit different than it’s looked in years past, with Android not necessarily taking a back burner to Google’s current AI interests, but getting its own special pre-I/O event. Even with all this about to happen just over the horizon, Google’s not about to sit around waiting for a few more weeks, and is already rolling out a very welcome addition to Gemini.

Android widgets offer some fantastically handy ways to quickly get to the app features you use the most, straight from your phone’s home screen. We recently took a look at some changes in the works for Google’s widgets for Keep and Calendar, but today we’ve got one better, as 9to5Google spots the arrival of a new widget just for Gemini.

This one appears to be arriving with version 1.0.751104895 of the Gemini app — we didn’t immediately get this update when checking on Google Play, but you can always download the app bundle and sideload it if you can’t stand the wait. That’s exactly what we ended up doing, and sure enough, Gemini now includes a single widget for you to install.

Google gives us a nice amount of flexibility here for resizing the widget to fit our needs, but however you configure it, you’ve got your search bar (with voice input) for starting a Gemini interaction, shortcuts for prompting Gemini with a file, image, or new shot from your camera, and an option to jump right into Gemini Live. You can even get really, really tiny, at which point some of those upload options start getting hidden until you’re down to just Gemini and Live, and finally end up with just a lone Gemini icon at its smallest.

Google has reportedly told 9to5Google that the Gemini widget should be arriving for everyone over the course of the next week. Google’s also in the process of bringing some similar Gemini widgets to iOS.