One of the most appealing aesthetic upgrades to Android 7 Nougat is the so-called Pill Widget that swaps out the Google search bar for a small and elegant pullout icon at the top left of your screen. Though custom launchers like Nova already include it, you may want to use it while keeping the original customization layer on your phone. Luckily there’s a free widget called the Pixel Pill Widget that lets you do exactly that.
Keep in mind that this is an adaptation of the button you see on the Pixel Launcher, though for practical and functional purposes it’s essentially the same thing. In fact, besides the button, you’ve also got the date, time, day, and weather info to the right just like in its namesake. Furthermore, the Pixel Pill Widget is far more customizable and can be adapted to your tastes in terms of both its looks and its functions.
From the app options menu you can change the button color, shape, and background, plus add a “connector” that joins the button with the edge of the screen to simulate the pullout action. Beyond that you can, for example, make it open your default calendar when you tap the time and date. In relation to the latter, keep in mind that by default, the weather viewer doesn’t extract data from Google Weather, but actually uses an external open-source API for that purpose. In other words, its features are fully unlinked from any Google services.
