YouTube finally gets widgets on Android for faster searching and browsing

You can finally add widgets related to your favorite streaming platform, YouTube, to your home screen. Two brand new widgets are being rolled out right now, which will allow users to quickly search and navigate the video platform app.

Both widgets are styled around Google’s Material You — an auto theme-ing solution, which aims to make your home screen stylish and clean. The widgets themselves present users with several shortcuts to specific YouTube functions or categories.

As of now, there are two widgets to choose from. One of them is more minimal, offering a direct YouTube search. That could potentially save you a tap or so, when compared to searching via the Google bar, as that covers the general web, instead of a specific app.

The second widget is admittedly more robust, as it offers not only the ability to search YouTube directly, which can take you to your favorite part of the app, such as your list of Subscriptions or your Library.

The amount of buttons present depends on how wide the widget is horizontally. And that really highlights the missed opportunity to have the search bar disappear when you shorten the widget. Including the bar on both widgets makes it a bit redundant, given that it’s already available separately. Oh well!