All eyes are on Apple right now, as the company just unveiled the next major software update for the iPhone, iOS 16. But Apple isn’t the only company with new software to showcase, as Google has quietly rolled out the June Feature Update for Pixel Phones – and it comes with some eye-catching enhancements of its own.
Header upgrades are presumably improvements to Google’s Quick Look widget, making important information viewable from both your home and lock screens.
The update adds new options for information that can be shown on the lock screen, including video feeds from your Nest Doorbell, air quality alerts, and reminders that your flashlight is on .
But that’s not all this update has to offer. It also allows you to add a shortcut to the screened vaccine card on the home screen so you can show proof of your vaccination status with a single tap.
Elsewhere, Google’s Live Translate now supports Traditional Chinese, Korean, Dutch, Turkish, and Thai; new wallpapers available; and the update comes with the Pocket Operator app (opens in a new tab)allows you to edit and add audio to your recorded video.
There’s also a ton of the usual bug fixes and security updates, so even if the new features don’t interest you, the update is worth the download. The feature has already started rolling out but won’t be available to everyone right away, so keep an eye out for notifications on your phone.
Analysis: the lock screen is getting an upgrade on both iOS and Android
One of the big new features coming in iOS 16 is the ability to fully customize the lock screen and add widgets to it. It’s a big change, but with this Feature Drop, Pixel users are getting some new widget-like features right now through a Quick Look update.
These new features follow other recent Quick View updates that added information like earthquake alerts and details of connected Bluetooth devices to the lock screen, so you can see a lot of things without unlocking your phone.
That said, these features are only available to Pixel owners – not the wider Android world, and it looks like iOS 16 will allow users to add even more things to the lock screen.
So this doesn’t quite align with what Apple is doing, but otherwise it’s available now, while iOS 16 probably won’t be released in its final form until around September.
