Google today updated its Gmail app designed for the iPhone and the iPad, introducing a new widget that can be added to the Today center alongside other widgets or to the Home Screen on an iPhone.
After updating, the Gmail widget can be added to the Home Screen by pressing and holding to enter jiggle mode and then tapping the "+" button. From there, scroll down and tap on Gmail to add the widget, using a finger to drag it to the appropriate spot.
The Gmail widget can be used to search within the Gmail app, compose a new email message, or view unread email messages. It provides shortcuts for these tasks only and does not list sensitive email information nor can it be customized with other functionality.
Google Maps users in the U.S. will now see the name "Lake America" instead of "Lake Ontario" for the Great Lake that straddles the New York—Ontario border.
Google said it made this change in response to the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) updating the name for "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America," following an executive order issued by U.S. President Donald Trump last week....
Wednesday August 19, 2026 12:00 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Google today said eligible college students in the United States can get a free year of Google AI Pro. Google AI Pro is normally priced at $19.99 per month, and it includes 4x higher usage limits in Gemini, access to Gemini Spark, Gemini in Google apps like Gmail and Google Docs, and 5TB of storage space.
Eligible college students outside the United States can get a free year of Google AI...
Sunday September 13, 2026 3:00 am PDT by Eric Slivka
Update 10:04 a.m.: iOS 27 is rolling out now, though it may take a bit for all users to see it, so keep checking!
Apple is about to release iOS 27, which will finally deliver more advanced Siri AI capabilities as well as a variety of other refinements, improvements, and new features to iPhones. It's Apple's biggest software update of the year, and Apple announced at Wednesday's iPhone event...
Wow - great job on a useless widget - so instead of just viewing the app icon with unread counts, or just tapping the icon to open the app and getting the same functionality, we now have the option of taking up 8 icon spaces. Awesome work Google!
Widgets have potential and I hope Apple delivers it with the next iteration. Right now they are basically huge icons.
I want widgets to be contextual, interactive, clickable and able to perform the functions of the app from the main screen without taking me to it and adding one more step to the process.
Wow - great job on a useless widget - so instead of just viewing the app icon with unread counts, or just tapping the icon to open the app and getting the same functionality, we now have the option of taking up 8 icon spaces. Awesome work Google!
well to be fair, they are pretty limited by apples widget guidelines
I remember an article from a few years ago that said "You want the best Google experience? Buy an iPhone". Exactly pointing out that for some reason Google pays much more attention to its iPhone apps than to its Android apps.
The American market is dominated by iOS, and Apple users are also the most willing to pay for apps and services, I am not coming up with this, I actually heard about it in an App Development research/teaching group.
The rest of the world uses Android, but a large proportion of those users are not paying subscribers to any type of service Google offers, so... it makes sense.
