I replaced all my Google widgets with privacy-focused alternatives — here’s what happened

Credit: Pankil Shah / Android Authority My home screen has had the same Google widgets for as long as I can remember — Search, Weather, Calendar, Keep, and Discover. It’s easy to overlook, but every one of these widgets does two jobs — one for me, one for Google. The weather widget knows where I am.

The search widget knows what I’m curious about. Discover knows what keeps me scrolling. You get the idea.

None of this is accidental, of course. So I decided to find out what would actually happen if I swapped all of them for privacy-focused alternatives . Spoiler: a few switches were painless, but a couple didn’t stick.