Google app

With this month’s March Feature Drop, Google finally rolled out Cross Device Timers on Pixel phones. At a Glance is now readying a pair of location proximity features when you’re near an airport or transit station.

As part of a broader Material You redesign, the Google app is getting a new shortcut to quickly access “Ads personalization,” which was recently overhauled.

Last November, we previewed a Material You redesign of the Google app, and it’s now rolling out on Android. 

While Search results and the Discover feed are visually tweaked from time to time, other parts of the Google app are often slow to change. Fortunately, Google is now working on a Material You redesign of the Search app.

Back in 2018, Google introduced a customizable Search widget and is now making those personalization options more apparent by supporting the changes introduced in Android 12+.

In a curious change, the Google Search app and Discover on Android no longer opens sites in fullscreen, but rather makes use of a sheet.

With Google Calendar set to lose Assistant Reminders, you’ll be forced to use the very basic and incredibly laggy UI that’s part of the Google app. It’s still bad, but Google recently rolled out some usability tweaks to Reminders and restored the dark mode.

Last month, Google updated At a Glance with flashlight reminders and Nest Doorbell alerts. The Pixel At a Glance widget could soon get a “Cross Device Timer” capability that integrates with Google Home.

For quite some time, the Google Weather app could only be found on Android phones, but it’s now coming to tablets.

Nearly two years after the last settings redesign, Google is taking another stab at making it easier to control and manage the ever-growing list of what Assistant can do.

Following the ongoing removal of Assistant Snapshot on Android, the Google for iOS app looks to be adding a “Notifications” tab.

In addition to a bottom field, the Google app is testing a Search bar that appears at the very top of your screen. It matches other first-party apps, but it is a departure from what Google Search has looked like on mobile for the past several years.

With the Pixel 2, the Pixel Launcher was revamped to place the search field at the bottom of your screen. Four years later, the Google app looks to be readying something similar with a bottom Search bar redesign.

Assistant Snapshot carries forward the legacy of Google Now, though its prominence is diminished compared to the previous feed. Its standing might be further de-prioritized following a pair of worrisome changes to Snapshot in the Google app and Assistant.

In July of last year, we spotted development of an “Assistant Chat Head” that never ended up launching. Google is now working on a more useful “Search bubble” chat head that provides quick access to text and voice lookup.

In a very welcome change from what we previously expected, the Google Weather Material You widgets are now live on existing Pixel phones with the latest Google app beta.