Google’s Search App For Android Gets Material Design Update And New Smarts
The Google app for Android — the app that handles your voice searches, Google Now Updates and more — is getting an update today that brings Google’s new Material Design user interface to the app for devices that already run Android Lollipop (that is, the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 at this point). The update also introduces a number of new features that will be available on any Android phone (running Jellybean and up) that will make the app smarter and more useful in general.
What’s actually more interesting is that the app is also getting a little bit smarter. One of the new features — powered by the same technology that also makes Google Now possible — is Google’s ability to monitor your email for messages related to plans you are making with your friends or colleagues but that don’t involve a formal calendar invite. When Google notices those, it’ll now bring up a prompt in the Google app that asks if you want to be reminded of that “dinner with Alex” you were planning for tonight.
That’s a pretty nifty new feature, but as so often, that also depends on how you feel about Google learning more and more about you and your daily habits from (optionally) crawling your Gmail account.
And if you just can’t figure out what to do tonight because life is giving you more options than you can handle, Google now allows you to say “OK Google, flip a coin,” and Google will give you something to do (how about watching Interstellar tonight?)