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Play Store adds ‘Your devices’ search filter to make it easier to find compatible apps

To help you find apps for all of your Android and Wear OS devices, the Play Store now has a neat search filter to help you get compatible apps for all of your hardware.

Expanding upon the ability to remotely install apps from your phone to Android TV and Wear OS watches, this new search filter will appear when you enter a term or query and want to drill down into more concise and targetted sections.

Provided you have Wear OS and Android TV hardware connected to your account when searching for an app or service, you’ll get a dropdown toggle just under the search field that can be expanded to view the “Your devices” slide-in panel. This gives three options: “This device,” “Android TV,” and “Watch.” Naturally, the first means an Android phone or tablet, and the “Watch” option refers to any Wear OS option:

It’s important to note that for this option to appear, you need to complete a text search. For instance, searching for “YouTube Music” and tapping the autocomplete option will take you directly to the app Play Store listing, therefore bypassing the search results page and the device search filter.

We’re not entirely sure just when this option began rolling out, but it has quietly appeared across a number of our own devices over the past week. Being able to search and filter apps for your compatible devices in this way will undoubtedly save time while scouring the Play Store.

This will also help save an unnecessary step with apps that have multiple versions for each platform as you can simply find the right one for your device. Managing all of your apps across your plethora of devices will no doubt be easier. Let us know if you’re seeing this option on your device down in the comments section below

More on the Play Store:

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Avatar for Damien Wilde Damien Wilde

Damien is a UK-based video producer for 9to5Google. Find him on Twitter: @iamdamienwilde. Email: damien@9to5mac.com