Gboard is following “Write in text fields” and the new physical keyboard UI with an Assistant voice typing toolbar for the Pixel Tablet.
Instead of the full keyboard remaining visible when Assistant voice typing is triggered, you can get a new pill-shaped toolbar. Google says this UI is a way to “See more of your screen when voice typing.”
The overflow menu at the left provides access to Settings, Show voice commands, Show clipboard, and Show translate. This is followed by a shortcut that opens the emoji/expressive keyboard in a floating window, while instructional prompts appear in the middle. At the right, you get a button to bring back the full keyboard and the microphone to start/stop the speech-to-text.
You can move the toolbar anywhere, including the left/right edge of your screen where a vertical layout is offered.
Text suggestions appear inline next to the cursor. When the full keyboard is open, you get a “Toolbar” button next to the voice mic. This toolbar persists across various text fields.
So far, we’re seeing this with version 13.7 of Gboard (beta). It’s only rolled out on one Pixel Tablet (running Android 14 QPR1 stable) of ours, while we’re not seeing it on the Pixel Fold. It’s not clear if Google plans to bring the Assistant voice typing toolbar to Pixel phones, but we caught a glimpse of a possible UI last year.
More on Gboard:
- You can add an undo key to Gboard for Android
- Google improves Gboard’s support for Spanish with better autocorrect
- Gboard switching to its floating keyboard when landscape
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