Google Docs adds formatting sidebar on Android tablets

Abner Li | Feb 16 2024 - 2:16 pm PT

Instead of just a toolbar, Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides now offers a sidebar for accessing the various formatting options on Android tablets.

Previously, Google Docs/Slides/Sheets housed its formatting options in a toolbar. A new button at the very end lets you switch to a “Format” panel that appears to the right of the document. Undo/redo remains at the top along with the Editing/Viewing/Suggesting switcher.

The sidebar offers much better spacing than the toolbar and is also persistent as you enter text. You get access to line spacing, columns, clear formatting, and other granular options this way.

Google says this approach “reduces the number of taps needed to navigate to formatting options, enabling you to more easily arrange text, tables, images and more.”

This Google Docs sidebar is already rolling out to Android tablets and will be fully available over the coming weeks. Recent large screen optimizations have made the Android apps look a lot like the web version.

On a related note, Google Sides on the web will let you drag and drop an image to replace a background: “Hovering over the border of an empty slide before dropping in an image (from your desktop, Content Library or another webpage) will now set the image as the background in Google Slides.”