The Google app is slowly becoming less cluttered on Android

The Google app is not the company’s nicest looking application, but a small carousel redesign on Android makes it a tiny bit more cohesive.

Previously, you had five pill-shaped shortcuts underneath the Search bar. Each was accompanied by an icon, name, and short description. 

• Search photo: From your library
• Translate text: With your camera
• Solve homework: With your camera
• Identify song: By listening
• Shop for products: In your screenshots 

The text — which mixed sentence and upper case — was a bit unwieldy and the double carousel design cluttered the app quite a bit.

Old vs. new

Google is now simplifying those shortcuts to feature just icons, be smaller, and colorful background that stand out a great deal more. Most open Google Lens, while the last one is Sound Search. The icons are more than enough to convey each function. 

What’s also nice about this approach is that you can see all four in one go. Scrolling only comes into play when you’ve taken a recent screenshot that can be analyzed. Meanwhile, it looks less like a carousel so the “your space” cards — which are nice and glanceable — below are more prominent.

This design has been implemented in the Google Search app on iOS for quite some time. 

We’re seeing this carousel redesign with the latest Google app beta (version 15.34). It’s not yet in stable channel.

More on Google app:

• Google Search bar widget redesign adds Dynamic Color, limits customization [U]
• Here are the new Google Weather widgets [Gallery]
• Google Search redesigns web stopwatch and timer