Gboard 7.2 beta enables ‘Make a GIF’ creator, tweaks Search cards, adds Sticker Gallery

Abner Li | May 4 2018 - 7:37 am PT

The latest beta version of Gboard is rolling out this morning with one feature that’s long been in developement finally live: “Make a GIF.” This built-in animation creator is quite fast to access and already launched on iOS, while version 7.2 also introduces some other minor visual tweaks.

Make a GIF

After updating Gboard to the latest version, users might notice the new “My GIFs” tab to the right of “Recently used.” This section features a new “Make a GIF” button that when tapped launches a camera interface, after asking for the camera permission.

In contrast to our earlier teardowns, Motion Stills does not need to be installed in order to enable the feature. Rather, the camera component is built right into Gboard.

This simple UI features a shutter at the bottom flanked by rotate and a button to show/hide the carousel of filters just above. Seven options are available, with the default being no filter to just record a simple video that gets converted into a GIF. The six others overlay question marks, multi-faces, breaking news, fractals, a door, and flowers.

After recording, users will have the option to save it to their camera roll, re-record, and send, which adds it to the My GIFs tab for future usage and insertion into text fields. From the carousel, users can also delete any GIF with a button in the top-right corner.

Search cards

Meanwhile, the marquee built-in Search feature sees a very minor tweak to the layout. Instead of an icon, there is now “View more” text in the bottom-right of every card to open that result in a browser. It’s more apparent and easier to understand.

: Gboard 7.1

: Gboard 7.2

New sticker gallery

Gboard is doubling down on expressiveness this version thanks to a new sticker gallery. Heading to the stickers tab, tapping the ‘plus’ icon, and then “Get stickers” reveals a new collection of over 500 stills and animations. These are packs that can be saved to your favorites tab and quickly accessed.