Following improvements to Google Maps that surface interesting locales, Google Search is now showing restaurant reviews from top critics and what best-of lists (from various publishers on the web) a place has been mentioned in. In related updates, the latest Google app beta now shows weather and stock cards when triggering Now on Tap from the homescreen.
Building on a new text selection and search feature introduced last month, an update to Now on Tap adds the ability to translate foreign languages found in any app. On Tap can now also read QR and bar codes, as well as suggest interesting articles and videos as part of a new Discover feature.
Ever since the introduction of Material Design, its not-so-new company-wide design language, Google has changed a number of things — like, for instance, its logo — that have affected almost the entirety of its looks.
Most of them were particularly notable on Android — the software keys inside the navigation buttons, for instance, were aesthetically overhauled with Lollipop. But it looks like the company has another redesign of these buttons in mind for later this year…
Update: In a blog post, Google details new features currently available in English and rolling out soon to other languages. Now on Tap now officially works in the camera app and for images. For instance, users can open the camera app and initiate Now on Tap to identify landmarks. It can also be used in apps like Pinterest to identify artwork.
Rolled out last night to all users, Now on Tap has a new interface and the ability to manually select text from anything in a screenshot to perform a search. Due to a number of factors, Now on Tap has yet to become a hit feature and today’s update is a meaningful change to the product.
For all the features the Google app has added, it still does not have any image recognition capabilities. Google Goggles from 2010 could recognize book covers, landmarks, and even solve Sudoku, but was ultimately discontinued due to a lack of use. However, Now on Tap has gained some of those features in a recent update.
Update 1/13: In another update (version 5.8.47.19), the normalized app icons were removed and are now back to their original size. The feature was likely just a bug. This update also fixes the gap between the favorites tray and onscreen buttons in landscape and the non-grayed out buttons when the launcher is opened.
The Google Now Launcher received quite a few updates in version 5.8.45.19 of the Google app. The launcher, which resides within the Google app, now has landscape orientation and normalizes the size of app icons.
Now on Tap has been criticized for its lack of usefulness since its launch in October. Today, it’s receiving its first major update that adds new languages and now recognizes more types of information. The screenshot feature previous seen in the beta channel is also now rolling out again.
The latest beta of the Google app adds a share icon to Now On Tap that doubles as a quick way to take and share screenshots of your current screen. While Now on Tap hasn’t been the most useful feature yet, most people will find this to be a very practical and nifty trick.
Google is rolling out an update to its self-titled app for Android, bringing it up to version 5.3. It’s available to download for free for anyone running Android 4.4 or later, bringing a fresh look to the standard Google Launcher. For those running Android ‘M’ Dev Preview 3, the update also brings one of Marshmallow‘s most exciting features: Now on Tap…
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As part of its Android M announcement, Google showed off its Now on Tap feature which will allow you to get contextual information within any app or screen just by pressing the home button for a few seconds. With Marshmallow not set to hit the public until later this year, it gave Microsoft a chance to beat Google to it. And it has done just that in its latest Bing app for Android.
