Google’s dedicated search app was updated this morning on App Store with a trio of nice-to-haves. For starters, you can now easily filter your local search results for museums, coffee shops, restaurants and other places of interest. With an expanded support for Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), more webpages will now load instantly within the app. AMP-optimized webpages are denoted on search results with a lightning bolt icon. Lastly, you can now use Google’s gesture-driven Gboard keyboard in the mobile search app.
When you search for places around you in Google 23.0 for iOS—stuff like “museums”, “coffee shops”, “restaurants” et cetera—you will now see new filters like “Top Rated” and “Open Now” to help you narrow down the query and find exactly what you want.
“With this update to the Google app, you can easily turn on Gboard, a new keyboard for your iPhone and iPad,” notes the search company. Simply tap Gboard in your app settings to get started. If you’re not familiar with Gboard, it’s a gesture-driven keyboard for iPhone and iPad that lets you search and send information, GIFs, emoji and more, without switching apps.
Gboard made its App Store debut in March 2016.
Prior updates to Google’s dedicated search app have enabled several new capabilities.
For instance, you can now preview cards with 3D Touch, watch YouTube videos from cards in your feed without opening a new page or the YouTube app, see rates and booking information in search results for hotels, access menus directly from restaurant search results, protect the app’s private-browsing mode with Touch ID and more.
My colleague Anthony put together a compelling how-to on viewing and deleting your Google search history, if you’re concerned about your privacy.