The Google app has been updated to version 6.9 this week, and with any new app, it has been torn apart to see what new goodies may be hiding in the code. The update itself isn’t all that big. Mostly bringing in bug fixes and such. But it does bring in some features that are going to be launching in the near future, perhaps. The code in this update hints at a few new features coming, but this doesn’t mean that they are absolutely coming. So it’s important to take this with a grain of salt, even though the proof is quite literally there.
Offline Maps has become a pretty popular feature for a good number of people that use Google Maps often but perhaps travel in areas where mobile networks aren’t all that great, or they just want to save some data. It now looks like Google is going to make those offline maps even better. By making them searchable. Those of you that use Offline Maps already, will know that this feature is actually available in Google Maps. So it appears that Google is just bringing the functionality on over to the Google app, where you are more likely to search anyways.
Another feature found in the code is a native image viewer. But some of the code in there is a bit interesting. Not only do we see code for the title, website, and such, which you’d expect to see anyways. But it appears that there are templates for recipes and even items you may be searching for to buy. As there are labels for ingredients, time and yield as well as brand, price, reviews, in stock and other labels that would be useful when searching for a product like Google Home.
Finally, Google may be making autocomplete a bit smarter. The search bar in the Google app is already fairly useful, allowing us to search the web and our phone at the exact same time. But the autocomplete could use some work. It appears that autocomplete will be recommending related terms instead of things you’ve searched for in the past. Which should be a bit more helpful for most people.
The latest version of the Google app should be making its way to everyone’s device already, but if you don’t have version 6.9 just yet you can grab it from the link down below.
Download: Google App