Today, in addition to its big Fiber announcement, Google launched a new way to... well, Google. It’s called Handwrite, and it’s designed to allow handwriting recognition for Google searches on phones or tablets. Once you’ve enabled the setting in your search preferences, a small toolbar pops up when you navigate to google.com. Tap it to enable Handwrite, and then you can scrawl your search queries without needing a keyboard or voice input. It’s designed to work best in Chrome, and Google warns it’s still “experimental,” but it’s available for iOS 5-and-higher devices, phones running Android 2.3 and higher, and and Android 4.0 tablets, and in a couple of quick tests it did a nice job of recognizing our chicken scratch as actual letters. Google’s done some work with handwriting recognition before, particularly with Translate, and this is a clever new way to do some quick searching.
Google Handwrite lets you write out searches on a phone or tablet
Google announced Handwrite today, which enables handwriting recognition for Google searches.
Google announced Handwrite today, which enables handwriting recognition for Google searches.
is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.
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