Google is bringing its new Material Design style to all of its biggest apps, and today that includes its namesake. Anyone who’s running Android Lollipop should soon begin to see a more colorful design inside of the Google app. It doesn’t appear that the app will look all that different, but it’s getting a number of new features in this update too. Most notably, it’ll now be able to search inside of other apps. Google gives the example of searching Tumblr by saying, “OK Google, search Tumblr for ‘Things Organized Neatly,’” at which point the app would send you into the Tumblr app and display the appropriate results.
Google app updated with Material Design for Android Lollipop
is The Verge’s executive editor. He has covered tech, policy, and online creators for over a decade.
"OK Google" gets more powerful in a couple different ways
The “OK Google” command will also now work on certain phones even when their screen is turned off. That’s starting small, however, including only the Nexus 6, Nexus 9 or the Galaxy Note 4 for now. Today’s update also allows the Google app to search your email for events and then automatically suggest reminders to you — something that we started to see Google do with its Material Design update for Calendar just last week. Oh, and you can now ask Google to flip a coin for you — we’re holding out hope that it’ll add support for rolling a d20 too.
Google only says that this update is coming to phones running Lollipop, so it’s unclear when, if ever, devices running Jelly Bean or below will see it. Fortunately, the first updates to Lollipop are beginning to roll out now.
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