Google May Be Revamping Android’s Search Bar With Handy New Shortcuts

Android users are reporting a new Search widget popping up on in the latest beta version of the Google app, which adds a customizable shortcut (on top of the Lens and Speak Now shortcuts). We haven't seen any official confirmation from Google on this feature just yet, so please treat this bit of news with a pinch of salt. Nonetheless, if this addition is available in the final release, the Google Search bar could offer more personal recommendations with just a simple tap.

Google's Android Search widget is getting supercharged with new shortcuts

The widget could soon offer a third, customizable shortcut button with support for five actions.

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— AssembleDebug (Shiv) (@AssembleDebug) September 9, 2024

For a random set of users running the latest Google beta app (version 15.35.41.29.arm64), Google seems to be testing a small, but significant improvement to its home screen Search widget. Presently, the widget has three icons flanking the search field—namely the Google icon which brings users to their personalized Google Search/Discover page, and the Google Lens visual search tool, and the Speak to Search microphone icon.

As shown in the X post above, the test widget now has a "+" icon as well. Tapping the icon takes users to the new-ish Search widget customization settings. In the menu, users have standard theme/color and transparency controls, but below that, there's something new called "Choose a shortcut." Within this menu, users can set the shortcut to directly launch Translate (text), Song Search, Weather, Translate (camera), Finance, or do nothing at all. 

While Finance is highly specialized, the other four could be useful functions that users can quickly access without digging into submenus or accessing via an additional voice command. We also suspect that there may be more options in the future, such as a dedicated Gemini AI or Google Assistant icon. The company quizzically dropped dedicated Google Assistant support from the Search bar earlier this year, so it'd be nice to have quick access to that function again.

At the moment, selecting one of the five functions isn't saved, but it's unusual for Google to drop an empty shell in a beta app, so we can expect Mountain View to push full functionality out into the wild soon. Whether this new shortcut icon will enter the mainstream release remains to be seen; Google is well-know for sunsetting projects nearly as quikcly as they were developed.