TL;DR
- The Google Search dwelling display widget lately acquired a customizable shortcut button that offers you fast entry to a useful gizmo of your alternative.
- Google seems to be prepping a extra versatile model of the shortcut button that offers you entry to all of the accessible instruments in a brand new pop-up window.
- The new Multi Shortcuts button follows the up to date Search widget design we first noticed late final yr and seems in a circle to the appropriate of the search bar.
Update, March 1, 2025 (08:45 PM ET): The new Multi Shortcuts button we noticed Google making ready for final month now seems to be in energetic testing. While it’s not but accessible on all units, we’ve noticed it dwell on a few of our Android {hardware}. It may be too quickly to say when Google will really feel able to push the brand new widget design out to everybody, however we’re undoubtedly making progress in that path.
Original article, February 4, 2025 (06:18 AM ET): Google lately began rolling out the customizable shortcut button for its search widget that was first noticed in September final yr. It offers you fast entry to helpful instruments, like translation, a dictionary, finance updates, or track search. Currently, you’ll be able to solely customise the shortcut to launch one software of your alternative. However, Google may make it a bit extra versatile with a future replace.
An APK teardown helps predict options that will arrive on a service sooner or later primarily based on work-in-progress code. However, it is potential that such predicted options might not make it to a public launch.
Google is already engaged on a brand new design for the search widget’s shortcut button, which strikes it from inside the search bar to a separate circle to the appropriate. We bought our first take a look at the refreshed design late final yr, however Google appears to have some extra modifications within the works. As per new strings of code noticed within the newest Google app beta launch (model 16.4.35.sa.arm64 beta), the shortcut button may quickly provide you with entry to all of the accessible instruments.
We’ve managed to allow the brand new “Multi Shortcuts” choice forward of the rollout and, as you’ll be able to see within the connected screenshots, it replaces the shortcuts icon with a brand new app grid icon. Tapping on this new shortcut button opens a backside sheet with all of the instruments, making the shortcut button way more helpful than it is in its present kind. You can see it in motion within the video embedded beneath.
This new Multi Shortcuts button is not dwell within the present Google app launch, however we count on it to roll out quickly because it already appears to work as supposed. We’ll replace this publish as quickly because it reaches customers.