One of the big new anticipated features coming to the next version of Android is finally rolling out to users who are on the Android Marshmallow Preview 3. The update to the Google App brings it to version 5.3 and introduces the Now On Tap feature. Now on Tap allows users to long press the home button and, depending on the app they are in, will pull up a relevant list of search results overlaid right on the app. In other words, you don’t have to leave your Netflix app to search for information on Narcos, or find relevant links to the currently displayed artist in your Google Play Music app.
As you can see in the screenshots above, Now on Tap displays cards which are relevant to the content it finds on the screen with links to Google search, Twitter, news, images, IMDB, YouTube, or other related apps. “Grabbing” the cards and scrolling up will display even more relevant cards. So far the functionality seems hit and miss and seems to work in the Google+, YouTube, Chrome, Google Play Music, and Netflix apps. A few other apps that we tried out came up with a “Nothing on tap” message. It also works on your home screen if you have certain widgets installed, for example it will bring up search results for news events if you have the Google Newsstand widget on your screen.
The update also brings the new Google Now card style to Android Marshmallow after being updated on Android 5.x Lollipop devices earlier this month. The app drawer and widget selector also got refreshes with a scrollbar indicator along the right hand side of both screens and the widget selector getting a new layout.
Are you running the preview build of Android Marshmallow? Have you received the update yet? If so which apps have you successfully used it with? Let us know in the comments below, or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
