Downloading podcasts for offline listening is now live in the Google app

We reported late last month that searching and listening to podcasts is now an easier affair using Google app. We mentioned then that you could download episodes for offline listening but it wasn’t live yet at the time. That changes now as the said feature is live. Aside from being able to download episodes, you can set automatic removal of the downloaded shows, whether you listened to the episodes or not. By default, completed episodes will be removed after 24 hours and unfinished ones will be taken out after 30 days. You can extend the former to seven days and the latter to 90 days. Or if you’d rather keep episodes with you, you can turn off this option.

Source: Android Police

Google app lets you pin three categories to your home screen

If you want easy access to entertainment and sports news as well as restaurants in your area, a new update coming to the Google app version 7.11 or 7.12 beta will make it easier to access these pieces of information right from your home screen. As mentioned the three categories you can pin to your home screen include Dining, Entertainment, and Sports. Tapping on the Dining icon will let you do search for restaurants in your area, while the other two icons will bring you to the respective categories within the app. The update seems to be coming from the server side so you may or may not see this feature immediately.

Source: Android Authority

Google adds video previews in Search for Android smartphones

With people consuming more and more videos on the internet, we’re not surprised Google is releasing something related to this. If you do search on your Android via Google app or Chrome on Android, there will now be video previews on top of the search results. Much like GIF-like teasers released for YouTube desktop users, there will now be clip snippets showing up to help you find what you’re looking for quickly. Don’t worry about using up your data, the feature will only work on Wi-Fi. Google started rolling the feature out on Friday and will be coming to more users next week.

Source: Google

Google tries out putting search results within search results

Google is known to try out certain features with a small group of users to see the reception for the feature and whether it warrants a wider release. One of the new features that’s popped up on Google Search app on mobile was reported by 9to5Google’s Justin Duino. It shows additional results from a pop-up window after you look for a particular thing or term. He tried looking up the price of a product and then some sort of pop-up cards, like you’d see with Google Assistant showed up at the bottom of his screen with the words: “People also view.” Duino was running 7.8.17.21 version of Google’s app. You can see what the pop-up search results look like in the image above.