One by one, Google's advanced search features disappear. Google's search tools menu used to include a lot of filters and now there are only 2 filters.

Google has quietly removed the features that allowed you to restrict results to visited pages and pages you haven't visited yet. "Visited pages" and "not yet visited" are no longer included in the search tools menu.

Here's a screenshot from 2013: 9 search tools.


A screenshot from 2014: 4 search tools.


And here's the same menu today: only 2 search tools left, at least for now.


I'm sure that Google will soon remove "reading level" and "verbatim", since they're probably used by a small percentage of Google users, just like all the other advanced search features. Google now focuses on answering questions and natural language understanding, so these features for power users are no longer important.

Here's a list of cool features removed by Google in the past 5 years:

* finding sites with images
* finding search results in foreign languages ("translated foreign pages")
* restricting results to forums, reviews, blogs
* finding recipes (the feature is still available here)
* removing shopping sites from the list of search results
* blocking search results
* quick view for PDF files and Office files
* timeline view for search results.

Android Device Manager is now available in Google Search for desktop. If you search for [find my phone] or [find my tablet] and you're logged in to your Google account, you can see a map that shows the most recent location of your Android phone or tablet. If you have more than one Android device, there's a dropdown that lets you select other phones and tablets connected to your account.


The location is not displayed instantly, so you may see the message: "locating your phone" for a few seconds. Obviously, your phone or tablet needs to have a working Internet connection, location needs to be enabled and the setting: "remotely locate this device" has to be enabled in Google Settings / Security.

If your Android device is nearby, you can also click "ring" to quickly find it. "Your phone will ring at full volume for 5 minutes. Press its power button to stop the ringing."

Click the map from Google Search to open Android Device Manager and use other features that let you lock your device and erase all your data.

{ via +Google }

Google has a new Android app that lets you input text using handwriting. "Google Handwriting Input allows you to handwrite text on your phone or tablet in 82 languages. It supports printed and cursive writing, with or without a stylus. Google Handwriting Input also supports hundreds of emojis, so you can express yourself in any Android app."

After you select your favorite languages from the settings, Google downloads the language packs. The English files are preloaded, so there's nothing to download. By the default, handwriting recognition works offline, but you can tap the cloud button to switch to the online recognition mode. Here's a help center page that offers more information about Google Handwriting Input.


Google Handwriting Input works like a regular Android keyboard, so you can use it any Android app that lets you input text. Google automatically converts your handwriting to a text and shows some other candidates (long press the centered candidate to see even more suggestions). If you try to write a word that's too long, you can type the first part of the word and then continue entering the rest of the word, as Google's app is smart enough to merge them. You can also write two lines or switch to the landscape mode.


"By building on large-scale language modeling, robust multi-language OCR, and incorporating large-scale neural-networks and approximate nearest neighbor search for character classification, Google Handwriting Input supports languages that can be challenging to type on a virtual keyboard. For example, keyboards for ideographic languages (such as Chinese) are often based on a particular dialect of the language, but if a user does not know that dialect, they may be hard to use," informs the Google Research blog.

Google's app claims to support even terrible handwriting, but that's not always the case. Sometimes a poorly written letter can make the app return incorrect results, especially for less common words.

Google Handwriting Input requires Android 4.0.3 or later and works for both phones and tablets. It integrates many features that were previously available in other specialized Google apps and services (Mobile Google Search, Google Translate for Android and iOS, Google Input Tools for Gmail, Google Docs and Google Translate, Gesture Search for Android, Input Methods for Chinese, Cantonese and Hindi).

YouTube tests a new HTML5 video player with a transparent control bar that hides when you're not using it, just like mobile video players.



After a few seconds, controls disappear.


This screenshot shows both the experimental player (at the top) and the regular player (at the bottom). As you can see, the "watch later" button is not available in the new player. Another change is that the seek bar is thinner and it's enlarged when you mouse over the bar.


The experimental player has bigger and bolder icons. Toggles for autoplay and annotations look better, while dropdowns for speed and quality are replaced by mobile-inspired menus.


{ Thanks, Angelo Giuffrida and Sterling Alvarez. }

Google Play Music had a special playlist called "Shared with me", but it's no longer available. The playlist included all the songs shared with you by Google+ users.


Here's how Google described this feature: "Share a free play of the songs and albums you've purchased on Google Play with your friends on Google+. They can share their purchases with you too. Forget the name of that song shared with you last week? No problem, you can find all of the music shared with you in your 'Shared with me' auto playlist."

The auto playlists section from the sidebar only has 4 auto playlists: "queue", "thumbs up", "last added" and "free and purchased".


{ Thanks, Boris Larson. }

Google added support for Android apps in Chrome OS, but there are only a few Android apps in Chrome Web Store. Developers tested the apps and tweaked them to work well in Chrome OS, even if they were created for phones and tablets.

Now there's an app for Chrome and Chrome OS that lets you run Android apps. It's called ARC Welder (ARC = App Runtime for Chrome, Weld = to unite) and it's mostly for Android developers that want to test their apps before submitting them to Chrome Web Store. You can select any APK file, but not all of them work, especially if they use Google Play Services APIs.


I've tried various APK files from APKMirror.com. A few of them worked properly (IMDb, BBC News, Wikipedia), while others crashed (for example: Amazon and Yahoo Weather), required Google Play Services (like YouTube and other Google apps) or didn't work that well (like Aviary). ARC is still in beta, so there are still many bugs that need to be fixed.

Google Now shows a new card for Google+ Stories. Google automatically generates stories using the images you upload to Google+ Photos. "Your best photos are automatically chosen and arranged in a fun timeline to show the highlights of your trip or event," explains Google.


Until now, users only received Google+ notifications.

{ Thanks, Angelo Giuffrida. }

Google's help centers have switched to Material Design. Help centers use different colors, much like the mobile apps. Gmail's help center uses a red background for navigation elements and it's annoying because it distracts you from the article.


Chrome's help center uses blue and it's interesting to notice that the sidebar stands out more than the article. There are many other services that have blue help centers: Search, Calendar, AdWords, AdSense, AdWords, Maps.



Here's the homepage for Google Drive's help center. The transition between Google's help centers is jarring because they look so different now. Colors should be used sparingly and shouldn't distract from the main content.


{ Thanks, Mohamed. }

If you switched to the new Google Contacts interface and select Contacts from the Gmail dropdown, you'll no longer see the old Google Contacts. Google will open the Contacts preview in a new tab and not inside Gmail, which doesn't use Material Design yet.


You can switch back to the old Contacts by clicking "Leave the Contacts preview" in the "More" menu. Another option is to use this permalink for the old Google Contacts: https://mail.google.com/mail/#contacts or this keyboard shortcut: press g then c in Gmail (assuming that keyboard shortcuts are enabled).

As previously announced, Google Drive has a new section for Google Photos and the new feature is gradually rolled out. Here's how it looks in Google Drive for desktop.

You should see a message which informs you that the new feature is enabled: "New! Access your Google Photos from Drive".


There's a Google Photos section in the sidebar. Click the new menu items and Google suggests to add the folder to My Drive to make it easier to organize your photos.


Click "Create folder" and Google Drive shows a strange message: "You have given Google Keep access to your files in Google Drive. Creating the Google Photos folder in My Drive will give the app access to your photos and videos from Google Photos, as well (including photos and videos from your mobile device if you've turned on AutoBackup)."


Google adds a Google Photos folder to My Drive, which groups your photos by year and month. For some reason, Google Drive doesn't show your albums. You can preview photos, download them, delete them, rename them, get permalinks, share photos with other people, move them to other folders.


Photos and videos aren't imported instantly. Google Drive only shows a few recent photos and this message: "Stay tuned! Your older photos are coming soon."