Google rolls out attractive, new apps search UI

It looks like Google has been working behind the scenes to make searching for apps a much more intuitive and better-looking experience on Android. As spotted by the folks at Android Police, if you go searching for apps from the default search feature in Android, you’ll now get a very attractive, Material-themed grid of apps. Although it doesn’t work for every single term, simply search for anything followed by ‘apps’ and it’ll bring up a grid of downloadable options from the Google Play Store.

I hit the search widget and typed in ‘camera apps’, ‘music apps’ and ‘to do list apps’ and it brought up the options shown below in the gallery. The screenshots were taken after I hit the ‘expand’ arrow on the original search results. It’s quick and intuitive, shows star ratings based on Play Store reviews and even shows if you have the app installed on your phone already. Apps are shown on flat cards in a three-column grid. What’s more, the cards are color-matched to the app icon colors. As a side note: ‘word processor apps’ also worked.

As mentioned previously, it doesn’t work for every term just yet. For instance, I searched for ‘twitter apps’, ‘shopping apps’ and ‘photography apps’ and got nothing more than a plain-old web search. Clearly, Google has some work to do to make sure all categories of apps are covered. I can’t imagine I’m the only person in the world who likes to search for Twitter or photography apps. Give then fact that this isn’t officially announced anywhere and it seems to have been trickling in over the past couple of days, it would appear Google isn’t done with it. Regardless, I definitely appreciate the more aesthetically pleasing app results (when they show up).

Give the new feature a spin and let us know what works (or doesn’t work) for you.