Google’s new ‘Upcoming’ app section organizes urgent and timely information

Back in August, Google Now was testing a Dashboard tab that showed cards and info from other services. As part of the latest beta version of the app, a new ‘Upcoming’ tab shows cards related to “what’s happening soon and nearby.”

The Upcoming tab includes cards with more pressing updates like commute, trips, calendar, day-to-day tasks and more. Refered to as a “snapshot of what’s coming up,” any tracking updates from Gmail will also show up here. While similar to Google Assistant’s ability to detail your itinerary for the day, the tab does not include any new cards.

Meanwhile, other cards like weather and sports still remain on the main feed represented by a newspaper icon. The addition of tabs is likely a better way to let users sift through the information they receive on a daily basis through Google.

Compared to the version A/B tested in August, the tabs are much narrower and the text naming the tabs have been removed. Instead, on first receiving the feature, users are shown a tutorial that focusses user’s attention on the new tab.

The feature is still rolling out to those on the latest version of the Google app beta. However, not all users on version 6.7 have received it yet. Recent updates to the Google app have renamed Google Now to the Feed and added a new widget that shows notifications right on the homescreen under the search bar.