Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google appears to be getting Photos ready to support the ability to search through your pics from the Pixel launcher.
- Evidence in both Google Photos and recent Android 17 Beta builds hints at a new framework for Pixel launcher search bar integration.
- While Photos may be the first, other apps could make their own content searchable through the Pixel launcher.
Your phone’s home screen is arguably the most important piece of its interface — we’re constantly coming back to it when getting started with new tasks, and a smartly configured layout with our top apps and a few helpful widgets can go a long way towards helping you get the most out of your phone. For Pixel users, that includes Google’s ever-present search bar at the bottom of their screens, quickly connecting them with apps or offering a shortcut to searching on the web. But for as much as it already does, Pixel launcher search could be about to get a whole lot more powerful.
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We’ve seen Google experiment with searching images like screenshots before, but we could be about to get a much more robust image-search experience thanks to some new integration with Google Photos. Looking through the app’s latest update, a couple new text strings catch our eye:
Code
<string name="photos_settings_genericconnectedapps_searchapi_dialog_title">Access to Google Photos</string>
<string name="photos_settings_genericconnectedapps_searchapi_settings_description">The %1$s can access your photos so you can search them from the Pixel launcher. <a href=help:>Learn more</a></string>That second string really gets right to the point: We’re looking at a way to search your Google Photos library directly from the Pixel launcher.
On its own, that would certainly be pretty interesting — that reference to a “search api” sure suggests Photos is planning to offer a feature-rich search experience through the launcher. But that’s just the first bread crumb in the path we’re following today.
Here’s our next crumb: Google Photos also makes reference to an app with the package name com.google.android.apps.pixel.launcherconnector, one we haven’t seen before. Before we start tossing around theories for what Google could be up to with that, we’ve got a couple more strings that make up our final crumb:
Code
<string name="search_pref_result_connector_title">Apps in search results</string>
<string name="search_pref_result_connector_desc">Manage which apps show results in search</string>We found these in the Pixel launcher in Google’s Android 17 Beta. And looking at all this together, we start to see what shape everything is taking.
It sure feels like Google is preparing a new framework for allowing the Pixel launcher’s search bar to interface with Android apps and search through the content within. While this may be getting started with Google Photos, some of those strings feel generic enough to make us think that Google intends to leave the door open for additional apps — maybe Google will eventually connect it to your Workspace apps so you can access Docs paperwork or stuff you’ve saved to Drive, all from this same spot.
Google’s been pretty aggressive with Pixel launcher search changes lately, so it’s entirely possible we might have the chance to see this in action soon. For now, though, it’s all a bit speculative, and while we’re optimistic about the potential for this tool, we may want to wait and see how Google ultimately delivers it before we get too excited.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
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