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Google Now on Tap was introduced alongside Android 6.0 Marshmallow, which used context on your screen to help you find information. Google Assistant replaced Now on Tap (for compatible devices), and carried over most of its functionality. Now Assistant is making it slightly more obvious that it can search your screen and take screenshots.
We all had high hopes for Google Now on Tap, but the reality of actually using it didn't live up to the hype. There are too many instances where Google Now on Tap simply misses key words or phrases, or just brings up that sad "nothing on tap right now" card. Google is testing a new feature of Now on Tap that might make it vastly more useful. Some users are seeing standard Google Now cards in Now on Tap.
Google Now on Tap sounded really cool when it was announced as part of Android M, but the reality of using it has been largely disappointing so far. Google has been adding new features in an attempt to make On Tap more engaging, and today there are three additions. In the latest round of updates, you'll have easier access to translation, content discovery, and barcode scanning.
One might assume that anyone who's enthusiastic enough to enable Google Now On Tap, the contextual search engine that uses screenshots and optical character recognition, would also want access to Google Now cards, which depend more on location, time, and search history. But you know what they say about making assumptions. Previously Now On Tap did indeed depend on the more vanilla Google Now, or at least was linked to it, but the latest version of the Google search app for Android seems to have reduced the interdependency of these two tools.
The Now On Tap portion of Google Search, still limited to Marshmallow and the Android N developer preview, is getting some new bells and whistles. A few readers tipped us off about the ability to select text in any app, activate the Now On Tap gesture, and get results only about the selected text. It's a great way to narrow the text recognition portion of the tool (which bowed earlier this year) down to only what you want. As we were preparing to report on the new feature, Google went ahead and announced it in a blog post, along with some other neat additions.
Dear international Android Police readers: thank you. Our staff is relatively small, so we can only be on the ground (so to speak) in a handful of countries... most of which are the US. So when a bunch of you from one particular place start telling us that something big is happening, we listen. The latest one is Google Now On Tap, the contextual screen-based search tool, which appears to be rolling out in Brazil right now. If you're in the country (and happen to be running Android M), give it a shot.
Google Now on Tap was arguably the highlight feature of Android Marshmallow. With the press of a finger, your phone or tablet would attempt to predict what you wanted to do with information available on screen. That's the glowy, abstract description anyway. What does it actually do? Well this new ad recently published to Google's YouTube channel gives a pretty clear idea.
Google Now on Tap, the search engine's contextual tool for Android, hides some pretty neat tricks up its sleeve. But perhaps none is so handy to music lovers as this option, spotted by an Android Police reader: Now on Tap can serve up song lyrics directly from music apps with just a few on-screen taps. Google's Knowledge Graph system can already find lyrics fairly easily, but the way it's been integrated into the retrieval system for Android is fairly slick.
Google Now on Tap sounded ridiculously cool when it was announced last year, but the reality of the feature has been lackluster to say the least. Google is apparently toying with a feature that could make it much more useful. Some users are seeing optical character recognition (OCR) as part of On Tap, but the implementation seems very early.
Google Now On Tap is one of those features that sounded great when it was announced, but has failed to live up to the hype now that it's out. It's not going to remain in that state forever, though. Google is already adding new features to On Tap, including some we've already noticed. A blog post on the Inside Search blog lays it all out.
Taking screenshots has officially become a little easier for those of us who have a device running Android 6.0. An update has begun to roll out to the Google App that adds a share button to Google Now on tap, which takes a screenshot and allows you to immediately share it. This is great news for some who have been having issues taking screenshots on their 6P while using certain cases, and for those who have trouble pressing multiple buttons at once. Let's take a quick look at how this works, and how it compares to the regular way of doing things.
If you've been following the Google Now On Tap saga in recent days, you'll be happy to know we've come full circle. A new version of the Google app last week enabled On Tap for the third dev preview, but it stopped working soon after. Now it's back to displaying a cheerful "coming soon" message. Why do you taunt us, Google?
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Update Wednesday isn't over yet, and this is a big one. Google is rolling out v5.3 of the search app and it enables Google Now On Tap for M preview 3. The app will install on Android 4.4 and higher, but it won't add On Tap functionality, obviously.
Among all the interesting tweaks to Android M, the new Google Now on Tap feature has the potential to be the most revolutionary. We won't know for sure until later, though. Google doesn't plan to make this feature fully functional until Android M is officially released.