Google is testing a new voice search screen in the Android beta of the Google app, right inside the home screen Search widget. For some people, tapping the mic no longer opens the usual one-off voice search page. It now brings up a swipeable hub with four options: regular Google Search, AI Mode, Search Live, and Song Search. The app also seems to remember whichever mode you used last, which means you can get back to it with fewer taps. So far, this is only showing up for some users on the latest beta, and Google hasn’t said when, or if, it will roll out more widely.
Google is changing the behavior of the interface too. In regular Google Search, the screen shows a four-bar waveform along with live transcription. In AI Mode, you get an arrow to send the query plus a stop button that takes you to an editable transcript inside Search. That should make longer spoken prompts feel easier to manage.
If you use the Search widget a lot, this is a handy update to have. It puts Google’s newer search tools closer at hand and makes them faster to open.
Google says AI Overviews now reach 2.5 billion monthly users, and AI Mode has about 1 billion users. If search keeps moving toward direct answers, that puts even more pressure on the wider web, where industry estimates say roughly 60% of searches already end without a click.
You can only test this in the latest Google app beta for Android, and even there it seems to be limited to a small group of users. There’s still no broader rollout date.
Author: Chema Carvajal Sarabia
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