Waiting. Walking. Watching TV. Working out. Winding down. Waking up. We check email pretty much everywhere these days. And when we do, we want easy access to our important messages so we can respond quickly and get back to life -- or slinging birds at thieving green pigs.
With that in mind, we’ve created a new Gmail app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. We’ve combined your favorite features from the Gmail mobile web app and iOS into one app so you can be more productive on the go. It’s designed to be fast, efficient and take full advantage of the touchscreen and notification capabilities of your device. And it’s one more reason to switch to Gmail.
Speed We want to give you the information you need quickly, with minimal effort and distraction. So we’ve included some time-saving features:
Get alerted to new messages with push notifications and sounds
Find an email in seconds with search across your entire inbox
Autocomplete email addresses from your Gmail contacts or select from your device’s address book
Upload photos with a click using the new attachment button in compose view
On iPad, navigate your inbox and read your mail simultaneously with split view
Upload photos
Reply, move, label and more
Efficiency Our inboxes overflow with dozens and even hundreds of messages a day—and this can be even more challenging on a smaller screen. The new Gmail app helps organize your mail so you don’t have to go wading through your inbox to find that key message from your boss or loved one:
Focus on your important messages first with Priority Inbox
Quickly scan countless emails on the same subject with threaded conversations
Organize your mail by archiving, labelling, starring, deleting and reporting spam
Threaded conversations on the iPad
Touch We’ve also optimized the interface so you can perform common actions in Gmail with the lightest touch:
Pull down your inbox to rapidly refresh if you’re eager for new mail
Swipe right to view your labels without ever leaving your inbox
Swiftly scroll through dozens of emails just by sliding your finger
Pull down to refresh
Swipe right to view labels
We hope the Gmail app makes checking email on the go a little easier. It is available in the App Store today and works on all devices running iOS 4+. For more information, check out our help center.
Update: 11/16/11 On 11/2 we launched a new Gmail app for iOS but after finding a bug removed the app from the App Store. Starting today, the Gmail app is now available again.
Today we’re excited to announce the new Blogger app for iOS. With the Blogger app, you can write a new blog post and publish it immediately or save it as a draft right from your iOS device. You can also open a blog post you've been working on from your computer and continue editing it while you're on-the-go. Your blog posts are automatically synced across devices, so you’ll always have access to the latest version.
Pictures are worth a thousand words, and the Blogger app makes it easy to add photos either by choosing from the gallery or taking a new photo right within the app. You can also add labels and location to provide more details about the post.
Download the Blogger app today for iOS versions 3.2 and above in the App Store. Although the user interface is only available in English at this time, the app supports blog posts written in all languages. If you’re using an Android-powered device, you can download the Blogger app for Android from the Android Market.
We’ve recently made a few new changes to Google Shopper for iPhone that makes it easy to find nearby deals when you’re on-the-go.
In the latest version of Google Shopper, in addition to the ‘Shop’ tab, you’ll now see two new tabs at the bottom of the app: Offers and My Offers. The Offers tab displays a list, or map view, of nearby offers which businesses have submitted through Google Places - from restaurant and movie theater deals to discounts on tennis lessons or a round of golf.
Let's say you come across an offer for free dessert at a nearby restaurant, but you won't have time to use it until the weekend. You can save the offer for future use, then later view and redeem it from the My Offers tab.
Additionally, if Google Offers are available in your city, you’ll be able to view and redeem your purchased offers on the My Offers tab. Google Offers are currently available in Portland, Oregon, the San Francisco Bay Area and New York, with other cities to follow.
Google Shopper 1.5 is currently available for iPhone users in the US and UK with iOS 4.0 and higher. If you’re a current Google Shopper user, you’ll automatically receive an update. Download Google Shopper 1.5 by visiting the App Store. To download Google Shopper for Android, visit Android Market.
Posted by Richard Hung, Product Manager, Google Shopper Team
We don’t have to tell you that the workforce is increasingly mobile, and that workers on the go expect to be fully productive on email and calendar from their mobile devices. But we do want to tell you that we have a few new features for Google Sync users that will help employees work efficiently from anywhere on their iPhones and iPads.
Google Sync keeps your phone’s native mail and calendar apps in sync with your Gmail, Calendar and Contacts. Today, three new updates to Google Sync for iOS will allow you to:
Search all your emails in Gmail, not just the emails stored locally by the iOS mail app.
Accept, decline or edit calendar events from the iOS calendar app.
Send email from the address you want. We recognize that some of you manage multiple email addresses from a single Gmail account.Gmail’s “Send Mail as” feature lets you send messages with another email address listed as the sender instead of your Gmail address, e.g. joe@altostrat.com instead of joe@gmail.com. Now the iOS mail app will respect these settings.
Two months ago, we launched a redesign of the Google Search app for iOS. We were happy that many of you liked the new look and interactivity of the app. However, we also heard your feedback about the app’s speed. Today we’re introducing changes that make the app more responsive as well as other visual changes that make search results even easier to read.
Faster app performance
This version of Google Search app is up to 20% more responsive as you type search queries and interact with it. As part of the speed improvements, a feature called “Just Talk” will now be off by default. Just Talk allowed you to search via voice just by bringing the phone to your ear and speaking rather than tapping the microphone icon. Turning off this feature may improve app performance, though you can easily re-enable it under the Settings > Voice Search menu.
Turn Just Talk on or off
Improved look & feel for search results
When searching on a phone, the small screen sometimes makes it difficult to read small fonts or to tap precisely on a link. To help you read and tap with ease, we’ve made the font of our search results bigger and the entire search result is now a tap target rather than just the link.
See the difference between previous (left) and new interface (right) with results now easier to read and select
Thank you for your feedback. Please continue to let us know how we can improve your experience by going to Settings > Help and Feedback > Feedback.
Google Search app is available for devices running iOS 3.0 and above. Download it from the App Store or by scanning the QR code below:
We’re happy to announce updates for two iPhone apps that help you connect the people you care about with the places you love: Google Latitude with check-ins and Google Places in 30 languages.
With Google Latitude, you can see where your Latitude friends are on a map and choose to continuously share where you are. Now, you can also choose to check in at specific places, such as your favorite restaurant or a park, to add more context to your location. You'll be able to not only let friends know that you’re just around the corner but also let them know the actual coffee shop that you’re at in case they want to join you. If Latitude is set to continuously update your location, you’ll also be automatically checked out when you leave. This way, friends aren’t left guessing if you’re still there or not before heading over to join you for a latte.
Tap the “Check in” button to start checking in at nearby places. Keep checking in every time you visit your favorite places to start gaining special status there. You’ll not only progress to become a Regular, VIP, and then Guru at your favorite places, but if you’re near Austin, Texas, gaining status lets you unlock check-in offers at over 60 places.
Just like with sharing your location, you can control your Latitude check-in privacy. Checking in is 100% opt-in, and you can choose to share any check-in with your friends on Latitude, publicly on the web and your Google profile, or just yourself.
To start checking in with Latitude on your iPhone, update the Latitude app from the App Store. The app requires iOS 4 and above, and it's available for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, and iPod touch (3rd/4th generation). However, background location updating is only available on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPad 3G.
Google Places in 30 languages Best ever! Me gusta! Mi piace! Ich liebe es! Wherever you are and whatever language you speak, we want to give you the best personalized place recommendations when you use Google Places with Hotpot. Update the Google Places app from the App Store to rate on the go and get personalized recommendations for places in 30 languages.
You’ll also have one more way to personalize your experience: saved places. Sign in with your Google Account using the info icon in the top left corner. Then, tap the new “Saved” icon on the app’s main screen to see all the places that you’ve saved or starred from the app, google.com/hotpot or maps.google.com.
Updates will appear in the App Store in supported countries throughout today. Get the latest version of Google Places from the App Store and start discovering great new places wherever you are!
Posted by Greg Blevins, Software Engineer, Google Maps for mobile team
If you need to do a Google search on your iPhone or iPod touch it's now faster and easier when you use our redesigned Google Search app, formerly Google Mobile App. If you've been using Google Mobile App for a while, you'll notice that things look different.
The redesigned home screen of Google Search app.
First, you’ll see that there are now more ways to interact with the app. When browsing through search results or looking at a webpage, you can swipe down to see the search bar or change your settings. For those who use other Google apps, there’s an Apps button at the bottom of the screen for rapid access to the mobile versions of our products.
We also included a new toolbar that will make it easier for you to filter your results. You can open this toolbar by swiping from left to right — either before you search or once you’ve got your results. If you only want images, just tap “Images,” and the results will update as shown:
The toolbar helps you to get to the right kind of results.
Second, we’ve made it easier to pick up searching where you left off. If you leave the app and come back later, you’ll be able either to start a new search right away (just tap in the search box to type, hit the microphone button to do a voice search or tap on the camera icon to use Google Goggles) or get back to exactly where you were by tapping on the lower part of the page.
Finally, there are a number of improvements we’ve made to everything else you love in the app, including Google Goggles, Voice Search, Search with My Location, Gmail unread counts and more. There's a lot in the app, so we've added a simple help feature to let you explore it. Access this by tapping the question mark above the Google logo.
The help screen can be accessed from anywhere in Google Search app.
Download and try Google Search app today; it’s available free from the iTunes App Store. You can also scan the QR code below.
Posted by Alastair Tse, Software Engineer and Robert Hamilton, Product Manager
To begin editing, visit docs.google.com in your mobile browser, and select a document to edit. Switch from view to edit mode by pressing ‘Edit’ to turn on the mobile editor and start typing away. As a reminder, mobile editing is available on Android (2.2+) and iOS (version 3.0+) devices. You can learn more about Google Docs for mobile on www.google.com/mobile. As always, feedback in the comments and on the forums is appreciated.
Over the past few months, we have launched several new mobile search features for iPhone and Android-powered devices that make it easier to find local businesses. In the US, we launched an “open now” feature which lets you filter local search results to show only businesses that are open right now, based on their listed hours. When you’re hankering for pizza at 1 o’clock in the morning, this can be really handy:
Other local search options available globally include filtering by star ratings (find a highly-rated restaurant for your first date) and by distance (especially handy when you’re on foot).
You may have noticed other improvements as well, like the addition of images, reviews from around the web and bigger buttons for viewing a map or calling a business directly. Each business’s open hours are also shown in the result snippets.
If you haven’t used local search recently, now is a great time to try it out. Just go to www.google.com in your browser, tap on the “Places” link at the top of the page, and do a search. You can also access these features when searching for businesses on Google Maps for mobile on Android devices.
Posted by Yoshi Matsumoto and Keiji Maekawa, Software Engineers
Back in August 2008, we launched a Google Translate HTML5 web app for iPhone users. Today, the official Google Translate for iPhone app is available for download from the App Store. The new app has all of the features of the web app, plus some significant new additions designed to improve your overall translation experience.
Speak to translate The new app accepts voice input for 15 languages, and—just like the web app—you can translate a word or phrase into one of more than 50 languages. For voice input, just press the microphone icon next to the text box and say what you want to translate.
Full-screen mode Another feature that might come in handy is the ability to easily enlarge the translated text to full-screen size. This way, it’s much easier to read the text on the screen, or show the translation to the person you are communicating with. Just tap on the zoom icon to quickly zoom in.
And the app also includes all of the major features of the web app, including the ability to view dictionary results for single words, access your starred translations and translation history even when offline, and support romanized text like Pinyin and Romaji.
If you’ve ever cursed a phone’s tiny screen as utterly inadequate for sifting through an overflowing inbox you’ll be pleased to hear that the Gmail mobile web app now supports Priority Inbox. Priority Inbox helps combat information overload by automatically identifying your important messages so you can focus on those first. Until today it was only available on the desktop and on Android devices.
Now, once you set up Priority Inbox in the desktop version of Gmail, you’ll see Priority Inbox sections when you visit gmail.com from your phone’s browser and click on the ‘Menu’ screen. You’ll also see importance markers in your inbox, so you can quickly identify which messages are important.
This feature is available for most mobile browsers that support HTML5, such as devices running Android 1.5+ and iOS 3+. Currently, you can’t set up Priority Inbox or mark messages as important or unimportant from here. If you have suggestions or want to learn more, visit our Help Center and forum.
As we announced last November, millions of people have downloaded Google Shopper for Android to help them shop on the go. Today, we’re excited to let you know that Google Shopper, our popular Android shopping application, is now available for iPhone as a download in the App Store. Google Shopper turns your iPhone into a shopping assistant, so you can:
Learn more about products and read relevant user reviews
Compare prices at online and local stores
Save and share products for later consideration
Let’s say you’re planning a special meal for Valentine’s Day - but you need a cast-iron skillet to get the recipe just right. With Shopper, finding one is easy enough: just type in “cast iron skillet” or say it using Voice Search. Then, from the results, you can choose a specific product that appeals to you. Alternatively, if you were in the store and wanted to see product reviews, you could also scan the barcode of a particular product.
Once you’ve selected a product result, you can compare prices across web retailers, and even find where you can purchase the item nearby, which is especially useful for those of us who are last-minute shoppers. For some retailers, we also provide inventory information so you can see if a particular store branch has the item in stock, has limited availability, or if the item is out of stock and you should head to a different store.
If you’re not sure about making a purchase or are building out a gift list, you can “star” products for future consideration. You can also share items with friends across your social network to let them know about products you love or great deals you've found.
You can download Google Shopper for free in the App Store. Shopper is available for iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 with iOS 4.0+ in English only for the United States and the UK.
We hope you enjoy shopping with Google Shopper!
Posted by Richard Hung, Senior Product Manager, Google Shopper
We’d been wanting to build a fun, useful, app-like way to display weather information on our search results pages in the mobile browser. So we pulled together a user experience designer and team of engineers and built a new weather search results snippet that lets you actually play with the results. To try it out, just go to google.com on your iPhone or Android-powered device and search for ‘weather’.
At first glance, you’ll see content that we’d previously shown you before: current conditions and a forecast for the next few days. But by moving the slider over the next 12 hours, you can now see a detailed hour-by-hour breakdown of the changing weather conditions. As you do this, keep an eye on the temperature, wind speed and humidity and see how all these conditions are expected to trend across the day. You may also notice that the background color changes throughout the day. Of course, as you scroll further down you’ll see our regular web search results for your query.
This new weather search experience is available only in English, but we have more updates on the way. We hope you’ll enjoy using it!
Posted by Nick Fey, User Experience Designer and Michael van Ouwerkerk, Software Engineer
We recently released Google Places with Hotpot in Google Maps for Android, and starting now, you can have that same great experience as an iPhone app. We realize the importance of finding places you’ll love while you’re out and about, no matter what mobile device you use. And Places with Hotpot not only helps you find places near where you are, it gives you the best places to go for you by personalizing your search results.
In case you aren’t familiar with Google Places, it lets you quickly search for places nearby and personalizes the results based on places you’ve rated. We get you started with a few popular search categories, but you can also tailor the list by adding your own favorite searches. This makes it fast and easy to find the best places for you with little fuss.
Use a default search category, save your own, or rate the nearest place quickly.
It can be pretty rewarding to discover a new place you love, but we also realize that there are some experiences you just can’t wait to share. So Places makes it super simple to rate a place with your iPhone while you’re there. Just fire up the app and hit “Rate now.” It will use your location to guess your current place and let you post a Hotpot review right from your phone. But it’s not just about getting to say what you think—the more you rate places, the more you’re sharing about your tastes and the more we can give you personally tailored recommendations.
Give your star rating and add optional details or a review so Hotpot knows your taste.
If you want to make things even tastier, just visit google.com/hotpot from your desktop computer. Here you can add friends to the mix and quickly rate all the places you already know. Once you’ve added friends, you’ll find your results seasoned not just with reviews from around the web and recommendations based on your own personal taste, but also with your friends’ opinions too.
Once you start rating and add friends, Places can give you personalized recommendations.
Get the Places app on your iPhone now by searching for Google Places in the App Store or going here.
This first version of Places is available for all iOS devices in English only. However, expect more features and improvements to roll out soon, including localization in many new languages. We’re hard at work to make Places with Hotpot more and more delicious.
Posted by Greg Blevins, Software Engineer, Google Hotpot team
Since we launched Google Voice for iPhone a few weeks ago, we’ve been hard at work to add a few improvements that didn’t make it into the first release.
At the top of the list was adding support for iPod Touch and iPad. Starting today, you can download a new version of Google Voice that lets you use all the features of the app on these devices, such as sending and receiving free text messages - except, of course, make cellular calls.
While you can’t use your iPod or iPad as a phone, you can use it to initiate Google Voice calls with your phones. We call this feature Click2Call. Simply click any ‘Call’ button in the Google Voice app on your iPod or iPad and then select which of your phones you want to ring. Google Voice will call your phone and then connect your call.
While we were at it, we also made a few other improvements to the app:
When you enable Push Notifications, we will automatically disable Text forwarding for you, so you won’t receive multiple notifications.
Want some quiet time? You can send all callers straight to voicemail by turning on Do not disturb in the Settings tab.
We made it easier for you to place calls from the address book by adding a dedicated Contacts button to the Dialer tab.
Sending text messages is now more streamlined since you don’t need to press the OK button anymore.
Bonus Tip: Tap and hold messages in your inbox to archive or delete them.
The Google Voice app is available to download from the Apple App Store today. You’ll need an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch with iOS 3.1 or later and a valid Google Voice account to use the app. At this time, Google Voice is available in the U.S. only.
Starting today, you’ll never again have to answer (or ask) that question when you’re on the go with your iPhone. With the new Google Latitude app for iPhone, you can see where your friends are and now, continuously share where you are – even in the background once you’ve closed the app.
Since launching last year, Latitude’s focus has always been on one goal: make it simple to stay in touch with friends and family by sharing where you are with each other. Simple setup. Simple sharing without fumbling for your phone. Now, you can use Latitude on your iPhone just like the more than 9 million people actively using it from Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile smartphones. Use the app to:
See where your friends are
Share your location continuously with whomever you choose
Contact friends by phone, text message, or email
Control your location and privacy
Watch the Latitude app for iPhone in action
You still get simple control over your privacy. Remember, Latitude is 100% opt-in. You must install the app and add friends (or accept requests) to start sharing your location. You can turn off background updating if you’d like and control the same privacy settings: share only city-level location, hide your location, or sign out of Latitude at any time. Learn more in the privacy tips video.
Though we released Latitude as a web application before the iPhone supported third party background applications, today’s Latitude app was built from the ground up using iOS 4’s new multitasking capability to support background updating. You’ll need iOS 4 and above on an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 to use the app.
Update (12/13/2010, 10:20am PST): The Google Latitude app will run on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, and iPod touch (3rd/4th generation). However, background location updating is only supported on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPad 3G. We're continuing to work on expanding support to more devices.
Posted by Chris Lambert, Software Engineer, Google Latitude Team
When we launched Google Instant for mobile in beta back in November, we announced that we would be supporting additional countries and languages, beyond just the U.S. in English. Today we’re happy to let you know that Google Instant for mobile is now available in 28 languages and 40 countries worldwide. If you have an Android 2.2+ or iOS4 device, just go to google.com in your mobile browser and you will be redirected to your local domain. Then, tap the Google Instant link beneath the search box to enable it.
Earlier this year we launched a Google Voice HTML5 web app for iPhone users. Today we’re taking the Google Voice experience on the iPhone to a whole new level with the launch of the official Google Voice for iPhone app.
With this native app, you’ll continue to have access to all the major Google Voice features on your iPhone, like:
Cheap rates for international calls
Free text messaging to U.S. numbers
Voicemail transcription
Display your Google Voice number as caller ID when making calls
In addition to these benefits, the app provides some features that make using Google Voice on your iPhone a much better experience:
With push notifications, the app will alert you instantly when you receive a new voicemail or text message
Most of your calls will be placed via Direct Access Numbers, making them connect just as quickly as regular phone calls
Google Voice for iPhone is available to download from the Apple App Store today. You’ll need an iPhone with iOS 3.1 or later and a valid Google Voice account to use the app. At this time, Google Voice is available in the U.S. only.
Google Instant makes search faster by displaying not just predictions but actual search results as you type. This saves valuable time on a desktop browser, but wouldn’t it be great to have Google Instant on mobile devices, where each keystroke and page load is much slower and you frequently have just a moment to find the information you need?
In September we announced that we were working to bring Google Instant to mobile, and today we’re making a beta version available to most iPhone and Android devices in the U.S. To try it out, go to google.com in your phone’s browser and tap the Google Instant “Turn on” link beneath the search box (if you don’t see the “Turn on” link, try waiting a moment and then refresh the page).
Like the desktop version of Google Instant, when you type on your mobile device you’ll see predictions of what you might be searching for. If you type [anse], for example, you should see [ansel adams] along with other predictions. Results for the first prediction appear automatically, and tapping on the other predictions will display those results. Pressing the enter key or the search button skips the predictions and will display results for exactly what you’ve typed. Check out our demo video:
With Google Instant on mobile, we’re pushing the limits of mobile browsers and wireless networks. You will probably notice a big improvement in speed when you search thanks to a new AJAX and HTML5 implementation for mobile that dynamically updates the page with new results and eliminates the need to load a new page for each query.
Google Instant for mobile works best on 3G and WiFi networks, but since the quality of any wireless connection can fluctuate, we’ve made it easy to enable or disable Google Instant without ever leaving the page. Just tap the “Turn on” or “Turn off” link.
We hope you’ll enjoy using Google Instant for mobile as much as we enjoyed making it. It’s currently available for Android 2.2 (“Froyo”) devices and iPhones and iPods running iOS 4 in the U.S. in English. We’re working to support additional countries and languages and more devices in the coming months, so stay tuned.
Searching with Google on your mobile phone can be an eye-opening experience. Now your phone’s camera can even help to find out more about the world around you.
Back in December we introduced Google Goggles on Android: it lets you search by taking pictures. Today, we’re excited to announce that Goggles is now a feature of Google Mobile App for iPhone. Google Mobile App already lets you speak your queries, and it can also use your phone’s location to give you more relevant search results.
In the new version of Google Mobile App just tap on the camera button to search using Goggles. Goggles will analyze the image and highlight the objects it recognizes -- just click on them to find out more. You can see how this works in this short video:
Computer vision is a hard problem and Google Goggles is still a Labs product. It works well for things such as landmarks, logos and the covers of books, DVDs and games. However, it doesn’t yet work for some things you might want to try like animals, plants or food.
Google Mobile App with Google Goggles is now available in the Apple App Store. Just search for “Google Mobile App” and download the latest version - it’s free. It will gradually be appearing in all App Stores around the world starting from today.
Goggles is enabled only for English-speaking users, and since it requires an auto-focusing camera it is supported only on iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 running iOS 4 or above. Visit our Help Center to learn more or send us your feedback and questions in our Help Forum.
So step away from your computer, get your Goggles on, and search the world around you.
Posted by Milan Broum, Software Engineer, Google Mobile Team