You might assume Gboard to be the forgotten member of Google’s roster, but nothing could be further from the truth. Google’s keyboard gets near-constant updates, and now, Google is looking to further supercharge Gboard, if a teardown of a beta build is to be believed.
In an APK teardown of the latest beta build by Android Authority, it seems Google is looking to make your Emoji Kitchen creations a bigger part of your life, as well as potentially integrating support for one of the Pixel 10‘s expected headline features.
Pixel Sense may be coming to Gboard
A peek into the Pixel’s future
The Pixel 10 isn’t expected to arrive until August, but one of its big features could be rolled into this new update for Gboard. Pixel Sense, if you’re not familiar, is also known as Magic Cue, and it essentially allows your phone to seek out information on your behalf. So, if someone was to ask you for a reservation number, Pixel Sense/Magic Cue would be able to dive into your Gmail account and look for any reservation numbers that might match. To be clear, this isn’t something you’ve directly asked it to do, outside of an assumed previous consent, it would do it automatically. It’s expected to be similar to those features that pull oone-time passwords out of your Messages app and directly into your clipboard.
It’s not clear whether this would be restricted to the Pixel 10 and other compatible Pixels at this stage, but hopefully it’ll be available on other Android devices through Gboard.
Also included in this teardown was the ability to favorite your Emoji Kitchen creations. Frankly, it’s a little shocking this wasn’t included from the start. After all, what’s the point in making an emoji only to use it once? There’s also mention of a “SmartEdit” feature, which might be an expansion of the already existing ability to make changes to text with your voice. Finally, there are some new animations for the AI-powered Writing Tools, and potentially some tweaks to the Smart Reply feature. These are hardly some of the biggest additions to this update though, and could possibly be small tweaks.
Gboard is one of the best keyboard apps for your Android phone, and Google is clearly intending for it to stay that way with these additions.
