Google Said to Be Adding a Search Bar to Gemini’s Android App

Google is said to be rolling out chat search functionality in Gemini for Android. A social media post shared a screenshot of the new search bar in the Android version of the artificial intelligence (AI) app. The feature is currently available on both iOS as well as on the web, but it has not been made available to Android users. With this feature, users can search for past conversations just by typing keywords from the chat. Notably, Google has not officially confirmed the rollout of the feature.

Gemini for Android Might Finally Be Getting the Search Bar

Reddit user u/JosefTor7 posted a screenshot of the feature on the r/Bard group. In the screenshot, a search bar with the text “Search for chats” was visible. The search bar was located within the hamburger menu on the top left. However, Gadgets 360 staff members were not able to spot the feature yet.

Search bar in Gemini for Android
Photo Credit: Reddit/JosefTor7

The reason for that could be that the Mountain View-based tech giant is shipping it in a phased rollout, and it might take up to a couple of weeks before it is available to all Android users. The Reddit user noted, “I didn't see it listed in the app update notes so they must have snuck it in or did a server side update.”

Before its arrival on the web and iOS, the search bar in Gemini was one of the highly requested features from users. Earlier, the only way to find an older conversation was by scrolling down the recent chats list located in the side panel on the web, or the hamburger menu on iOS. Notably, OpenAI also added the feature to ChatGPT recently.

Now, with the search bar, users can simply run a semantic search that prioritises both keyword matches from past conversations, as well as understands the meaning and intent behind a search query.

In the Reddit post, several commenters were excited to finally receive the much-awaited feature, while others expressed frustrations over the company taking so much time to build it. One user said, “Kind of funny that the search company took so long to build a very basic full text search into one of their most important products on their own operating system.”