Google Assistant now has a search bar for help in finding services

Google Assistant can be a great virtual companion and helper on your Android smartphone or device, but sometimes it’s hard to keep up with all of the different services it supports. This week, Google quietly added a small, but highly useful, new feature in Assistant that throws in a search bar, so users can quickly find the specific integration and service they are looking for.

As first reported by Android Police, the new search bar replaces just scrolling through a list in Assistant to try to find just the right integration. Now when you tap on the top right blue icon to bring up that list, the search bar appears and can be used to type in strings to find the many first and third-party integrations that are available. That same search bar also now appears in the official Google Home app for the smart speaker. For example, you can check to see which Google Assistant services work with alarm features by typing in “alarm” in the search bar.

This appears to be a server-side update, so if the search bar has yet to appear on your Google Assistant, be patient; it’s likely to take a few days to roll out to all supported devices. This update comes just over a week before Google plans to unveil some new hardware products on October 4. One of them is likely to be Google Home Mini, a smaller version of the Google Home speaker that uses Google Assistant. The virtual helper is also slated to be included in a number of third-party smart speakers that will launch later this fall.