One day after pushing a notable update to Google Maps, Google is now rolling out an update to the core Google app that includes a pair of interesting features.
The first new feature of this updated Google app is app icon resizing. As you can see in the screenshots below, many of the app icons shrunk in size after updating to the new Google app. The Soundhound, Starbucks, Threes, Twitch, Twitter, and Untappd icons all got smaller after the update.
The other notable feature included in this new Google app is the ability to rotate your home screen. This feature works just like you’d think, allowing you to rotate your home screen into a landscape orientation. To activate it, go into Google Now, hit the hamburger button in the upper left corner, go to Settings, then hit the “Allow rotation” button at the bottom.
So yeah, this new Google app update is an interesting one. The resizing of the app icons helps to make your home screen look a bit more clean, but some folks may not like the fact that it happens automatically rather than being something that you can toggle yourself. As for the home screen rotation, I’m not a big fan of the feature, but I typically lock my phone to portrait except for videos. For folks that find themselves frequently using their phone in landscape, it may be nice to be able to keep it in landscape while you’re on the home screen, too.
After updating, my Google app is on version 5.8.45.19. It’s worth noting that I’m enrolled in the beta, though, so you may need to be in the program to get these new features for yourself. If you’re not, you can just wait for these features to roll out to the stable, public version of the Google app.
