Chrome Canary Is Testing Query Tiles – a Search Shortcuts with Images You Can Click to Search
https://www.androidpolice.comChrome’s team is always experimenting with new ways to surface content for your or speed up your search when you open a new tab page. Over the years, we’ve seen bookmarks, downloads, Discover content, games, top sites, and more, show up on this previously empty page, the latest addition is called “query tiles.”
The tiles are glorified search shortcuts with images, which let you get to sports news or look for vegetarian recipes by tapping a couple of squares instead of wasting time typing words into the Google search bar. In the US, 13 first-level tile categories are offered: News, Films, Recipes, Fashion, Music, Health, Electronics, TV Shows, Sports, Astrology, Education, Investment, and Automobile. Tapping each one reveals a few sub-categories underneath it, like Covid-19 under news, or video games in electronics.
When you make your selection, a Google search is started with the tile keywords you chose. In the two examples above, you can see two different behaviours of the feature.
- On the left, I picked the “TV shows” then “Comedy” tiles and the search was immediately performed as soon as I tapped the second tile — fast and efficient.
- On the right, I picked “Recipes” then “Biryani,” but got offered the option to edit the search before submitting it — more customizable. A flag controls the behaviour and you can choose which one works better for you.
The tiles are currently available on Chrome Dev and Canary, but will likely trickle down to Beta and Stable in upcoming versions.
