Almost two weeks after releasing Chrome 27 on the desktop and Chrome 27 for Android, Google today announced the release of Chrome 27 for iOS, significantly improving voice search and speeding up page reloads. You can download the latest version now directly from Apple’s App Store.
The biggest addition in the much more accessible method for speaking your searches into the omnibox. Just tap the microphone, say your search query aloud, and see your results (some will even be spoken back to you), all without typing a single character.
Google already includes voice search in its Google Search app for iOS thanks to its Google Now integration. As of Chrome 27, Google also began offering conversational voice search which it announced at its I/O 2013 conference, and now it’s finally bringing voice search to Apple’s platform.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
The latest Chrome app for iOS also reloads Web pages faster by using the cache more efficiently when the network is slow. If you’re ever in an area where you have a poor connection, this should be a useful improvement.
Google also says other iOS apps “can now give you the option to open links in Chrome and then return to the app with just one tap.” Although this has been available for a while, the company for some reason has been emphasizing it a lot lately.
Here’s the full Chrome 27.0.1453.10 for iOS changelog:
- Improved voice search: Say what you want and get results back without typing, faster voice recognition with text streamed on the fly, get answers spoken back to you with web results tailored to your questions.
- Faster page reloading: Pages reload faster even when the network is slow or unavailable.
- Stability / security improvements and bug fixes.
Pushing voice support via its search app is one thing, but including support for the feature in its browser shows Google is very serious about ensuring its users can search with more than just their fingers. How popular voice search will become remains to be seen, but both Google Now and Siri appear to have a lot of hype surrounding them, at least right now.
Top Image Credit: Half Cut
Disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link. While we only ever write about products we think deserve to be on the pages of our site, The Next Web may earn a small commission if you click through and buy the product in question. For more information, please see our Terms of Service.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.