Google Search for Android gets reminders, upcoming content, real-time public transit updates, and more

Google on Wednesday announced an update to its Google Search app for Android, adding new features such as reminders, upcoming content, and real-time public transit. You can grab the new update now from Google Play.

First up the Google app now lets you set reminders. This plays into the integrated Google Now functionality, except that instead of simply predicting what information to give you at a given time, you can teach it to what to remind you when. Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search, said reminders means you’ll get the updates you need “at the right place at the right time – whenever you need them.”

That being said, Google is still adding some predictive features. The company has added Cards for upcoming books, albums, TV shows, and video games you may like. Curiously, movies is missing from this list, which is odd because of all these it would probably be the most useful.

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Last but certainly not least, Google now features real-time public transit updates right in the app. This is limited to certain cities, a list of which hasn’t been posted yet.

Here’s the full changelog, which notes these features are only available for Android Jelly Bean:

• Reminders (e.g. say “remind me to buy milk this evening”, “remind me to take out the trash when I get home”).
• Upcoming books, music albums, tv shows and video games you may like.
• Real time public transit updates (select cities).
• Last train home (Japan only).

Those last point two points are both features we want to see in as many places as possible. As a night owl, that last one would be particularly useful to me, especially when traveling.

We’ve been checking to see if Google’s iOS app has been updated as well, but alas it has not. We’ll let you know when Apple users get these features too.

See also – Google brings conversational voice search to desktop, along with Knowledge Graph statistics

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