The promised on-device search feature of Android 12 finally lands with the fifth beta. Here’s what it looks like and how it works!<\/b>
\nOn most Android phones nowadays, there\u2019s a persistent Google search bar on the home screen. Using that, you can easily find all sorts of things all over the web, just as you would if you went to Google.com. However, it doesn\u2019t show you results from a place you might want: the phone itself. Google told us that a full on-device search engine would come to Android 12 at some point. Now, with the fifth beta launched today, we finally can see it. On Pixel phones with Android 12 beta 5, you can access the new search feature within the app drawer. At the top of the drawer is a search bar that says \u201cSearch your phone and more\u201d (see photo above). The results you\u2019ll see from this location will not include web results, at least not by default. It is not clear if this is also how it will work on Android skins, such as One UI or Oxygen OS. However, it\u2019s likely it will be similar. Here\u2019s how the on-device search works in Android 12! Searching with the on-device engine is very intuitive. First, you put in a query. As you type, results will pop up from all over your phone, including apps, files, settings, contacts, and more. As you can see, the first thing it pulled up was the Google Home app, which makes sense. Next was one of my contacts which has the word \u201chome\u201d in it. There are two quick links there to text that contact or visit the full page. Underneath, you can see the \u201cHome\u201d shortcut within Google Maps. Scrolling further down, you find Assistant routines with the word \u201chome,\u201d settings related to the word \u201chome,\u201d and more. At the very bottom, there\u2019s a link to search on Google instead. This would be useful if I was hoping to search the web with that search bar, but was in the wrong place. Rather than go to the proper search bar, I can just jump right to Google. If you don\u2019t like how many results this includes, you can always tweak them. Within Android settings is the \u201cSearch your phone\u201d page at which you can turn search result sources on or off. Since this is the final Android 12 beta, we don\u2019t expect there to be too many changes for this feature between now and the stable launch. Get excited for this new useful tool coming to your phone soon!<\/p>\n