It wouldn’t be the end of the year without one final significant Pixel feature drop to close us out. Pixel 9 users are particularly in for a treat as they’ll be the first smartphones to get the new Pixel Screenshots upgrades, which include the ability to save material directly from Circle to Search and a more robust search of your screenshots.
The Pixel Screenshots app was announced during the initial Pixel 9 phone launch, and though you can try it now, it feels like a feature in progress. Today marks its official rollout. The app will offer all kinds of functionality. Any time you take a screenshot, the app extracts what it considers the most essential “entities” of the image. If there’s an address, it will point it out to you. If a product is mentioned, it will link it for you. And if there is a QR code present that grants you entrance somewhere, the Screenshots app will file it away to Google Wallet.
Did you know that people take screenshots of concert tickets in this day and age? I discovered that in my briefing with Google about the Pixel Screenshots rolling out now. Is no one downloading PDFs of their tickets to ensure entrance into an event? I thought you still had to do that to prove validity. This week, I discovered that you are allowed to enter a venue with only a copy of a copy of a QR code.
This new way to interact with screenshots is what Google calls an evolution of how users have been hoarding screenshots all this time. I’m just a weird outlier stuck in the past because I still use Android’s native Share sheet to send images and data to an exterior app.
Pixel Screenshots will also work with Circle to Search. If you find something you deem worthy of referencing later, you can save it directly from the same screen you captured with the ability.
More Pixel enhancements
The Pixel 9, 9 Pro, and 9 Pro Fold aren’t the only ones getting new abilities. Pixel 6 and newer devices will get Gemini’s Spotify extension, which lets you interact with the third-party app via Gemini for things like bringing up playlists. Expressive Captions are also rolling out, and they use AI to suggest the vibe of the environment you’re watching on screen. You can expect it to crop up during live sports or while scrolling through social media. For a full rundown of what’s new for the Pixel, Google has it for you in blog form.
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English (US) ·