But there are five Google services I deliberately don’t open from the app drawer. Instead, I tap the URL bar in Chrome.
It’s not that I dislike the apps, but for these tasks, the web is more direct and better suited to how I work.
The apps are still on my phone, and I just stopped reaching for them.
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Google Sheets on a tablet works like a small laptop in the browser
The mobile app puts a wall between you and the formula bar
I often work on a tablet while on the move. This app started my habit of using the web version.
The Google Sheets app on Android pins the formula bar to the bottom of the screen, which means typing happens in a strip while the actual cell is somewhere above your fingers.
Editing a formula means tapping a cell, then tapping the strip, then typing into the strip, then tapping a checkmark — a four-step process for every formula.
On a tablet with a keyboard, Sheets in Chrome with the desktop site toggle on works the same way as it does on a PC.
I tap a cell, type, and the formula appears in the cell. I can also use keyboard shortcuts, open multiple tabs at once, and switch between them with a swipe.
The same goes for Google Docs. I write on one tab and keep my research on another, and switching is instant. With the app, I’m jumping between two separate apps in the recents view, which always loses my place.
If you’re doing real work on a tablet, desktop mode in Chrome makes a tablet feel like a small laptop, and the Sheets and Docs apps are the clearest case for using it.
Google Search is already where my typing happens
The Google Search app sits in my app drawer, and I’ve never opened it, except by accident.
The app exists mostly as a home for Discover, Lens, and the various things Google is trying to make the front page of its ecosystem.
The Chrome URL bar is literally a search box. Anything I’d type into the Search app, I type there instead. It lets me ask a question and get an answer without going through Discover first.
Plus, my tabs are already open in the web version of search. When a search leads me down a rabbit hole, I open three or four results in new tabs and read them in any order.
The app’s results open inside the app, which means I’m bouncing between an app view and a browser view depending on what I tap. The back button doesn’t always go where I think it will.
Google Translate is faster from the URL bar
Typing language queries into the URL bar beats fiddling with dropdowns
Google Translate is where the speed gap is most apparent. The app opens with two language dropdowns at the top, and most of the time, the wrong language is selected, so I have to tap and pick before I can do anything.
On the web, I type “English to Spanish [word]” into the address bar, and Google shows the translation right there.
If I want a longer phrase, I open translate.google.com, and the language picker is two clicks from the URL bar.
The app has features the web doesn’t, like conversation mode and camera translation, and if I needed them, I’d open the app. However, I rarely use these features, and for the ones I use (checking a word or a short phrase), the URL bar is faster.
Google News in a browser lets me open four stories at once
Multiple stories at once, in the same place that I read everything else
Google News on the web is, for me, the better front page.
The Chrome new tab page already shows a Discover feed I built brick by brick, and from there, I open stories in multiple tabs. When I’m done, I close them all.
The app makes me read one story at a time because tapping back goes to the feed rather than where I was.
If I want to keep two stories around to come back to, I’d have to bookmark them or copy URLs, which is more work than just leaving tabs open.
The bigger reason is that I read news the same way I read almost everything else on the phone, that is, in a browser.
Having Google News in its own app means context-switching between news reading and the rest of my reading habits.
The web version puts news in the same place as the rest of the internet, and that’s where we find news anyway.
Google Maps splits cleanly between web and app
The web wins for sharing and lookups, the app wins for live navigation
For live navigation, the Google Maps app is the right tool, and it’s hard to argue otherwise.
It offers turn-by-turn directions, offline maps, a picture-in-picture navigation bubble that hovers over other apps, and a seamless connection to Android Auto.
However, I use the web version for everything that isn’t navigation. That includes looking up a place to see what time it closes, copying a link to directions to send to someone, and checking what’s near an address I’m researching.
The web version of Maps does all of that without trying to deep-link me back into the app or prompt me to leave a review.
It loads, shows me what I asked for, and lets me copy the URL like any other web page.
Maps is a partial pick rather than a clean one, since the app is really hard to beat.
I use the app for navigating, and the web for everything around it, and most of what I do with Maps is the everything-around-it part.
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These five apps all share a pattern
One advantage of using the web versions of these apps is that they all get out of my way.
Each one opens to the thing I want to do, not to a feed or a home tab. And, most importantly, the web version plays nicely with other tabs, so I can have a few things open at once.
Some Google apps still open a separate browser context when you need to visit a web page they don’t natively support, resulting in a browsing experience that’s inferior to using the web version from the start.
The apps are still there for the jobs they’re designed for, but for these five, I keep ending up in the browser, and I’ve stopped fighting it.
