Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Gmail could soon be getting a new filter for search results.
- The filter would allow you to sort results by relevance or recency.
- Cards may start appearing on top of search results.
If it weren’t for the search bar in Gmail, finding a message among the thousands of emails that sit in your inbox would be difficult and tiresome. But there is more it could do to help narrow down your search. A new APK teardown reveals Google is working on adding a filter to your search results.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
Currently, if you initiate a search in the Gmail app, it will sometimes show you a few results that are relevant to your query in the “Top results” section. The rest of the results that appear are shown in order descending by date. You can see an example of the current behavior in the screenshot below.
After digging into the Gmail app (version 2024.10.20.690780686.Release), we discovered a new filter that will give users a couple of sorting options. The filter appears below the search bar, but above the results. Tapping on the filter will allow users to choose between “Most relevant” and “Most recent.”
This specific filter appears to only be in the mobile app. You won’t find the filter in the web version of Gmail. In addition to this filter, we also noticed that cards are being shown in search results at the top of the page. Usually, these cards only appear inside shopping order emails.
This news arrives shortly after we reported that Google is adding an AI-powered “Polish” tool to Gmail. Just as it sounds, it helps users refine their emails if it has 12 words or more.
