Now You Can Google By Handwriting

Google announced a new feature for mobile search, called Handwrite, which lets you search Google from your smartphone or tablet by simply writing your query with your finger, rather than having to type it out with the keyboard (or use voice search).

Check it out:

To enable the feature, hit “settings” at the bottom of Google.com in your mobile browser, and enable “Handwrite”. Once you’ve saved the setting, it should appear on Google.com (you may have to refresh).

“We designed Handwrite to complement rather than replace typing: with the feature enabled, you can still use the keyboard at any time by tapping on the search box,” writes Google software engineer Rui Ueyama. “Handwrite is experimental, and works better in some browsers than others—on Android devices, it works best in Chrome.”

The feature is available for iOS 5 and up, Android 2.3 and up phones, and Android 4.0 and up tablets. It works in 27 languages.

Google released a similar feature for Google Translate earlier this year. It was impressive then, and it’s nice to see it make its way to Google’s flagship search product.