The Chrome App Launcher

A cool feature from Chrome OS is now ported to Chrome for Windows: the app launcher. For now, it's only available in Chromium, but it will soon make its way to Chrome's dev channel. To enable it, open a new tab, enter this address: chrome://flags, press Enter, scroll to the bottom of the page, click "Enable" next to "Show Chromium Apps Launcher" and restart the browser.

You should see a new icon in the taskbar for a launcher that includes the apps you've installed from the Chrome Web Store and a search box that works just like Chrome's Omnibox. The app launcher is great because it's there even if Chrome's windows have been closed and it's a faster way to open an app, perform a search or go to any other site. You can also use it for simple calculations and unit conversions. It reminds me of the Google Quick Search Box and a similar feature from Google Desktop.

{ via Chrome Story }

Archive Social Updates and Other Gmail Smart Labels

Some people complained that Gmail doesn't automatically archive "social updates". It's a new category of messages created if you use the Smart Labels experimental feature from Gmail Labs.

It turns out that that the "skip inbox" rule is only enabled for newsletters and promotional messages (the smart label name used to be "Bulk", but now is "Promotions"). They're not exactly spam messages, but Google assumed that they're less important and it's a good idea to archive them automatically. If you take a look at the list of filters from your Gmail account, you'll notice that Google added 5 special filters:

You can remove them, but you can't edit them. If you'd like to automatically archive social updates, forum messages or notifications, just click the smart label in Gmail's sidebar and enable "archive incoming social updates (skip the inbox)" at the top of the page. Obviously, the setting will use the smart label name: "archive incoming notifications", "archive incoming forums", "archive incoming bulk."

What if you accidentally delete a filter or a label added by Gmail's Smart Labels experiment? Just disable Smart Labels from Gmail Labs and enable it again. Don't forget to click "save changes".

It's worth mentioning that Gmail has 5 built-in labels: ^smartlabel_group - for forum messages, ^smartlabel_newsletter for newsletters, ^smartlabel_promo for promotional messages, ^smartlabel_notification for notifications and ^smartlabel_social for messages sent by social networks. You can use the built-in labels to create your own filters or queries and they work even if you remove the filters and user-friendly labels added by Gmail.

{ Thanks, Frank. }

Google Simplifies the Search Interface

After a few months of testing, Google released a new search interface that removes the left sidebar and replaces it with a much simpler horizontal bar placed below the search box. A similar UI was launched last year for tablets and last month for smartphones, so Google tries to offer a consistent user experience.

While the old features are still available, the advanced search tools are no longer displayed by default. You need to click "search tools" and pick the right option. Google used to display some relevant search tools and the old interface made it easier to find recent results. Now you need 3 clicks to find results from the past 24 hours instead of only one click (sometimes two clicks). Another issue is that it's much easier to accidentally click the ads when you're using the search tools.

"With the new design, there's a bit more breathing room, and more focus on the answers you're looking for, whether from web results or from a feature like the Knowledge Graph. It's going out to Google.com users in the U.S. to start, and we want to get it to users in other languages and regions as soon as we can," informs Google.