Google Hold’s Android app is getting formatting instruments and model historical past

Excellent news for Android-toting Google Hold customers: you’re lastly getting the textual content formatting choices the app has so desperately wanted for years. Google introduced this week that the power to daring, italicize, and in any other case remodel textual content in your notes is rolling out now, and you must begin to see it within the app quickly. (I don’t have it but, however Mishaal Rahman and some others truly noticed the characteristic forward of its official launch, so it appears to be coming quick.)

The brand new Hold options are extra within the “ought to have been right here all alongside” class than they’re shiny new issues, however they’re nonetheless a welcome addition to the app. And truly, Google has been paying an uncommon quantity of consideration to Hold not too long ago: customers bought a brand new homescreen widget earlier this yr, and now you can open a number of Hold home windows at a time in your system. Google’s additionally slowly rolling out model historical past so you may see all of the modifications you’ve made to your notes over time.

Hold is, should you didn’t already know, a superb note-taking app. It’s quick, accessible on Android, iOS, and the net, and it manages to be each very simple and fairly intelligent. Paste a hyperlink right into a observe, and the cardboard reformats as a wealthy preview so you understand precisely what it’s. A single-line observe simply appears like a Put up-it, however an extended observe appears extra like a doc. You possibly can attract a observe; you may report audio in a observe; you may set reminders in a observe! And since this can be a Google product we’re speaking about, it’s all searchable and accessible within the sidebar of a bunch of different Google merchandise.

The large drawback with Hold is that its future appears tenuous. It doesn’t get a lot consideration or many characteristic upgrades — the app is a full 10 years previous, and that is perhaps its largest replace ever! You’re by no means going to see some lengthy speech on the I/O developer convention about how nice Hold is and all of the cool stuff you are able to do with it. That makes customers moderately fearful that Google would possibly at any second kill the app, because it has so many others, as a part of some cost-cutting or refocusing initiative. Hold does many issues higher than Docs, however Docs is much extra more likely to nonetheless be round a couple of years from now.

That’s why it’s good to see Google proceed to recollect Hold exists, simply because it has appeared to additionally keep in mind this yr that Duties exists. (Now, Google, make Hold reminders present up in Duties. It’s proper there!) The formatting choices will presumably be accessible on the net and iOS sooner or later, they usually make Hold much more highly effective on high of that easy interface. Hold stays top-of-the-line note-taking apps on Android, and generally, and hopefully it stays that means.