Google Finally Improves Android Tablet Apps

Google regularly updates its suite of productivity apps for Android phones, but year after year, many of these improvements skip tablets and foldables. 

Well, the tablet-side of Android is finally getting some love from Google, as many of the company’s productivity apps are receiving fairly substantial overhauls for those who prefer to work with larger screens. 

First up, Docs, Sheets, and Drive will get updates to support drag and drop, so you can pull texts and images from one app to another, helping to sustain a single ecosystem across all software. Google is beefing up Drive even further, adding the option to open up two files side by side. 

Keyboard shortcuts are also coming to Drive, Docs, and Slides, which is sure to please anyone who uses their Android tablet as a primary computer with a wired or Bluetooth keyboard. These include popular shortcuts like select, cut, copy, paste, undo, and redo, among others.

"Today, we are making Google Workspace apps even better on Android’s larger screens," Scott Blanksteen, Senior Director of Project Management, wrote in the post on The Keyword. 

These updates will roll out to Google Workspace accounts, and personal Google accounts over the "next few weeks." The company also says more improvements for Android tablets are forthcoming, though did not provide details. 

Why the sudden emphasis on tablets? It could be the company is simply listening to consumer demands, or they have a refresh inbound for the Google Pixel Slate. Another possibility is the ever-expanding foldables market, as Samsung recently announced that the company’s foldable devices had experienced a 300 percent increase in sales in 2021 over 2020.