Bing steals one of Android Marshmallow’s best features: Now on Tap
While we were busy staring at lawn statues and dreaming about the next big Android release — officially known as Android 6.0 Marshmallow — Microsoft was busy making moves. In a new update hitting Bing Search in the Google Play Store, the search app seems to have successfully managed to mimic the functionality of one of Marshmallow’s biggest features: Now on Tap.
Only available for Android 4.4+ devices, once installed users can long press the home button and Bing will automatically search for anything you currently have displayed on your device, be it text or images. A popup will then show you search results based on this content, making it easy to look up travel destinations, info about movies, or just about anything else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=384xrKf6s98
Microsoft says their new Bing On Tap Search feature is launching first on Android, followed by Windows 10 desktops and devices in the near future. Their currently exploring their options on iOS, but didn’t have anything more to announce. Developers interested in integrating Bing’s knowledge graph API into their own apps can hit up Microsoft asking for early access, or wait until it arrives in Microsoft’s Dev Center later this fall.