With such a massive user base, it’s necessary for Google to A/B test new features before rolling them out in their apps. The newest feature being tested in Google’s keyboard app for Android, Gboard, is a slider that lets you adjust the speed of words you’re deleting. Currently, when you hold down the backspace button in Gboard, the keyboard app deletes words at a set rate.
With help from XDA Recognized Developer Quinny899, Kieron Quinn of MightyQuinnApps, we were able to enable this new feature in Gboard version 7.7.5 beta. The feature seems to be in the early stages of testing. As you can see in the video below, it just deletes words at different rates depending on where it is swiped.
I can see this feature being very useful when you’re deleting big chunks of text from paragraphs. This isn’t a big new feature that warrants a blog post like the emoji stickers that were just released, but it’s a welcome quality of life change.
Speaking of new Gboard features, Google recently started testing offline voice typing. This feature downloads a copy of the voice database and will do all processing for voice typing offline for those who don’t have network access all the time. They are also testing a new Sand theme to match the Not Pink Google Pixel 3, and even a Clipboard Manager is slowly starting to roll out.
As Google is always testing new features and not all of them make it to a final release, we don’t know if this new feature will be available for users. We hope it does because we’ve seen a lot of really useful Gboard features get tested recently. Google recently added the new floating keyboard mode, for example. We’ll let you know when the feature rolls out for users, but you can download the latest version of Google’s keyboard app from the Play Store link below.
Gboard - the Google Keyboard (Free, Google Play) →
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