You’re Not Using The Google App’s Best Feature

Andy Walker / Android Authority

Google has plenty of apps in its coffers. Some are obscure, while others proudly wear the company’s name on their sleeve. The Google app is the obvious example. Beyond listing your Discover feed, voice search, and a shortcut to Lens, it houses a surprisingly powerful feature: Google Saved.

Located in a tab along the foot of the app, you’ll likely be greeted by a selection of items you’ve saved (or have forgotten you’ve saved) to your Google account when you tap it. And I don’t believe many people tap it all that often. I scoured the internet before writing this article to see if anyone had raised any issues. Crickets. It’s a shame because, in my opinion, this is the best part of the Google app.

In short, Saved is a digital version of that cluttered utility drawer in your kitchen housing everything you want to keep or may need. It organizes the various data you’ve uploaded or shared to it in “Collections.”

Saved is the digital version of that cluttered utility drawer in your kitchen, housing everything and anything you want to keep or may need.

You can tweak these Collections at your will, rearrange items within them, rename them, share them, and access them on any device via your Google account. The final two points make Saved particularly useful for how I use it.

Google Saved is the digital pocket for all my bits and bobs

Andy Walker / Android Authority

I use Saved in three main ways, and I’ll delve into each in more detail. Let’s start at the top: Saved is an excellent central point for syncing key links and items across multiple devices. This includes anything that I don’t deem incredibly important but may want to access in the future.

I made a brief video tutorial for my mom about the various tech items in our apartment, including how to use them. I saved its link so I could easily pass it on to her or any other family member who may house-sit for us. I could ask her to trawl through months of WhatsApp messages to find it, or I can reshare its link. And, because it’s in an easily accessible collection, I can send it to her from any device connected to my Google account if I don’t have my phone on hand.

Saved is an excellent central point for syncing key links and items across multiple devices.

My Saved also contains other details: a list of summer cricket fixtures at my local ground, a picture of car wash contact details with prices that I want to compare, and a photo of a local market’s trading days, all of which I can forward to friends or family when necessary. Adding items to the list is done through the Android share menu or by saving something from a Google search or Google image search, making it the first port of call for anything I may want to save now and organize later.

While this is still Saved’s best use, I’ve recently seen its real potential as a social bookmarking tool. I use it to share a running list of links I want my significant others to access.

I loathe link spam on WhatsApp, so a collaborative Saved collection creates a more personal way to share items with my partner. It’s like a lucky packet — I’m never sure what new thing she’s found during her day that she’s added to Saved. Over time, Saved can be used as a time capsule, revealing a list of things we had tucked away years ago. Photos already does this to an extent, but think of Saved as a memory box for everything else.

It’s like a lucky packet — I’m never sure what new thing my partner has added to our shared Saved collection during the day.

Of course, Google Saved’s chief connection is forged with Google Maps. This seems to be its primary purpose, and it’s where all your saved places of interest reside. Do you know all those “lists” of wishlist places of interest dotted around your Maps interface? You can find all of them in specific collections (called “lists” on Maps for some reason) on Saved.

On the surface, Saved isn’t revolutionary in this regard — after all, you can access all this info from Maps — but its social and collaboration features make it an incredible group planning tool. In that regard, it’s miles better than Chrome, URLs, and bookmarks because you can’t collaborate on those. Planning a road trip and want to list places to visit en route? Create a collection, share it with friends, and allow them to add points along the way. Flying to a city you’ve never been to and need pointers from someone who has? Allow your friend to add places of interest, pictures of transport stops, links, and more to a specific collection.

Saved is also where your watchlist from the Google TV Streamer or other Google TV units resides and where your saved recipes from your Nest Hub displays get collected. It’s really a jack-of-all-trades for safekeeping anything and everything you come across online.

Saved’s biggest problem is where it resides

Andy Walker / Android Authority

The Saved tab in the Google app is handy but also a shadow of what it could be. Although I usually criticize Google for offering users too many apps with similar functionality, this is the one instance where Saved should be set apart from the Google app. It’s currently a forgotten tab within an app I barely care to access on a good day. If Google were to unbundle and roll Saved as its own database/digital bookmark app, it would likely be one of my most accessed pieces of software.

Despite this awkward implementation, Google Saved is a surprisingly great catch-all I’ve found some genuinely good uses for. I wish Google gave the feature the development love it deserves. But hey, at least it’s still alive, and Google is actively working on improving it with a search function and public collections and profiles.