Google Play gets an AI assistant for app discovery
What's the story
Google has announced a major update for its Google Play store at the I/O 2026 event. The new features, mostly developer-focused, are aimed at enhancing user interaction with the platform. The biggest highlight of this update is "Ask Play," an AI-powered feature that lets users discover apps by asking natural language questions.
Enhanced discovery
Ask Play allows ongoing conversations for app discovery
The Ask Play feature goes beyond simple keyword searches, allowing users to ask more complex questions and have ongoing conversations for easier app and game discovery. If a user's conversation with the assistant gets complicated, Ask Play highlights can provide a top-level summary of the search at the top of the results page. This way, users can get an overview of their query before diving into specific results.
AI integration
Deeper integration with Gemini
The latest update also brings deeper integration with Gemini, Google's AI. Soon, apps and games will be discoverable directly through the Gemini app on Android and web. This will let developers showcase their apps to millions of Gemini users. Later this year, Gemini will also start surfacing apps related to over 450,000 movies, TV shows, and sports streams for quick content discovery.
Visual discovery
Google Play now has a short-form video feed
Along with Ask Play, Google is also introducing "Play Shorts," a short-form vertical video feed for visual app discovery. This facility gives users a quick look at an app's interface, functionality, and overall feel before downloading it. The feature is currently being rolled out in the US and is limited to select developers for now.
Developer tools
New tools for developers
The update also comes with new developer-focused tools, including a new Gemini-powered Google Play Console experience. This will let developers localize app listings using structured CSV files or Google Sheets, with Gemini auto-populating translated app listings in multiple languages. Google is also bringing monetization improvements such as letting the low-risk users keep access to subscriptions even after failed payments while retrying the transaction in the background.