With Android 12, the Pixel Launcher is getting a major update that adds a new “Device Search” functionality that refines the way you search for things on your Android phone. While this feature was announced in the early beta builds, Google has only now started rolling it out to users, with the release of Android 12 beta 5. In this post, we'll explain how Device Search works on Android 12 and how you can enable and use it on your Pixel smartphone.

Android 12 adds a new search feature to your native Home Screen on a Pixel device, allowing users to not only search the web on Google, but also search for things locally on their phone. This is apparent once you open the app drawer from the bottom of your screen, where the search bar at the top will read “Search your phone and more.”

This new feature lets Pixel users search for apps, files in their device library, contacts, conversations, app and people shortcuts, items in settings, and Pixel tips. All of your results appear instantly as you type, and are displayed even if you made small typos along the way.

To make finding things easier, you can customize which of these categories appear in your searches, and whether you want your default keyboard to automatically appear when you open Search.