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A couple of weeks ago, for a short period, Google flipped a switch that enabled Google’s Now On Tap. As a result, the feature was then available to anybody who was running the latest version of the Android Marshmallow Developer Preview. Unfortunately, for reasons still unknown to the public, Google only had Now on Tap enabled briefly, before completely disabling the feature once again.
Now though, after unveiling more of how Now on Tap will work at their event in San Francisco this morning, Google appears to have re-enabled the feature for those running the latest version of the Android Marshmallow Developer Preview. If you happen to be one of those people, then all you have to do to utilize Now on Tap is simply long press the home button when you are within an app that you wish to gain contextual information about.
For those of you who are not entirely aware of what Google’s Now on Tap brings to the table, here is a little bit of information on the feature. It is designed to information that is relevant to what you are looking at or for. For instance, say you are using the Hangouts app and one of your co-workers sends you a message reminding you of a meeting later that day. Long press the home button and you will get Google Now cards, one of them offering to automatically create a reminder for that meeting.
Google hopes that Now on Tap can give users relevant information based on what they currently have on their screen. This can save users a significant amount of time that they would otherwise spend manually creating reminders, searching for things, or trying to remember certain things. Now on Tap will be built into Android Marshmallow upon its initial public release, which is scheduled for October. But for those of you who like to live on the bleeding edge and have a device running the Android Marshmallow Developer Preview (in short, a Nexus device), then you can enjoy all that Now on Tap has to offer right now, just long press the home button.