Google is rolling out some updates in the Play Store, with reviews now featuring a handy option to search, but losing the useful “device model” filter.
Starting with the good news, the Google Play Store is now rolling out keyword search for Android app reviews. Live fairly widely now, this feature allows users to quickly search through reviews from other users based on words within each review.
While this is certainly pretty basic in the grand scheme of things, it’s been missing from the Play Store for ages. And it could absolutely be useful too. Reviews from other users are a great method of troubleshooting issues, if only to help figure out if others are having the same problem as you. With keyword search, that just became a whole lot easier.
But, on the flip side, Google has also removed the “this device model” filter from Play Store reviews, as spotted by Android Authority. The previous sorting options that popped up in Play Store reviews allowed for “latest version” and “this device model” filters, which would allow users to narrow down potentially thousands of reviews to just ones applicable for their specific device, or for the newest version of the app. Luckily, that “latest version” has just moved to its own chip along the top of the screen, but “this device model” has simply been removed entirely.
While search is great for showing issues that people are having across the app as a whole, the “device” filter was great for seeing if it was something specific to your device.
Google hasn’t officially announced either of these changes, but they’ve both widely rolled out with the latest Play Store updates.
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