is tinkering away again with its search app, now letting you assign a relationship status to anyone in your address book. 

The version 4.4 update exps the rollout of a nicknames feature, which allows you to tell to “call my wife” or “text my brother” by assigning those titles to your contacts. Simple nicknames like “wife” “brother” have been in the app for a long time, but now you can seemingly arbitrarily assign as many nicknames as you want.

A support article details that it’s limited to English for now, but usually these features tend to exp to other languages.

so, an A teardown by Android lice points to further work with something called Trusted Voice, a component of Android’s Smart ck feature. tentially your phone may only perform comms if it recognizes your voice, which would keep others from activating it.

Another clue buried in the code is something called “Seamless Hotword.” There aren’t any key details, but it sounds like some additional voice comms or capabilities to customize them. ’ll keep an eye out for this if more information spills.

The impact on you: A lot of the hidden power in Android is inside of ’s own apps. Give the nickname feature a try, you’ll see how such customization is what makes Android so great. It’s also an indication at how is continuing to push the voice capabilities forward, freeing your hs from your device even more.