Google’s Play Store has a comprehensive list of apps to make day-to-day life ever easier and more fun. Given that apps add a level of personalisation and customisations such that a device can reveal a lot about it’s owner. With that in mind, and knowing that certain categories gain more significance as app developed in those arenas bring a new level of connectivity, Google has further refined the process by adding eight new app categories to the Play Store to make it easier to find a suitable app.

These new categories might not appear for every device immediately with the rollout expected to take up to 60 days, however, in due course, it will be much easier to find a specific application. These new Play Store categories are:

• Art & Design
• Auto & Vehicles
• Beauty
• Dating
• Events
• Food & Drink
• House & Home
• Parenting

What is interesting is seeing the addition of Dating as well as Auto & Vehicles, given the rapid success of companies such as Tinder, Grinder, Über, Grab and Lyft. Between themselves, these apps amount to over 200 million downloads, which has probably been the main reason to categorise them more efficiently. Under Auto & Vehicles, you would even find proprietary apps by BMW, Mercedes, Volvo etc, which help connect mobile devices to the in-car audio systems. With Google’s own Android Auto gaining popularity, this category was a necessary addition to the Play Store.

Apart from adding new categories, two existing categories have also been renamed. ‘Transportation’ and ‘Media & Video,’ have been renamed to ‘Maps & Navigation’ and ‘Video Players & Editors’ respectively. This does help distinguish vehicle apps such as Über and Lyft with navigational tools such as Waze and HERE Maps.

For app developers, these categories will have a worldwide release within the next 60 days and developers are advised to re-categorise their apps accordingly for their own benefit. However, if the new categories are applied before the update rolls out, the app might not appear in the Play Store as desired.