Gboard for Android now recognizes the emoji you draw by hand and suggests phrases for you

Emoji offer a great way to spice up your chats, and the Android version of Gboard has been updated to make it easier to find the perfect ones. The update means you can now use the emoji search box to draw the sort of emoji you're looking for, and Google's keyboard will track down what it thinks you mean.

Google uses machine learning to interpret even the most primitive of squiggles, so now there's no need to think about how you would describe a particular emoji in order to perform a text-based search for it -- just draw what you want! But there's more.

The ability to search for emoji by drawing them is cool enough, but the latest version of Gboard also introduces phrase suggestions. The aim is to speed up the typing of messages, and it's a logical extension of the now-familiar next-word-suggestion feature that many of us now make use of on a daily basis.

Google says:

To help you up your texts per minute, Gboard now includes phrase suggestions to predict what you plan to type next. For example, try typing "looking forward" and Gboard suggests "to seeing" or "to it" as you type. This is supported in English today and will be rolling out to more languages soon.

The keyboard now boasts support for over 200 language variants, and this update also sees the search tool getting a revamp. "When you're searching in the keyboard, we'll now offer multiple results for you to browse through, making it easier to search and share in any app. In addition, on a card, you can click through to go to Maps, call a business, or watch a YouTube video. Just press the G or arrow->magnifying glass in the suggestion strip to start searching."

Head over to Google Play to download version 6.3 of Gboard to take advantage of all the new features.