Google put an easter egg in the menu of their iPhone application, but they hid it so well that no one stumbled upon it, so they simply decided to blog about it to reveal the gem.
Venturebeat was first to report and has more screenshots.
If you have the Google Mobile App installed on your iPhone, go to the Settings tab, scroll to the bottom and keep swiping upwards until a secret option dubbed ‘Bells and Whistles’ appears (this also works in the foreign language versions of the app, and it will stay there once you’ve found it).
The hidden menu lets you change the theme color of the app and its default sounds to chicken or monkey noises. It also enables you to turn on a ‘Live Waveform’ which visualizes speech as a graph, and an effectively useful one that lets you opt to to open hyperlinks in the app itself.
Now go tell all your friends that you found it first!
useful news.
Not a very useful comment though…
(Thanks for the easter egg, though!)
iPhone users are not so smart as Google tought
Atleast TechCrunch Readers are Smart now
My only comment is – how does everyone feel about handing all their personal information to google for searching and indexing and then selling thru it’s ad networks to advertisers? Just an ongoing thought that occurs to me whenever I see myself or others using google.
Simple: I don’t trust them, so I don’t use it.
Thats just too hidden. I wonder if there’s any eggs in Google Earth app now?!
Possibly…
There is one…
That’s interesting!!!
I just checked the settings on my Google app and this option isn’t available (London, UK)
Just keep swiping for the next couple of hours.
Just take a look of your content that I have posted :
http://www.wiki...iphone-app-menu
thanks
Jessica
this app sucks because it is not available in India
Maybe India sucks because it’s not worth releasing apps there.
The monkey sounds are v.entertaining
just to let you know – in the german version the section is called “schnickschnack”…
I can’t seem to get it to appear but what I find interesting is that they had to have hacked into (or with apple’s help) altered the settings tab to enable this ‘feature’. it’s not something apple would just let them add to the settings tab and options.
The Easter Egg is there. You must swipe several times. Then it appears. Love the color option tree. Nice find. Thanks for sharing.
nevermind.. duh.
@TC – edit this offensive thumbnail, my kids are reading.
Yes please remove, it has no place in a public forum.
Easter eggs in iPhone apps = cool! Too bad the Google app voice recognition is only about 50% accurate. I spoke, “Google app easter egg” and it started searching for “google spca”. sigh. Vlingo is much more accurate and functional.
Somehow I feel techcrunch writers are paid by Google and Apple. TC always gives them such great PR even for trivial stuff like this while ignoring important stuff from MS or Yahoo! AlleyInsider is much better source of news.
could not agree more — unfortunate that the conversation in the blogosphere is about this trivial and fairly absurd features like this.
Something to chat about around the old tech watercooler. I’ll admit I totally missed the feature.
sounds more like… “techcrunch wants you to know that Google Wants You To Know About Its Hidden iPhone App Menu”
I feel better now that I found the egg. I never was the kid who found the hundred dollar golden egg @ the grand Easter egg Hunts. Now what can I do with my new pice of info. Thanks for the update; it was a refreshing break from my boring day
This is rather absurd…why the fuck do you hide features. A bit too cute.
Help me out here -
Is it in the Google App. settings (which you get to when you tap the little “i” in the upper right hand corner of the Google App screen.)
Or is it in the iPhone settings page.
I don’t want to spend the next twenty minutes swiping on the wrong page.
Google Mobile App settings.
wow its cool i’m just can give big applause for google
@sonytouchless
since when did hiding features become cool design.
the google love affair continues in 2009…
Monkey noises, you say? I think I might change some settings on my friend’s iPod Touch….
The first time I used the Google App (with voice recognition), it spit back a terribly interesting babbling chatter that seemed to be built out of my own voices phonemes. I’m not sure if I stumbled onto a bug or what.
But maybe it was the monkey and chicken sounds.
It was a really interesting sound though, I’d like to bear it again.
Wow, now that’s an amazing easter egg. Definitely front page material!!!
That’s great – I’ll share the news . Thanks
Ya – and I would be careful too.. heard scientists were bashing the iphone
http://www.week...-death-ray-app/
Just a though, but if you enable the view links in App option does flash work?? I will try it!
Nope. It doesn’t. Kinda figures though, Apple wouldn’t have any of that (Stupid Apple!!). So Google, here a little tip. Somehow figure out a way to get flash into your view in app feature. We will all be very grateful!!!!!
wow, I see those eggs a lot in my IE browser. Every time I scroll the page down something new pops up.
I did a little digging around and it looks like Chris Messina of Citizen Agency uncovered these features shortly after the last release of Google moApp in November: http://tiny
url.com/9vd4k3