The new version contains a fair share of bug fixes and improvements as well

Dec 13, 2013 05:01 GMT  ·  By

Google's Vic Gundotra has just detailed the latest version of Google+ that the company's engineers pushed to Play Store.

Aside from lots of bug fixes and improvements that drastically enhance the application's overall performance, Google+ has been stuffed with some interesting new features as well.

First of all, following the last week's #AutoAwesome snow feature, the latest version of Google+ now comes with a snow falling effect that can be applied to any photos.

“Shake your device to add snow to your photos. […] so we’re adding another way to let it snow this holiday season. Just open one of your photos, shake your device, and snow will start falling. Shake again to save.”

Furthermore, Google+ users will now be able to search everything from the same box:

“Search across more stuff, from a single box. Now you can search for posts, people, photos and communities — all from one place. So the next time you’re looking for something specific, just tap ‘Search’ and type what you want.”

Google also added some tweaks to the Notifications feature, allowing users to adjust the buzz control: “if you only want certain people to be able to buzz your phone (like family), simply adjust your ‘Who can notify me’ settings. Notifications from others will now appear in ‘Everything else,’ so you can read them whenever it’s convenient.”

With the latest version of Google+, users will be able to search deeper into various categories in order to find what interests them: “now when you visit the What’s Hot stream, you’ll be able to 'go deeper' on a number of different categories — from Music and Science to Sports and Photography.”

Last but not least, Gundrota mentioned the “when you +1 posts in the stream, you’ll see something lovely” on Google+.

You can now download Google+ for Android 4.2.4 for free via Google Play. Keep in mind that the application should be fully compatible with all devices running Android 4.0 and up.