Google’s iOS app has a secret pinball Easter egg now

The Google app on iOS appears to have gotten a new Easter egg: a rather entertaining little pinball app hidden away in the “Tabs” menu. The game appears to have been added a few weeks ago, as spotted by several YouTube videos and a Reddit post in the middle of June.

Opening the pinball game is simple: switch over to the Tabs, uh, tab in Google’s iOS app, clear out any open tabs, and then wait for the colorful shapes to start creeping up from the bottom of the screen. Swipe up on those shapes, and you’ll launch a surprisingly full-featured pinball game directly in the app.

Gameplay actually works like a mix of pinball and Brick Breaker, with each level spawning a variety of colorful shapes that shrink and eventually vanish with each hit. Each level adds new bumper variations and more shapes to the mix, and there are even power-ups: a heart adds an extra life, a blue star splits the pinball into two, and a yellow star makes the ball larger and easier to hit. It also works offline, in the event that you’re stuck on a plane or subway and somehow manage to only have the Google app on your phone for internet-less entertainment.

Is there a real purpose to the pinball Easter egg? Not really. (The same could be said of regular pinball, I suppose.) But the existential nature of pinball is beyond the scope of this blog post — besides, I need to go back and try to beat my high score.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/1/22558872/google-ios-app-secret-pinball-easter-egg-game