Tumblr Android app updated, takes advantage of new search features

Tumblr has seen an update, and it’s oddly simple — but brilliant. This time around, we’ll get the ability to search for multiple tags or topics at once, and return different results when we use the hashtagging feature. This has been around for a few months, but is only recently available for Android.

If you look in the Play Store, the “What’s new” section merely states “Made one big improvement: now you can filter and sort your search results. Now you can take control of your life.” That belies the subtle brilliance of it all, as detailed in the Tumblr blog post. From there, we get the all the details:

• You can now use multiple #tags in a single query to find all that #hello kitty #nail art.
• Searching for “government shutdown” now returns posts tagged #government shutdown or that mention ”government shutdown”. Searching “#government shutdown” will limit the results to posts with that #tag.
• You’ll now see related blogs in your search results.
• Use the new Filter menu to filter by post type!

This becomes really useful when you want to see all topics that relate to something (sans hashtag), or posts that specifically make note of a topic originally (using a hashtag in search). This will give more thorough results, and is a feature we’re surprised to see just making the cut. It seems like such a simple thing for a service that relies heavily on hashtags and search.

The update, it seems, is not without its detractors. Some users are noting it has become slower, with one reviewer noting it’s changed the way pictures are shared, forcing you to choose form all pics rather than a Gallery. Audio remains a problem, and we hope to see it fixed via a future update. At 4.4 stars in the Play Store, most seem happy with the app, so Tumblr is clearly onto something.