What is the Yandex. Application for? Review of the Yandex Transport application for Android. Built-in voice assistant

Yandex application is a comprehensive service for finding nearby places, transport, shops and other interesting information. A convenient voice assistant Alice is built into it, which will simplify the work with the browser and can become a good interlocutor.

Yandex features

Among the many services from Yandex, this application stands out in that it allows you to find information in a couple of clicks or using a voice request.

The Yandex application is a universal assistant in finding information, profitable discounts, transport and everything that surrounds the user at the moment. The functionality includes:

• text and voice search engine;
• overview of current news around the world and your region;
• detailed weather forecast for today and next week;
• current exchange rates;
• synchronization with a mailbox;
• interactive map with public transport;
• current discounts, promotions and cashbacks in the nearest stores;
• TV program;
• search for the nearest pharmacies, gas stations, shops, cafes and so on;
• a poster of local cinemas with descriptions of films;
• useful articles, the list of which is formed according to your requests.

Peculiarities

For the program to work on Android, it is enough to install and then log in via Yandex email. All services of the company are synchronized with each other thanks to a single account. Here are some of the main features:

1. The program is compatible with the proprietary voice assistant Alice, which is installed automatically. Voice control of search queries allows you to get the information you need without logging into the application. To activate it, just say the phrase "Hello, Alice".
2. Variability of settings. In the parameters, you can manually select elements of the news feed, region settings, query history, prompts, voice activation, notifications, and so on. Also, the Yandex application for Android allows you to customize the branded widget in detail.
3. The service has the ability to scan QR codes. With it, you can capture the product code in a couple of seconds and get complete information on the Internet. If you encounter problems with functionality and performance, you can contact the online support service through the "Feedback" button.

The Yandex branded application will replace several third-party programs and a browser. With Alice's help, you can get out of any situation: pick up an interesting movie, find the nearest restaurant or gas station. The unique Zen service is able to select news according to requests and transitions to thematic sites, so after a while Yandex will advise only the articles you are interested in.

Many of us still find ourselves in situations where we need to quickly find important information, but internet access is limited or not available. It's one thing to try to open an entertaining post on the site, and quite another to look for a phone number hotline bank or hospital. Today, for the first time, I will tell the readers of Habr about how the acceleration of search in the Yandex application led to the ability to search for important information without the Internet.

But first you need to understand the main thing: why did we even undertake offline search, if sites from the search results are still unavailable in the absence of a network?

EDGE search

Yandex radars traditionally show people who enter a request, but then leave the page without waiting for the download due to a bad mobile internet... In this situation, we could not affect the overall quality of the network and the loading speed of all sites, but at least making the search process less painful and saving a little time was worth trying. Actually, that is why this project was originally called EDGE-search, i.e. search on slow internet.

There are two ways to speed up your search. First, optimize the web version and the APIs that the application uses as much as possible. And this work is also underway, but even this is not enough. Secondly, you can pre-download something that will come in handy in case of a bad connection to the device. Obviously, it is physically impossible to fit the entire Internet index into a phone. Therefore, it was necessary to go from the side of local storage of ready-made search results for specific queries. By what? So far, no one knows how to predict future human requests with high accuracy (but we are learning). Therefore, we take popular duplicate queries.

When we talk about popular queries, many people imagine a [vkontakte] query and several similar ones. In fact, we have hundreds of thousands of less obvious queries that are repeated in large numbers on a regular basis. And this is already many hundreds of megabytes of results. Moreover, we planned to save not only the search results, but also the hints that appear in the process of entering a query. And here many will ask: why store hints offline, because a person is quite capable of entering a query without them?

When entering queries in the Yandex application, users see not ordinary search suggestions, but in the form of individual words / word pairs (i.e. predictive text input). Regular prompts cannot be edited: if you need to add a word, you will have to enter the entire query yourself. Word hints allow you to make edits, cover a much larger number of queries, and significantly speed up human input.

But the main thing is that the hints were especially useful when working offline. These hints help people frame their question the way most people do, and this, in turn, increases the chance that the answer will be received from the local cache. That is why it was important to keep the hints as well.

Empirically, we selected a certain minimum of search queries (about 150 thousand) and hints, less than which there was no longer any sense to keep. But the volume of all this baggage still exceeded the limits of a decent one (several hundred megabytes). Even taking into account the fact that only the top 10 results were stored for each query. I had to do something.

From optimization to offline

We started looking for everything that could be sent under the knife. Each result contained not only links to sites, but also favicons and snippets. Favicons are pictures, which means that serious savings could be achieved here. The same site can be found in the results for completely different queries, so we initially did not duplicate favicons, but stored them across sites. And then we made it so that the probability of saving the favicon is directly proportional to the frequency of the site's appearance in the search results. In other words, we have abandoned most favicons, but visually it is not very striking.

The more we reduced the usual search results in favor of ready-made answers, the closer we came to the understanding that our EDGE search no longer only speeds up work, but is able to answer a wide range of questions without an Internet connection at all. Without even noticing it, we already worked on offline search. This means that the stake should be placed on ready-made answers. Realizing this, we proceeded to enrich the database with important facts that previously could not get there due to the limitation of the popularity of the request. These results contain only responses, no site listing.

Following a similar scheme, we copied all the object response cards and all requests for which the object response is available to the database. Offline search cards differ from the originals in almost complete absence of pictures: we have removed them for reasons of economy.

The growth of the fact base required further work on optimization and such a data storage structure that would be careful with the resources of the device.

Dictionaries

The database is not downloaded to the device entirely, but in the form of separate dictionaries, and only with a Wi-Fi connection and only with a sufficient charge level. The dictionaries are broken down for two reasons. Firstly, if the connection breaks during the download, then during the next attempt, only those dictionaries will be downloaded that did not have time to download earlier. Secondly, to save additional space, the database is downloaded and stored on the device in a compressed form, but with each request it is not unpacked in its entirety, but only in the necessary parts.

Each dictionary contains queries starting with certain letters, as well as all the data for results and hints for these queries. Sorting the data before dividing it into dictionaries by the first letters of the queries turned out to be more logical than, for example, by their popularity. Imagine a situation: the first dictionary contains the most popular queries, the second contains slightly less popular queries, and so on. But the popularity of queries often changes, and this will lead to the need to regularly update dictionaries just in order to move a query from one to another. These are the costs of traffic, energy and time. Therefore, it was important to make sure that when the database is updated, queries do not move between dictionaries. Alphabetical order turned out to be a simple and effective solution.

The answers to the same queries may differ in different parts of the country, so different dictionaries are formed for different regions. Moreover, for short-term visits to another region, the application will not rush to update the dictionaries - we have provided scenarios for business trips and tourism.

No matter how hard we try, offline search does not cover all possible queries, but already now it helps out on average every third. As with any average result, this means that one subset of users encounters offline responses more often than others. Therefore, we, of course, allow you to completely disable offline search in the settings.

Our team would be interested to know the opinion of Habr's readers about this direction and get feedback on the work of the beta

Knowing everything about the latest events, being ready for the rain, quickly finding a pharmacy and choosing the best seats in the cinema is easy with the universal Yandex.

Voice assistant. Solve your daily tasks with Alice: she will tell you the weather and traffic jams along the route, advise where to eat or buy groceries, and find anything on the Internet. Alice knows how not only to voice information, but also to tell stories and maintain a conversation on any topic.
All NHL matches. Follow the NHL 19/20 season. Watch daily reviews, goals and highlights for free on Yandex.Ether.
Automatic Caller ID *. Turn on Caller ID in the main menu of the application and be aware of who is calling, even if the number is not in your phone contacts. The application will find the name of the organization in the Directory or report the purpose of the call based on user feedback. (* for iPhone with iOS version 11.0 and higher)
Free movies and TV shows. Watch it in good quality and at a convenient time on Yandex.Ether. The service contains over 5000 films, TV series and cartoons.
Events in your area. Meet and communicate with your neighbors using the Yandex.Rayon service. Join the community in your area and stay informed about what is happening nearby.
Smart device management. In the Yandex application, you can activate Yandex.Station and control it by voice using Alice. Alice will hear and execute your commands - dim the lights, turn on the TV, make the music louder. Yandex's smart home already works with dozens of Philips, Redmond, Samsung and Xiaomi devices. You can connect your devices by selecting "Devices" in the settings menu.
Weather accurate to the region. See detailed forecast hourly and weekly ahead with detailed information on wind speed, barometric pressure and humidity levels.
Top news. Follow events in your region, Russia and other countries, for news of politics, economics, science, sports and other spheres.
Places nearby. Find your way even in an unfamiliar area: pharmacies, ATMs, restaurants, grocery stores and other organizations are marked on the map with opening hours, contact details and the ability to get directions.
Transport card *. Save time on the road: the nearest buses, trolleybuses and trams are shown directly on the map. Click on a stop and you will see how much is left until the desired route arrives. (* not available in all cities)
Important notifications. Be in the know before anyone else: Yandex will warn you about rain or a sharp cold snap, send you news that is gaining popularity and tell you the traffic situation with a push message.
Exchange rates. Evaluate the economic situation based on the quotes of major currencies, the value of shares of key companies, stock indices and commodity prices.
Discounts on goods. Plan your purchases more efficiently: Yandex will show you discounts in chain supermarkets and help you save on household goods. The information is provided by the Foodil service.
Offline search. Stay confident at any connection speed - for many popular queries, Yandex will show the answer even without an Internet connection. You can disable the function in the application settings.
Playbill and ticket booking. View detailed information about the films you are interested in in the film distribution and buy tickets for the best seats in the application itself.
Versatility. Try other features: search by voice and by photo, reading QR codes, speed dialing with prompts, popular video and TV program.

Yandex. At any time and in any situation.

Yandex has updated its proprietary application for mobile devices running Android and iOS. The updated application is designed to become a truly universal assistant in a wide variety of everyday situations.

So, for example, in the Android application, you can check where the nearest public transport stops are and what route numbers are sent from them (their intervals, etc.). At the moment, information about transport is available in more than 50 cities in Russia and abroad.

Favorable offers nearby - discounts in the nearest stores (data provided by the Foodil service).

Playbill - a list of films shown in cinemas with detailed descriptions, reviews, and so on, while you can buy a ticket for a movie you like directly in the app.

Places nearby - shops, pharmacies, ATMs, gas stations, etc. using the application, it is easy to find a 24/7 or late hour store at a late hour. You can choose and build the most optimal route to any point: on foot, by car or public transport.

Offline mode - will help out when the Internet connection is weak or completely absent (Yandex saves answers to popular search queries, allowing the user to quickly get a short reference, for example: phone number, organization address, etc.). Offline mode is currently only available on the iOS app, and will be available on Android at a later date.

Yandex is all the services of the company of the same name, collected in one application.

Usage

Installing the Yandex app on an Android smartphone or tablet will allow the user to keep abreast of all the latest news, instantly access fresh and interesting content, and keep the most frequently used services close at hand. Multitasking and convenience are the main advantages of the Yandex.

Functional

Once upon a time people were very fond of talking on the phone, but then this telephone conversations changed messengers and text messages. In recent years, "conversations" with portable equipment have gained particular popularity. Why press buttons when giving commands when the same can be done faster and more conveniently - by voice?

If you want to quickly find something on the Internet, but typing is inconvenient, contact the voice assistant Alice - she will fulfill the request, suggest a way out of a difficult situation and even cheer you up. Yandex will not let you miss important notifications - the application will compile a summary of personalized news, warn you about a sharp change in weather conditions, "hot" news that disturb the public, and also tell you about the current exchange rates.

In addition, you can use it to track discounts on goods, check new interesting events on the billboard of your city, book tickets and even look for interesting places nearby. To simplify the work with the program, use the collection of widgets - their presence on the Android desktop will allow you to quickly access the most important functions.

Key features

• search engine management using;
• receiving information about the current weather and nearest forecasts;
• formation of a news feed in accordance with the tastes of the user;
• getting information about interesting places nearby;
• viewing the map and transport schedule;
• information about events, discounts and exchange rates;
• compatibility with all current Android versions.