Google is expanding the availability of Opal, its AI application that lets users create mini web apps from text prompts, to 15 additional countries. The tool, which launched in the U.S. in July, is designed to help non-technical users build app prototypes without writing any code.
The app is now available in Canada, India, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil, Singapore, Colombia, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panamá, Honduras, Argentina, and Pakistan.
How Google Opal works
Opal allows users to generate a functional web application by describing what they want it to do.
- A user enters a text prompt describing the app they want to create.
- The tool uses various Google models to generate the application.
- Once generated, the user can open an editor panel to view and customize the visual workflow, including inputs, outputs, and generation steps.
- Users can edit the prompt for any step or manually add new ones.
- The final app can be published to the web and shared with a link, allowing others to test it with their own Google accounts.
New improvements to the platform
Alongside the global expansion, Google announced several improvements to Opal’s performance and functionality.
- No-code debugging: The debugging program has been improved to be more user-friendly. Users can now run their app’s workflow step by step in the visual editor or adjust specific steps in the console. Errors are displayed directly where they occur to provide immediate context.
- Faster performance: The company has worked to significantly reduce the time it takes to create a new app, which previously could take five seconds or more.
- Parallel execution: Users can now run multiple steps in a complex workflow simultaneously, speeding up the execution of more sophisticated apps.
The expansion and improvements position Opal to compete with other companies like Canva, Figma, and Replit that offer tools for no-code application design and prototyping.
“When we opened up Opal to users in the U.S. we anticipated they might build simple, fun tools. We didn’t expect the surge of sophisticated, practical and highly creative Opal apps we got instead. The ingenuity of these early adopters made one thing clear: we need to get Opal into the hands of more creators globally.”
said Megan Li, a senior product manager at Google Labs.
