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Google's iPhone-to-Android AR doodle experiment is now live for you to play with

Multiple people in AR? Across iOS and Android? Get ready for the future.

Headshot of Scott Stein
Headshot of Scott Stein
Scott Stein Editor at Large
I started with CNET reviewing laptops in 2009. Now I explore wearable tech, VR/AR, tablets, gaming and future/emerging trends in our changing world. Other obsessions include magic, immersive theater, puzzles, board games, cooking, improv and the New York Jets. My background includes an MFA in theater which I apply to thinking about immersive experiences of the future.
Expertise VR and AR | Gaming | Metaverse technologies | Wearable tech | Tablets Credentials
  • Nearly 20 years writing about tech, and over a decade reviewing wearable tech, VR, and AR products and apps
Scott Stein
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Trying Just A Line in AR at this year's Google I/O. It works across Android and iPhone now.

Scott Stein/CNET

Maybe you didn't catch the news at this year's Google I/O conference, but Google's developed a fascinating tool for enabling multiplayer AR on phones called Cloud Anchors, which syncs positions across devices. It even works across iOS and Android.

The Just A Line app already existed on Android, and is a doodling app in AR. But the app just went live on iOS, too, and is Google's first Android-to-iOS AR experiment.

To work, both phones trying the collaborative doodling need to be near each other, and then can pair in-app to begin doing ARdoodles together.

The app can be found here for Android, or here for iOS.

Download it (I am), and try it out. Maybe we'll see a lot more of these to come. See below for Cloud Anchor AR games I tried at Google I/O a few weeks ago.

Watch this: Multiplayer AR games are coming thanks to Google. We played one

The coolest things we saw at Google I/O

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