There are now more than one billion people using Android smartphones and tablets around the world – and a decent chunk of them are parents (or, more specifically, their children when they’re allowed to lay hands on the devices).

Last week, Google announced a series of new features aimed at parents and kids downloading apps from Android’s Google Play app store.

“Starting today, we’re making it easier to find great family-friendly content on Google Play. Parents can now find family destinations across the Play store, with new features for browsing by age and interests,” explained Google’s Eunice Kim in a blog post.

“We’re also providing more useful information about apps and content on Google Play and improved tools so you can decide what’s right for your family.”

There are several new things here, so what do you need to know as a parent? The first thing is a new “Family” button on the store that you can tap to browse apps (and also e-books and other content) by age-range, to find the ones that suit your child best.

Google has also worked with a succession of children’s brands to create dedicated pages for them on Google Play, bringing together games, apps, videos and e-books in one place.

Examples include SpongeBob SquarePants, Elmo, Dora the Explorer, Peppa Pig, Thomas & Friends, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Star Wars and Frozen. It’ll be a good way to quickly see what’s available for a child’s favourite brand or character, rather than a pure search.

Also, Google is making it easier to tell which apps are child-friendly by showing “star badges” with age ranges on the page for every children’s app, as well as an alert to show when an app contains advertising – this goes alongside the existing alert about whether it uses in-app purchases.

All of these are sensible, good steps forward for Android, which alongside iOS has become a key source of entertainment for touchscreen-savvy children in recent years.

As Google makes it easier for parents to find (and buy) apps for kids, we’re hopeful that this will in turn convince more developers to bring their best iOS apps to Android, sparking a new surge in creative, educational and entertaining apps for kids on those devices.