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This week’s top stories: Fuchsia OS release, Google Weather redesign, Fitbit snore detection

Kyle Bradshaw | May 29 2021 - 11:00 am PT

In this week’s top stories: Fuchsia OS begins rolling out to the first-gen Nest Hub, Google Weather gets a redesign on Android, Fitbit prepares snore and noise detection, and more.

After five years of anticipation, Google has begun the process of releasing Fuchsia, a from-scratch operating system that is distinctly “not Linux.” The first device to get Fuchsia OS is the first-generation Google Nest Hub, but if all goes to plan, owners of the smart display should not even notice that anything changed.

The Fuchsia-based update for the Nest Hub will roll out over the coming months, starting with those in the Preview Program, before eventually becoming more broadly available. Considering the interface and experience will be unchanged, it’s likely that Nest Hub owners won’t even notice they’ve been switched over to Fuchsia OS. That said, Google appears to be moving cautiously with this rollout, moving over the course of months, as switching operating systems is not a simple update.

In Android news, the Google Search got a new beta update this week, and with it the Weather experience has gotten a minor redesign. With the update, the older style Material Design has been replaced with the Google Material Theme, adding a rounded search bar and ditching the navigation drawer.

There are no other changes to the core forecasting experience with the company still leveraging weather.com for data. There are currently some bugs when tapping the search bar to switch cities. Your full list of saved locations is not properly loading.

Pixel Launcher Discover feed on Android 12 can be themed by Doodles in Material You-like manner

Elsewhere in the Google Search beta, the Discover feed found on the leftmost page of Pixel phones’ homescreen has gotten an Android 12 specific change. On Tuesday, we spotted that the feed was getting recolored to match that day’s Google Doodle in a way reminiscent to the upcoming Material You design language.

Our APK Insight team took a look at the newest Fitbit update, and inside we found that Google’s acquired health app will soon be able to use your fitness tracker to listen for snoring and ambient noise at night. By doing so, Fitbit will use that info to suggest ways to improve the quality of your sleep.

If having your microphone listening constantly overnight sounds like it would be fairly demanding on your fitness tracker, you would be right. As such, Fitbit recommends charging your device above 40% before laying down, and they also explicitly note that using Snore & Noise Detect will cause you to need to charge your Fitbit more often.

Midway through the week, the third-generation Nest Learning Thermostat received an update to version 6.1.1-2. While normally an uneventful occurrence, some had found that their thermostats were flickering their air conditioning on and off far too quickly, at risk of causing damage. Since then, Google has rolled the Nest Thermostats back to the previous 6.1-9 update to prevent the issue.

Google’s thermostat is turning off air conditioning and then displaying a “delay 4 min” message. The AC will start back up only to shut down again after 3-4 minutes, though one report says it’s happening every “few seconds.” This could cause some long-term issues with cooling.