Kyle Bradshaw joined 9to5Google in 2018 with a special interest in Google’s Fuchsia OS, rooted in his experience of being the first to offer a visual preview of the revolutionary design of the in-development operating system. Since then, his attention has broadened to include the secrets hidden within other areas of Google’s public codebases.
By reading the public Fuchsia code, Kyle was able to prove the existence of the Nest Mini and the Nest Hub Max months ahead of their respective announcements. With evidence from Chromium, he reported on Google’s since-canceled efforts to create an offshoot of Android designed for “touchless” feature phones.
In 2018, Kyle reported on three distinct Made by Google Chromebooks in development, the Pixel Slate, the Pixelbook Go — a full year before its release — and “Meowth,” the original version of the Pixel Slate that was canceled due to Intel’s delays that year. For ChromeOS itself, Kyle was the first to demonstrate the upcoming light theme redesign in action.
Looking at the early evidence of the Pixel 5’s specs, Kyle accurately predicted in February 2020 that the Pixel 5 might not be a traditional “flagship” phone. In 2021, he reported that Google’s next headset would be the “Pixel Buds A.”
Kyle was the first to report that the Pixel 6 would mark the debut of Google’s in-house processors, later revealed to be the Tensor chips.
Kyle contributes to the APK Insight column at 9to5Google, discovering the hidden changes in Google’s apps. These efforts have revealed hotly anticipated features, details about upcoming devices, and unexpected connections between companies.
He can be reached for tips or just friendly chat by Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky, or email. If you’re looking for his other works or side projects, head over to Kyle’s personal portfolio.
Following the recent launch of 1440p streaming support on desktop/laptop devices, Google Stadia is now picking up more fine-tuned resolution controls that can be saved on a per-device basis.
While all eyes were on the Android 11 beta yesterday, Google also made a subtle change to the Pixel series’ catalog of past updates, adding links to the Android Flash Tool for every update.
Today was the big day for the twice-delayed Android 11 Beta to arrive on Google’s Pixel phones, bringing a year’s worth of improvements. But the question on our minds is: did you install the Android 11 Beta?
Following a number of delays, Android 11 Beta 1 has released to owners of Google Pixel phones today. Coinciding with the release, Google has brought a variety of improvements for developers, including an update to Android Studio beta, wireless debugging support, a new version of Jetpack Compose, and more.
Today’s the big day of the Android 11 Beta, bringing with it a variety of smaller changes and putting all of the improvements into the hands of more people. One of the more exciting, if subtle, changes coming with Android 11 is the ability to switch your current media to a new Bluetooth device with ease.
Our APK Insight team has discovered that the latest update to the Bose Connect app includes references to a currently unannounced headset, the “QC35 II Gaming Headset,” including a video.
Today, Bungie gave us all insight into the next three years of Destiny 2 expansions, showing how they intend to breathe life into the game. The first upcoming expansion, Destiny 2: Beyond Light, is now available for pre-order on Google Stadia, a first for the platform.
The Google Phone app is quite effective at being something of a one-stop-shop for getting in touch with your contacts via voice, text, and video. The latest improvement to the Google Phone app beta adds a debatably handy Google Duo button onto the app’s main screens.
For nearly a year now, Google has been working to bring a Chromecast-like Ambient Mode to Chrome OS to act as something of a screensaver for the lock screen. With the latest Chrome OS Dev channel update, the Ambient Mode now has a clock and info about the weather.
Google Chrome’s built-in autofill service is one of the better ways to save time when filling out forms on the internet. Chrome for Android is about to make that process even smoother with a new bar UI for autofill for addresses, passwords, and billing info.
In this week’s top stories: The Android 11 Beta arrives early for a few lucky people, a method has been discovered to brick some Android phones simply by changing the wallpaper, we revisit the OnePlus 7T, and more.
Earlier this year, Google “killed” their long-running web page for Android’s distribution numbers, instead tucking the data away into Android Studio. Today, we’re unveiling a new home for Android distribution data both past and present.
The leaked build of Android 11 Beta 1 has shown that the move to give media control notifications their own special location in the Quick Settings menu is now becoming official.
While some areas are beginning to re-open, COVID-19 continues to be a major concern around the world today. One of the best ways to fight the spread of diseases of all kinds is to wash your hands frequently and thoroughly. With the latest update to Wear OS, it appears Google is preparing a new tile with a timer to help you wash your hands thoroughly.
On this day in 1978, the Galápagos Islands were officially recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. To celebrate the 42 year anniversary, Google has replaced their homepage logo with a slideshow Doodle that captures the beauty of the Galápagos Islands.
Right now, the only way to use Chrome extensions on Android is to use an alternative browser like Kiwi Browser, which is based on the same Chromium browser engine. The developer responsible for Kiwi Browser is working with Google and Samsung to bring Kiwi’s extensions support “upstream” to Chromium for other Chromium-based browsers to use freely.
Since launch, Google Stadia has been slowly gaining support for more and more Android phones outside of the Google Pixel series. With the release of Stadia for Android version 2.19, it looks like the service is preparing to allow you to play on phones that haven’t yet been “certified,” alongside other new features.
In a normal year, Google I/O would traditionally mark the release of a new version of Android Studio. While there hasn’t been a Google I/O event this year, the Android team has still seen fit to release Android Studio 4.0 today, complete with new Android app design tools.
One of the core aspects of Google’s Material Design, especially as of late, is the usage of “cards,” which help visually separate things in an app or page. Google has now begun testing a new UI for Google Search on the desktop that’s based almost entirely around Material Design cards.
Today, the folks at APKMirror got ahold of an internal “dogfood” build of Google Messages version 6.2. Here, “dogfood” is used in the sense of the phrase “eat your own dog food,” meaning actually use the product you’re building. Of course, our APK Insight team immediately dug in to see what all is coming with the next version of Google Messages. While we’re still actively looking through the many changes found within, one in particular stood out — end-to-end encryption for RCS messages.
Update 5/26: We now have a screenshot of one of the end-to-end encryption settings pages in action.
A new trailer has been released today promoting the latest Elder Scrolls Online expansion, Greymoor, and with it, Google and Bethesda have announced a release date for Elder Scrolls Online on Google Stadia.
Thanks to the recent Universal Stylus Initiative (USI), it’s slowly becoming possible for fine-tuned, pressure-sensitive styluses to be cross-compatible between devices. Lenovo’s upcoming “USI Pen,” built to complement their recent IdeaPad Duet tablet, has just been revealed in detail by the FCC.
Earlier this month, we showed that a dark mode was coming to the Google Search website on Android, by way of Google Chrome. At the time, we weren’t sure of how this dark mode would work or why it would require a flag in chrome://flags. As of today, Google Search has finally begun testing its dark mode for mobile web — here’s how you can start using it.
In this week’s top stories: a new survey strongly hints at the Google Pixel 4a and Pixel 5, dark mode for the Google app on Android 10+ and iOS becomes official, Google opens early access transfers from Play Music and YouTube Music, and more.