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.
Even before the launch of Android 10, Google has been putting special focus on bringing dark mode to its apps and services, especially on Android. Now Chrome for Android is working to bring dark mode to the Google Search results page in something of an unusual way.
The fourth Android 11 Developer Preview released today, bringing a small swath of changes and upgrades. Included in these, you’ll find that Android 11 is making picture-in-picture resizable and bringing some minor changes to its UI.
While Google I/O is no longer happening this year, many of the company’s planned announcements, especially for developers, are still going forward as intended. Today, Flutter, Google’s massively cross-platform app development framework, is launching its first stable update of 2020, Flutter SDK version 1.17, complete with support for Apple’s Metal graphics API on iOS devices.
For years, Chrome OS has used a simple, straightforward app to let you thumb through photos on your Chromebook. Over the past few months, Google has been working on an all-new “Gallery” app for Chrome OS, with some built-in editing tools. Let’s check it out!
Google is following up the high from yesterday’s Stadia Connect event with a massive sale for Pro members, offering discounts on nine games including Final Fantasy XV, Darksiders Genesis, and Football Manager 2020. There are also some discounts offered for non-Pro members.
Update 5/5: Four more games, including DOOM Eternal, are now also on sale.
Today, HP is unveiling two new Chromebooks for business, including the Elite c1030 Chromebook, the first Chromebook with a built-in privacy screen.
Following the recent release of the Google Pixel Buds, our attention now turns back to Google’s next upcoming device, the mid-range Pixel 4a. Today, we may have gotten a small sneak peek at using the Google Pixel 4a thanks to a screenshot from their senior VP of hardware, Rick Osterloh.
In this week’s top stories: the Pixel Buds app arrives in the Play Store, Google Meet to become free to use without G Suite, Lenovo’s affordable Chrome OS tablet IdeaPad Duet appears for pre-order, and more.
Over the years, Google has become infamous for creating and “killing” messaging apps, as well as putting messaging into apps where it may or may not be useful, like in YouTube. Now, Google is preparing to launch messaging into yet another app, Stadia.
Google Stadia has had quite the busy week, between Tuesday’s Stadia Connect event and the launch of new Stadia Pro games for May. Stadia for Android also saw an update to version 2.16 this week, which continues to prep for Android TV, as well as start work on sharing captures and much more.
Of the many, many things we got to preview at CES 2020 back in January, there were two clear winners, the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook which ended up being underwhelming for an overwhelming price, and an affordable Chrome OS tablet from Lenovo. The latter device, the IdeaPad Duet, has now appeared for pre-order at one retailer, possibly revealing its release date.
Since the Chrome Web Store has become the sole source of Chrome extensions, as well as a begrudging secondary provider for Microsoft Edge extensions, safety and security is of the utmost importance. To that end, Google has announced a new set of restrictions on Chrome extensions that should help cut back on spam.
No game publisher seems more onboard with the ideas and ambitions of Google Stadia than Ubisoft, who is set to launch a uPlay+ subscription that gives access to many of their games on Stadia. Filling out that service’s library, Ubisoft has today announced that Monopoly will be coming to Stadia, along with a release date and new information about The Crew 2.
Today, Google held its first “Stadia Connect” event since the platform launched in November, unveiling and even releasing a ton of new games. Here’s a quick rundown of everything announced during the April 2020 Stadia Connect.
One of the coolest, if underused, features of the Google Wifi and Nest Wifi routers is that you can control parts of your network through the Google Assistant instead of fiddling with a configuration page. Now it seems the capability for Google Assistant support is opening up for developers to put into more routers.
In this week’s top stories: Huawei was caught claiming DSLR photos were taken on a smartphone, the Google Store sees a refresh highlighting Google’s hardware brands, adjustable “Hey Google” sensitivity outlined, and more.
While using a pre-release version of Android sounds like an exciting experience, we usually don’t recommend the average joe to install Developer Preview builds, as they come with flaws. One of the usual flaws, the inability to use Google Pay, is actually no longer the case as of Android 11 Developer Preview 3.
While the best thing most of us can do to combat the coronavirus is stay home, play some video games, and thank everyone who is doing their part, companies around the world are finding ways to support the efforts. Today, uBreakiFix has announced a partnership with Google to offer free repairs to Pixel phones for healthcare workers and other folks who are directly fighting COVID-19.
We’re still in the process of uncovering all of the new things in Android 11 Developer Preview 3, a process that is currently taking a longer time than usual. Our normal routine of manually “sideloading” the update to Android 11 DP3 via ADB — which our Ben Schoon has explained in detail — is failing for owners of the Pixel 3 and Pixel 4.
Earlier this month, Milestone Srl released Monster Energy Supercross 3 bringing the excitement of off-road motorcycling to Google Stadia. Today, Milestone is following that game up with MotoGP 20 a full motorcycle Grand Prix racing simulator, releasing on all platforms including Google Stadia on April 23.
With everyone — including students of all ages — working from home, video conferencing apps like Zoom have become essential parts of daily life. However, the Chromebooks that many students have handy were hindered by not being able to install the Chrome extension for either Zoom or Hangouts, but that has just changed.
Update 4/22: Even more extensions are coming soon to Chromebooks with Family Link.
Over the last two years, Google’s massively cross-platform Flutter SDK has seen significant growth both to their team and to the number of developers making Flutter apps worldwide. Today, the Flutter team is sharing some insights into how that growth will affect their release schedule going forward.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, Google has created a relaxing game that lets you control a bee pollinating flowers.
Earlier this month, Google Stadia launched its free tier to the public including a two-month trial of Stadia Pro and its library of free games. Since Stadia’s free tier launched, we’ve found that at least one game, Destiny 2, has seen a meteoric rise in player count.