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.
Over the years, Google Messages has become more than just a text messaging app, as Google has used it to help push RCS features to new regions. However, some of the more useful features have been buried in somewhat messy menus. To help with this, Google Messages is trying out a new UI that makes the ability to record and send voice messages far easier to use.
The public is flooding Gamescom in Germany this week, and after a decent showing from Google at the second Stadia Connect event, they’re also on-site to offer hands-on time with the new service. The Stadia hands-on experience at Gamescom has revealed our first real look at Google Stadia UI, showing a sleek friends list view.
When browsing the web, sometimes you’ll come across an image that you want to know a bit more about, and one of the best ways to do that is through Google Lens. As it stands, you need to save the image to your phone, switch to Google Lens, and scan the image that way. Soon, you’ll be able to share an image directly to Google Lens from Chrome for Android.
Back at I/O 2019, Google unveiled a handful of upcoming features for Digital Wellbeing, including Focus Mode which pauses “distracting” apps and Family Link support. With the latest beta update, version 1.0.26, Focus Mode is now available in Digital Wellbeing.
Despite having been around for almost five years in the US, Google Pay does not yet support cards from every bank in America, but they’re working on it. Already, for the month of August, Google Pay has gained support for a whopping twenty-seven more banks and credit unions across the US.
The biggest news from yesterday’s Stadia Connect was that one of the most highly anticipated games of 2020, Cyberpunk 2077, is coming to the Google Stadia game-streaming platform. As of today, advertisements for Cyberpunk 2077 are now integrating with Google Lens to offer an AR experience.
Android Studio is the main gateway to Android app development, for better or worse, but it’s not known for being particularly fast, or for necessarily working well on lower-end computers. For Android Studio 3.5, Google dedicated eight months to working almost exclusively on bug fixes and performance improvements, with Chrome OS support being one of the only new features.
Yesterday’s Nest app update brought with it the ability to migrate your Nest account to Google, for better or worse. This Nest 5.38 update also has the beginnings of glass break detection for Nest Guard.
According to a new report, for two years, Google apparently provided mobile carriers access to anonymized network data from Android phones in a program called “Mobile Network Insights.”
The second Stadia Connect event is going on now, a day ahead of Gamescom, and Google has said that the main focus of the event is games. Without a doubt, we’ll be seeing a plethora of new titles announced for the streaming platform. Here’s a continuously updated list of every game Google has announced during the second Stadia Connect.
Without a doubt, the most hyped game at E3 2019 was Cyberpunk 2077 from CD Projekt Red, of The Witcher series fame. When the game debuted, however, there was no sign of support for Google’s Stadia game streaming service. During the second Stadia Connect, Google and CD Projekt Red have confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 is coming to Google Stadia.
For the past few months, our APK Insight team has been on the trail of low light mode for Google Duo, as it’s been in development since at least last year. Now Google is making things official by launching it on both Android and iOS this week.
Give or take our own minor frustrations, the Google Assistant is generally accepted as the best voice assistant on the market today. While public perception plays a critical role, it’s also important to back that feeling up with numbers. For the third year in a row, the Google Assistant has been tested and proven to be able to answer more queries correctly versus both Siri and Alexa.
In this week’s top stories: the winner of the 2019 “Doodle for Google” competition was announced and proudly displayed, Nest takes away the ability to disable camera status lights, Android Auto has been crashing for many, and more.
Last year, our Damien Wilde raved about Mobvoi’s TicPods Free true wireless earbuds, calling them the Android alternative to AirPods. We’ve discovered that Mobvoi is getting ready for a second round, developing two new models of “TicPods 2,” including a “Pro” variant to match the PowerBeats Pro.
The latest beta of Files by Google, version 1.0.2635, rolled out last night, and it shows work toward sharing photos and videos from your phone to Chromecast devices.
Earlier this year, Google created “Password Checkup,” a tool that checks if any of your passwords have been revealed in an online data breach, as an extension for desktop Chrome. In the near future, the leak detection part of Password Checkup will become a default feature of Google Chrome instead of an optional extension.
When something goes wrong with your Pixel phone, the first thing you’d think to do is contact Google Support. But what do you do when — surprise, surprise — Google Support isn’t as helpful as you’d expect? For many, the answer is to turn to Reddit, and hope that one particular user and their “Reddit Requests” system will sympathize with your plea.
Over the past two years, Google has been trying a number of UI redesigns on Chrome for Android, some of which have worked decently, others have drawn complaints. The latest Chrome for Android redesign, called “Start Surface,” replaces the somewhat complicated “Duet” layout and adds a dedicated “Explore” tab.
Late last year, we uncovered a list of devices that would never be able to support Chrome OS’s Linux apps (Crostini). At the time, we noted that the second-generation Chromebook Pixel from 2015 was not on this list, and that it in fact stood a chance of getting the necessary upgrades to support Linux apps. It seems that eight more devices are following suit to allow their owners to run Linux apps.
A few weeks ago, we learned that Google was working on a Chrome OS release notes web app, which would be tailored to your specific Chromebook. Google has now launched this simple web app (installable on Chrome OS) under the name “What’s New.”
In this week’s top stories: we’ve got the full spec sheet for the Google Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, Google released Android Q Beta 6 with back gesture sensitivity settings, we got a sneak peek at the next generation of Google WiFi, and more.
Since 2013, Visa has run their Visa Checkout online payment service, competing with the likes of PayPal. We’ve now learned that Visa Checkout will apparently be shutting down sometime in 2020.
With the release of Chrome 76, Google attempted to put a stop to web developers and publishers detecting people using Chrome’s Incognito Mode. Unfortunately, it seems their efforts may be all for naught, as at least one major news outlet, The New York Times, has managed to put their hard paywall back up for those using Chrome Incognito.