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.
In modern life, if you don’t know how to do something, the usual first step is to Google it. To make this workflow smoother, Google has announced at I/O 2019 that both the Assistant and Google Search will start including useful “how-to” steps in your results.
The last two Android Q Beta versions were unfortunately limited to the Pixel series phones, including the original Google Pixel “by popular demand.” At Google I/O, the company has announced that today’s third Beta release will bring Android Q to fifteen more devices, like OnePlus 6T and Sony Xperia XZ3.
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As in year’s past, the Google I/O 2019 keynote has taken time to focus on Google’s latest accessibility tech. One of this year’s demos, Project Euphonia, is an impressive project designed to let the Google Assistant’s voice recognition understand those with speech impairments.
At Google I/O 2019, Google has announced that Duplex is moving from being a voice-only service to being able to complete web-based tasks using Google Chrome on Android and information from your calendar and Gmail.
In this week’s top stories: Pixel 3 owners are still facing some issues six months later, Fossil’s Wear OS devices lose market share, Google says more Android TV devices are on the way, and more.
While the Pixel 3a and 3a XL have not even been properly announced yet, details have slowly been coming out that indicate Verizon’s exclusivity period with the Google Pixel series of phones is coming to an end. The latest leak seems to point to not only the Pixel 3a phones but also at least the Pixel 3 XL coming to Sprint stores in the near future.
For the past 5 months, we’ve been watching as Google slowly brought support for their Fuchsia OS to the Android Emulator, which would make the OS accessible to developers who don’t have Pixelbooks. A pair of indie developers have managed to piece together some of Google’s work-in-progress efforts to demonstrate Fuchsia running directly in the Android Emulator.
Google has been slowly revealing more about this year’s Google I/O as Tuesday approaches. The latest reveal is some of the ways Google I/O attendees will be able to spend their after hours time at the Shoreline Amphitheatre, including an AR spin on Chrome’s classic Dino Runner and a tattoo parlor.
Regardless of your reasons for using Incognito, we’ve all taken Google Chrome’s privacy option for granted. As it stands now, though, on Windows 10, your typing data is still passed through Windows’ prediction services even while using Chrome in Incognito mode. Microsoft is working to fix this and avoid awkward text predictions from both Google Chrome and Chromium-based Edge by marking your keyboard input as private while in Incognito.
In the build up to Google I/O 2019, just over a week away, Google has been making dozens of changes to the schedule, mostly additions. Sometimes, though, details will get removed from the website, which signals to us that maybe Google included something too early. One such removed detail suggests that Google may be releasing a “next-generation UI framework for Android” in the near future, possibly at I/O.
Another month, another set of new banks gaining support for Google Pay. So far, in April, Google Pay has added fifteen new banks and credit unions in the United States.
Update: As of the final update, the grand total is now fifty-two.
The ability to have more than one “virtual desktop” is a hallmark of many desktop operating systems including Linux, Mac OS, and even recent versions of Windows. It allows you to separate your (too many) open apps and windows into cleanly divided work spaces. One major OS that’s been missing out though is Chrome OS, but Google is finally starting to change it with the new “Virtual Desks” feature.
Update: We now have a third video showing Chrome OS’s virtual desks and how they’ll actually work.
Generally speaking, we’ve come to trust our browser’s address bar to know whether a site we’re on is legitimate or not. A developer has demonstrated an exploit that can make you believe you’re on a legitimate website by showing a fake version of Chrome for Android’s full address bar.
In this week’s top stories: Thanos snaps his way through Google Search results page in an Avengers: Endgame Easter Egg, Huawei announces EMUI 9.1 for almost 50 more devices, we review the Anker Roav Bolt the first standalone Google Assistant device for the car, and more.
Every year at Google I/O, the company displays its latest technologies across the many various aspects of life that Google has gotten involved in. This year, it appears Google will be unveiling a new accessibility technology, “Project Euphonia,” which is aimed at giving those who are speech-impaired “their voice back.”
Thanks to EU law changes leading to consent banners on what feels like every website, public awareness of cookies on the web has probably never been higher. Google has introduced two experimental Chrome flags that should make cookies more secure for everyone by default, but could break older websites.
When Android Q Beta 2 rolled out to our beta-enrolled Pixel devices, we noticed that many apps were unable to function as they once could. This is partly because of a new restriction placed on apps, called Scoped Storage, that changes the permissions needed to access certain files. In response to developer feedback, Google is making Scoped Storage optional in Android Q, starting with Beta 3.
Here at 9to5Google, we’ve been closely monitoring the Google I/O 2019 sessions list, noting the various additions and changes Google makes almost every day. Last night, for example, the company added twelve “lightning talks” sessions, or 30 minutes of rapid-fire presentations on various related subjects, across two days of Google I/O. In these, we’ve found hints of things likely to be announced during the keynote, such as “Find My Accessories.”
When searching for a new job, like any other kind of search, people tend to start with Google. To help adapt the job search feature to what work looks like for many today, Google is adding a “work from home” filter.
Android Q has only been in beta testing on Pixel phones for just over a month, but Google has already begun work to bring this latest version of Android to Chrome OS devices, according to a code change.
Earlier this year, we uncovered screenshots of a “touchless” version of Chrome which appears to be designed for feature-phone-like devices. New screenshots we were able to obtain have confirmed that this “touchless” Chrome is being built for a version of Android Oreo.
AI assistants have entered our lives in a way we’ve long dreamed about in Sci-Fi stories, being available in our homes, phones, laptops, and most recently our cars. As these assistants become a part of our daily workflow, the ability to call for them certainly needs to become standardized. Google has taken a major step toward the standardization of AI assistants by making the “assistant” key an officially recognized button.
In this week’s top stories: a Google error leads to a $9000 shipment of unwanted Pixel 3 phones, the Google Camera app picks up kiss detection, we confirm that the Google Home Hub is being rebranded to the Google Nest Hub, and more.
We’ve all been watching and waiting eagerly for the official launch of Fuchsia, Google’s in-development OS for anything and everything, but the company has barely even acknowledged its existence thus far. Despite this lack of publicity, Fuchsia has marched on toward its latest milestone—the first “release candidate.”