At the moment, Google Assistant’s health integrations are limited to asking about sleep. Moving forward, you’ll be able to see steps, calories burned, and other activity metrics from Fitbit or Google Fit on the Nest Hub.
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Following the iOS app in March, Google Translate for Android now has a homescreen widget that follows the latest Material You design language.
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YouTube Music is breaking up the visual monotony of the Home feed on Android and iOS with a new grid design for the “Listen again” shelf.
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Google has historically been very cautious about changing Chrome’s interface and layout given the extremely large user base. That said, one such change might be underway in Chrome for Android with the addition of a customizable toolbar shortcut.
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At the end of last month, Google delisted its classic Hangouts app from iOS and Android app stores. Surprisingly, the soon to be retired Hangouts app has returned to the iOS App Store, but only if you have the link.
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Back in December of 2020, YouTube started letting users restrict alcohol and gambling advertising. These ad limits are now being expanded to Google’s broader Display network and cover more sensitive categories.
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Google is expanding what content you can request the removal of in Search to more types of personally identifiable information as part of a policy update. This now covers phone numbers, email addresses, or physical addresses.
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Following iOS picture-in-picture support and an update on surround sound availability last month, YouTube TV is working on a better family sharing experience for televisions that adds a built-in account switcher.
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Most Chrome features these days are rolled out via server-side updates instead of browser updates. One such example of that is a small tweak to the autofill popup in desktop Chrome that greatly improves usability when filling out forms.
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Google is updating the toolbar menus that appear in the Docs web client with a focus on making it “easier to locate the most commonly used features.”
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Google announced that the Play Store was getting a “Data safety” section last May, and it’s now beginning to roll out after a brief delay. The new section will be fully available over the coming weeks, and full developer adoption is set for July.
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In April of 2020, YouTube Music replaced “Hotlist” with the “Explore” tab. A small addition that’s presented as a new way to access Explore more or less obviates its position in the bottom bar.
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In addition to offering user-facing apps, Google Workspace gives companies the ability to manage their employees’ devices. Google Workspace admins now have more control over Android app updates on work devices that use managed Google Play.
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After widget tweaks last year, Google Fi has now redesigned its Android app with Material You. It’s a straightforward modernization as the company is nearly finished visually revamping its biggest apps.
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Google’s annual Webspam Report is here to highlight progress in keeping “spam and malicious content away from Search” over the course of 2021.
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Following regulatory fines this year, Google has announced new consent choice banners for cookies in Europe that most notably feature a “Reject all” button.
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Just over four weeks ago, Google announced that Photos for Android and iOS would get pretty significant updates to two core parts of the app. That Google Photos redesign of the Library tab has now been delayed.
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Last year, Google started prominently showing air quality (AQI) data to Nest Hub and other Smart Display users. You can now also search for air quality on Google to get detailed information.
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For the past several years, Google has been making a big push to get developers to optimize their apps for large screens, including Chrome OS. The latest example sees Evernote update its Android app for Chromebooks.
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YouTube Music has long been able to automatically download songs “based on your previous listening history” so that you always have a fresh collection of things to listen to when offline. A small YouTube Music tweak sees smart downloads get a new sparkle icon.
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Over the past few years, Google has worked to clean up, boost privacy, and increase security on the Chrome Web Store. The latest effort introduces badges in the Chrome Web Store to better highlight high-quality extensions.
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While Google Chat does a great deal to modernize Hangouts, some similarities do remain. One of the more fun overlaps is easter eggs — appropriately — with all of the classic slash commands continuing to work in Google Chat.
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The latest Google One perk is a free Titan Security Key that lets you enable two-factor authentication (a.k.a. 2-Step Verification) on your online accounts.
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Google started rolling out Nearby Share in August of 2020 to Android devices as part of Play services. The native OS integration somewhat eclipsed a key aspect of the Files by Google, but Share is now prominently being highlighted again on Pixel devices.
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