Following a Material You redesign and new homescreen widgets on Android, Google Calendar is getting a new “Focus time” event type.

The integrated Gmail web experience that combines Chat, Spaces, and Meet is due for a navigation redesign. Until then, Google is rolling out a slew of updates to the compose UI on the web client.

Starting next month, YouTube Music is getting free background listening in a major revamp of the streaming service’s ad-supported tier. As part of that, the YouTube Music app is going audio-only and will no longer play videos if you don’t pay for Premium.

In a very welcome change from what we previously expected, the Google Weather Material You widgets are now live on existing Pixel phones with the latest Google app beta.

Back in May, Google announced a new Play Store requirement to have Android apps detail how they collect and use personal information. The Google Play “Data safety” section will go live in February as developers will soon be able to fill out the necessary information.

Google is rolling out an update to the “Sounds” app on Pixel phones that introduces a Material You redesign, as well as the new “Material Adventures” collection.

In late August, Google rolled out a pair of new features for Assistant Routines. Google’s Home and Away Routines for smart home devices now has a new arrive/leave location trigger.

Car Crash Detection is a key part of the Pixel experience, and Google is now updating the Personal Safety app with the ability to automatically record video when you invoke an Emergency SOS. The UI has also been refreshed with Material You.

Google is today rolling out Chrome OS 94 as the last six-week update for the platform. There are a handful of user-facing additions in this update that will be fully available over the coming weeks.

Chrome Apps preceded Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) as Google’s original vision for mimicking the capabilities of native applications through browsers. The legacy technology is on its way out, but Google has decided to extend the availability of Chrome Apps on Chrome OS. 

Following the bigger Android and iOS redesign in January, Google Search will soon adopt continuous scrolling on the mobile web.

With Android 12, the “Android Auto for Phone Screens” experience is going away in favor of Google Assistant. That transition is happening for more users as of late, while Assistant Driving Mode can now auto-launch when it connects to your vehicle’s Bluetooth.

With Android 12 Beta 5 last month, Google introduced Material You clock widgets. An update to Google Clock is rolling out today with a brand new widget and a grand total of five clock styles to choose from.

Smart Lock dates back to Android Lollipop and was Google’s solution for reducing the number of times users had to enter their passcodes before the ubiquity of fingerprint readers. Smart Lock in Android Settings was recently updated with a much-needed modern UI.

Back in September, Google announced that its YouTube-branded streaming service was dropping Galaxy Watch 4 exclusivity and coming to Wear OS 2 devices running the Snapdragon Wear 4100. YouTube Music can now be installed on even older watches powered by the Wear 3100 chipset.

Cloud Next is Google Cloud’s annual conference for enterprise customers and developers, and this year’s virtual edition is kicking off later today at 9 a.m. PT. Google Workspace announcements at Cloud Next ‘21 are primarily centered on security.

Google is rolling out two security-related changes that are aimed at simplifying the process of getting 2-Step Verification (2SV) backup codes through a new page and approving permissions on the OAuth screen.

Back in August, Google widely rolled out a visual revamp of its wearable Play Store. Google Clock now looks to be the next Wear OS app to get a Material You redesign.

Google applications on iOS have long been criticized for not feeling native to the platform. Earlier this year, the company’s designers reviewed their approach for developing iOS apps and opted for a change. 

Google’s Material You rollout continues with the Play Store over the last 24 hours, but this redesign is not too visually encompassing ye and availability is quite limited.

UV Index data was added to the Wear OS Weather app back in April. Sometime in the past few months – if not weeks – Google Assistant started showing UV Index across all its platforms.

During I/O 2021, Google announced that Chrome for Android would be testing a built-in RSS reader. It’s considered an experiment that might not ever launch, but you can test the RSS-powered “Web Feed” in Chrome today.