Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Google has been rapidly iterating on Meet, given the demand for enterprise video conferencing. The company also made Google Meet free for personal Gmail accounts, and is now extending the availability of longer calls to June 2021.Â
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YouTube is always running several tests, and the latest sees it hide the public dislike count in response to creator feedback. It follows how the Google video site has publicly obscured subscriber totals for some time now.
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The latest launch from Google’s internal Area 120 incubator is smaller in scale than a messaging or virtual events tool but even more useful. Google this week released “Stacks” as a “PDF Scanner + Document Organizer” for Android.
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Last May, Google released an app for creating one-tap Assistant shortcuts on Android homescreens. An update today adds Action Blocks backup and restore when moving to new devices, as well as other small tweaks.
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With Discover, Google wants to “help you uncover fresh and interesting content about things that matter to you.” Something appears to have recently changed with Google Discover as more than a few users are increasingly being served old news and more evergreen articles.
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Over the past week, Google Discover has made two tweaks to the feed’s design. The first sees Posts on Google get a more prominent Discover layout, while sports carousels have been removed to improve usability.
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With Chrome 89 at the start of this month, Google introduced a built-in tool that lets you quickly save articles and other links for later. Users that have no need for it or don’t like losing bookmark bar space can remove the Chrome Reading List.
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Following a brief test earlier this week on the main website, YouTube Music for Android is now beginning to more widely see outline-style icons.
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A large number of Android users over the past few hours have been encountering continuous Gmail and other app shutdowns, with some finding that uninstalling Android System WebView will stop the crashing.
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Google has increasingly made Search a resource for students and others wanting to learn about various topics. The latest additions see Google Search surface practice problems, while expanding other capabilities.
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In addition to a web revamp, Google Chat is rolling out more notification settings over the coming weeks. These new options are “based on your level of engagement or involvement in specific conversations.”
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While Google Drive does offer a GUI lookup interface, power users often take advantage of search operators to save time. A change is in the process of rolling out to “make finding shared files easier.”
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Google Lens has long been part of Google Photos to help you visually search images. On Android, Google Lens is now a more prominent part of Photos by identifying what pictures would benefit from the analysis and search tool.
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After we first spotted in August, Gboard is now rolling out an “enhanced voice typing” experience that features the new Google Assistant found on the latest Pixel phones.
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Since it was announced in 2017, Google’s visual search tool has seen two (live) logos. Google Lens is now getting a third logo that better reflects how it’s a camera for looking up things in the real world.
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Since 2019, Google has been rolling out night modes to all of its apps. The last major holdout is Google Maps, but that’s fortunately coming to an end as its dark theme is set to soon launch globally on Android.
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Besides music and relaxing sounds, Google’s Assistant devices are frequently used for podcasts. However, a bug has emerged in the past few days that sees Google Home and Nest speakers play the wrong podcast.
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With the Pixel 4 in 2019, Google introduced the ability to automatically subtitle playing audio and video. After expanding on Android, Live Caption is now coming to Google Chrome and later Chrome OS.
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After a preview in India, YouTube Shorts is rolling out in the US with a beta launch. Alongside the expanded availability, Google is making a number of updates to the short-form platform.
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Last month, Google announced that an upcoming YouTube TV add-on will let you watch available shows in 4K and download them for offline playback, as well as have unlimited concurrent home streams. Ahead of that, YouTube TV is getting a new “Store” on televisions to highlight all the additional channels you can subscribe to.
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At the start of December, the Google Play Music website and mobile apps officially stopped working for all users worldwide. It marked the biggest milestone in the transition to YouTube Music, but there is one last step. Before February 24th, transfer your Play Music library to the replacement YouTube service, or download using Google Takeout.
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The Google Lens app today is geared towards analyzing live images in real-time, but a new gallery view makes it easier to sift through screenshots and other pictures already in your camera roll.
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In announcing that new Viacom channels are available in YouTube TV, Google last year raised the subscription by $15 to $64.99. Following the initial additions last June, YouTube TV is picking up seven more channels.
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Google is adding a small but highly useful feature to the Calendar website that lets you snooze notifications. This was a “top user request” that’s long overdue for the web client.
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