As part of Google Workspace, the company is rolling out new branding for its productivity apps. Gmail — as teased last month — will be getting a new icon, with Calendar, Drive, Docs, and Meet also following over the coming weeks.

Since the revamped Snapshot feed launched in March, Google has been adding more and more features. Google Assistant now offers settings to control which cards appear in Snapshot.

YouTube Music continues its flurry of new features by adding global top charts to the Explore tab. That second section in the bottom bar launched earlier this year to replace the video-focused Hotlist.  

Google Play Music is set to stop working for users around the world starting this month. YouTube Music continues to add legacy features to ease the transition, with Google Assistant now working to play personal playlists.

Google has been working on Tasks integration in Calendar for Android and iOS over the past year. The feature is now officially rolling out in the coming weeks.

Google Maps Live View uses augmented reality to overlay arrows, directions, and now landmarks over the real world to make navigating easier. The feature is getting a number of big updates today.

Back in June, Google announced that it would license content from news publishers for a new feature that would appear across its products. The company today unveiled “Google News Showcase” and a $1 billion investment.

Besides introducing an “Explore” tab earlier this year, Google’s primary — and soon only — streaming service has remained visually unchanged since the 2018 revamp. YouTube Music is now testing high-level filters for the Home feed of recommendations.

Google is trying hard to make Meet a video conferencing competitor by adding a torrent of new features in quick succession. After making premium features free at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Google is now extending free, unlimited Meet calls into next year for Gmail accounts.

At the start of this month, we spotted Google working on a Maps dark mode for Android. The Google Maps dark theme is now beginning to roll out for some users and it encompasses the entire app.

After rolling out to desktops in June, Google Meet can now filter out disruptive sounds, thanks to noise cancellation on Android and iOS. The video conferencing service is also adding attendance reports for schools and educators. 

As rumored last week, Google today announced that it will require all Android apps downloaded from the Play Store to use its billing system for in-app purchases (IAPs). The company also noted how its own first-party apps will adapt to this.

Recent versions of the Home companion client have added a slew of new features. A server-side update now appears to remove the interface for triggering Assistant Routines from the Google Home app.

To the left of most Android homescreens is a personalized feed of articles, YouTube videos, and — increasingly — AMP Stories. Google Discover is now offering episode recommendations from Google Podcasts for some users.

Since the start of this year, Google has added a number of useful resources about how to get around amid a pandemic. A new Google Maps layer now works to show COVID-19 case trends “in an area so you can make more informed decisions.”

In addition to announcing new games coming this week, Google today detailed how Stadia accounts can soon be linked to Community Forum logins as part of a broader revamp.

Besides loading articles quickly, AMP is being leveraged to create a visual medium for sharing content online. Google is now bringing Web Stories to any WordPress site with the wide launch of a new creation tool.

YouTube today announced a series of changes to how age-restricted videos work on its platform. The Google company will be leveraging machine learning in this review process, while YouTube videos meant for those over 18 will not play on third-party sites.

Google Takeout has long let users export and download local copies of their data. With the Data Transfer Project, Google made it so that you could directly move an image library to a third-party service. Google Takeout now lets you select specific Photos albums to transfer.

Two distinct versions of Google Pay exist today. The first is aimed at countries where NFC-based payments are widely adopted, while the other is for the Next Billion Users. That latter version of Google Pay, known as Tez, is getting a Flutter rewrite that will serve as the basis for global expansion.