After generating a straightforward playlist with top songs, YouTube Music is now emailing subscribers a “Your 2020 music journey” recap complete with listening stats and other breakdowns.

In mid-November, Google appeared to settle on a compact design for Google Assistant where the activation panel is half as tall and answers don’t take up the entire screen. Google is now widely testing an Assistant design that brings the light bar to all Android phones.

Those that don’t pay for YouTube Music are either using it for the cloud locker or as a lighter YouTube client just for songs. Free YouTube Music users are now seeing a prominent “Upgrade” tab in the bottom bar.

Last month, Google announced that it would fulfill a long-time feature request in its RCS client. End-to-end encryption in Google Messages is now rolling out for some beta users.

Google’s advertising controls today range from seeing why something was served to turning off personalization entirely. Moving forward, the company will let you limit ads that are sensitive in nature, with YouTube being the first to get this option.

Google is rolling out new features across Docs and other Workspace apps to increase interoperability with Word and the Microsoft Office suite. It comes as some teams might choose to use both sets of tools, while others still work with partners that don’t use cloud offerings.

Following this week’s Feature Drop, an update to the Pixel Live Wallpaper app introduces “Conveyor Belt” to the Pixel 5. A rather elaborate moving background, it does not appear to be available for the Pixel 4a.

Google’s browser, especially on mobile, has always had a minimal interface to keep the focus on web content. Chrome houses the vast majority of controls in the overflow menu, which has just been tweaked with icons on Android.

From stricter disclosures to an entirely new platform, Google has been continuously working to make extensions better respect user privacy and more secure. Next year, Chrome will require users to first approve what sites an extension can access in a change to the default behavior.

Google’s Health division today announced that its next project is an application to “make it easier for leading research institutions to connect with potential study participants.” The Google Health Studies app is available for Android and takes advantage of federated learning and analytics.

While Microsoft is clearly focused on iterating the Chromium version of Edge, the company’s previous browser is still available. Google announced today that Workspace apps will cease support for Internet Explorer 11 in March.

Over the years, Google has been working to make “Chrome Sync” optional for more and more browser features. The company is continuing that today by announcing a pair of changes for Chrome on Android and one for desktops.

“Look to Speak” is a new experimental app from Google that helps those with speech and motor impairments communicate through eye gaze technology. 

At the tail end of September, Photos got a revamped editing experience on Android with new features. Notably, there’s a new tab that surfaces machine learning-derived “Suggestions.” Google Photos is now rolling out a slew of new sunset filters that are first coming to the Pixel. 

Assistant has primarily been tied to your main email account since it launched. However, most people use and have several accounts signed in on their phones. Google Assistant now better reflects that reality with multi-account information access.

There are a number of background services needed to make Android devices run that present themselves as apps that update via the Play Store. Google’s Pixel phones have more than a few, with a small change made recently renaming “Connectivity Health Services” to “Adaptive Connectivity Services.”

Following a big desktop update two weeks week, Chrome OS 87 started rolling out on Thursday after a brief delay. There are a handful of usability enhancements in this release, which will be available in the coming days.

Following Spotify Wrapped and Apple Music Replay, YouTube Music’s 2020 Year in Review is officially rolling out today. It’s a relatively straightforward playlist featuring the “songs you listened to the most this year.” 

Last month, Google Podcasts hit 50 million installs on the Play Store, and it’s now letting you “Add by RSS feed” across all platforms. 

Google started shutting down its legacy streaming service around the world in October. Google Play Music is now officially dead for all users.

Google launched a big Maps redesign in February and just this week introduced a new Community feed. Google Maps is now getting a simple but very useful “Go” tab on Android and iOS.

Earlier this year, Google began “cooking” up stickers in Gboard that mix emojis into wild combinations. Gboard’s “emoji kitchen” and its expanded collection of over 14,000 stickers is rolling out for all Android users.