I like YouTube Music and have been using it daily since the May 2018 relaunch as Google’s primary streaming service. For the most part, it’s good, and there are features most people can appreciate. However, a year after launch, YouTube Music in 2019 is starting to show signs of not keeping up with vibrant competition. More importantly, it’s not adding features for the diehard, built-in Play Music audience.
Making the case that great music videos are “works of art” on the level of museum paintings or sculptures, YouTube and Universal Music Group today announced a partnership to “remaster some of the most iconic music videos of all time.”
Waze has offered integration with some popular music apps such as Spotify and Pandora, and now that’s extending to a podcast player. Starting today, Castbox is officially integrating with Waze on Android.
Ahead of next week’s ISTE 2019, Google for Education announced a slew of G Suite updates for schools. Classroom is adding grading rubrics and SIS syncing, while locked mode Quizzes on Chromebooks are launching this August.
Google Slides is adding two new features that make it easier to give a live presentation. New keyboard shortcuts aid in faster navigation through a deck, while “Present mode” can be resized to make slide previews bigger.
Google’s Material Theme has solely been making its way out to the company’s various Android apps, and it seems the latest is Google Docs. Some users are currently seeing a new interface takeover the app on Android.
The latest version of Chrome, which rolled out earlier this month, adds deceptive URL protections that will send users to the correct site. Google is also releasing a Suspicious Site Reporter extension for Chrome to submit deceptive URLs and other malicious pages directly to Safe Browsing.
With Rich Communication Services slow to proliferate around the world, Google announced today that it’s stepping in to help boost adoption. The company is specifically offering to handle RCS rollout so that individual carriers do not have to.
The Google Play Store on mobile is facing a limited bug this morning that’s stopping some users from checking for updates. Other capabilities like searching for Android apps and downloading are still operational at this time.
Besides paying with your phone at retailers, Google Pay features peer-to-peer capabilities that are a remnant of Google Wallet. The company just announced that it’s killing Google Pay Send P2P features in the UK this September.
Back in March, we spotted Google testing Material Theme icons for the various Search categories. This graphical and colorful addition is now widely rolled out when visiting Google.com on the desktop web.
Back in April, we enabled a massive redesign of the Play Store that introduced the Google Material Theme. With the latest version of Google Play, this revamp is beginning to officially roll out on Android.
Just before Google Voice received its Material Theme redesign earlier this year, the Android app removed the live count of unread messages and calls in the bottom bar. Fortunately, this feature is now back with the latest version of the Android app.
With the Google Material Theme in 2018, the company introduced Google Sans as a site-optimized version of Product Sans. The YouTube Sans display font is now getting its own refresh following 10 months of work.
Since I/O 2019, Google has launched a slew of augmented reality features from new Lens capabilities to 3D animals in Search. A previously announced Lens integration with the de Young museum in San Francisco is now also live.
Revision history is a key component of any word processor that lets you track writing progress and return to older iterations. The new Google Docs “Compare Documents” tool takes this a step further by highlighting the differences between two separate files in a dedicated view.
Back in April, our APK Insight spotted a dark mode in development for the Google app. This new look for Discover and Google Search is now beginning to roll out for some users running the latest beta release from Friday.
Back in March, Google announced support for “dynamic emails” that can live update and allow users to take action directly within the Gmail interface. Based on AMP, these interactive messages are launching for all G Suite customers in July.
In addition to a new Driving Mode that replaces Android Auto on phones, Google at I/O 2019 announced that Assistant is coming to Waze. Google Assistant in Waze for Android is now beginning to roll out in the U.S.
We’re deep into 2019 and we’re still having issues with Android apps not supporting Dark or Night modes despite millions of devices now using AMOLED displays. Here’s a list of our favorite Android apps that support the dark side…
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Google today announced a change in Search designed to prevent sites from appearing multiple times in top results. Rolling out now, this aims to improve site diversity on Google Search as requested by users.
Earlier this year, Google Docs picked up the Material Theme on both the web homepage and in the editor. With G Suite especially, Google has been incrementally adding new features to apps and tweaking others. The latest in Google Docs is a Material Theme link editor.
Crowdsource lets users perform “simple tasks” like translation validation or handwriting recognition to improve Google services. Google today updated the Android app with a new logo and other tweaks to the design.
As the name suggests, Chrome Remote Desktop allows you to control another computer or have a trusted user access yours to render help. With Chrome 75’s launch yesterday, Google announced that Chrome Remote Desktop is exiting beta and now available on the web.