Smart text selection in Android O uses on-device machine learning to recognize phone numbers and addresses, as well as improve the copy-and-paste experience. New in Developer Preview 4 is the ability to paste copied items that have formatting as plain text.
Action Launcher is one of our favorite options for customizing the Android homescreen, and today, it’s getting a massive update that brings some highly requested features to all. With version 26 of Action Launcher, developer Chris Lacy introduces support for Google’s Feed (formerly known as Google Now) without root, as well as the addition of several features pulled out of Android O.
Android O features a huge redesign of notifications for both end users and developers. Google wants the latter group to add notification channels to give users more control in apps, as well as a centralized location for quicker access. In Android 8.0, Chrome will extend notification channels to all websites.
Google Photos is arguably one of the best cloud backup services for images. Its biggest downside, despite allowing for unlimited “high quality” photographs to be backed up, is that there is a 2,000 photo limit for albums. Thankfully, that limit appears to be going away…
In line with other digital media stores, Google Play Movies & TV has a convenient feature that allows users to buy TV seasons at a discounted price if they already own existing episodes.
Launching six years ago last month, Google+ has since refocused on becoming an interest-based network centered around Collections and Communities. Google today reopened its Early Access program for the social product that allows fans to beta test new features.
Popular messaging app WhatsApp announced today that it has reached one billion daily active users as the company also shared some other stats on how the service is being used. The one billion active daily users is up from the one billion monthly actives it announced last year, and monthly users too are up:
Back in February, Google combined their YouTube and Play Music teams in order to “deliver the best possible product.” That move widely suggested that Google was working on a single music service to greatly simplify their offering. Today, that merger was officially confirmed by YouTube’s head of music.
Since 2010, typing a query into Google on desktops would automatically begin listing results based on what Search assumed you were looking for. Google is now removing this desktop-specific feature given how most searches occur on mobile.
Ever since Waze revealed that it would be coming to Android Auto, fans have patiently been waiting for it. Over the past couple of months, the Google-owned service has been beta testing that functionality, and today, it’s finally available for everyone.
Slowly but surely, cardless mobile payment options are becoming more widely available around the world. Today, Google has announced that it is making Android Pay Available to users in Spain…
Motorola, like many other Android manufacturers, has started moving more of its stock applications to the Play Store. The latest application to be added to Motorola’s Play Store listing is Moto Photo Editor, an app made specifically to work with the OEM’s phones that pack dual cameras…
Last December, Project Fi announced a referral program that netted referrers and new customers a $20 credit towards their monthly bill. The Google MVNO is now significantly expanding the program with a new Referral Challenge that adds prizes to the mix.
Over the past few years, Google has been slowly reducing Adobe Flash usage in Chrome. With the announcement this morning that Adobe will soon stop supporting Flash, Google is following suit and will completely remove the plug-in from its browser by 2020.
Google has plans for a ton of new Daydream VR-ready smartphones through the end of this year, and that’s starting with a previous announcement. Following the reveal back at I/O 2017, Samsung is finally starting to roll out Daydream support for the Galaxy S8 family, starting with the Verizon variant.
As past events throughout time have proven, the world can sometimes be a dark and dangerous place. Having access to the right information during a crisis can prove to be lifesaving depending on the situation at hand, and the release of SOS Alerts on Google Search and Maps aims to make dealing with these future events easier and much more manageable.
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The fourth and final Developer Preview of Android O finally dropped for Pixel and Nexus device yesterday, and several small graphical changes came with it. The latest change to be found is the system apps icon which has finally received a fresh coat of paint…
Typing on TVs is something that pretty much everyone hates. Clicking half a dozen times between letter is infuriating, and it’s only made worse when you have a poor keyboard layout. When Google debuted Android TV, input was one of the key things that it fixed. It did that by pushing voice, but that doesn’t always work. Some apps need keyboard input, and Android TV’s keyboard always worked well. Now, though, Google is changing things up…
Smart Reply for Gmail was announced back at I/O a couple of months ago as a feature designed to save time when sending quick responses. Today, Google is expanding that feature to Spanish-language users.
While developer preview 3 of Android O brought up quite a few new goodies, developer preview 4 hasn’t held quite as many little gems. In digging through the update, though, a few more tweaks have popped up, including some on the lockscreen and notification panel.
Android O has been floating around for a while in the form of developer previews. Through its first three developer previews, Google hasn’t done much with regards to easter eggs outside of adding the orange O. However, in Android O Developer Preview 4, Google has just added a new easter egg, and it’s an octopus, for some reason.
After finding its way to the HTC U11 in the United States last week, U11 users across the pond are reporting Alexa as now available for their devices.
OnePlus gets a lot of things right with its OxygenOS software, and of its best features is arguably the built-in launcher. OnePlus’s launcher is smooth, stable, and is equipped with a host of customization features for making your home screen look exactly the way that you want it to.
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Late last week, we reported that the ASUS ZenWatch 2 had started to receive the update to Android Wear 2.0. This came as great news considering the fact that it’s taken far too long for this software to arrive on ASUS’ lineup of wearables, but there was, unfortunately, a bit of a catch.