Announced at Google I/O, the Early Access section of the Play Store allows developers to have their near finished apps beta tested by thousands of users. The collection has been a success with a million installs and frequent user feedback. Google is now opening up the submission process and launching an event for app and games developers in Europe.
Snapseed 2.9 is rolling out today on Android with a number of features, including new Face, Perspective, and White Balance tools. The app also includes some new animations and the ability to customize the file format and compression rate when exporting.
Google has announced a number of upcoming changes to Chrome in the past few weeks, including phasing out Chrome apps on the browser and defaulting to HTML5 by year’s end. Chrome 53 — rolling out now to Mac, Windows, and Linux — contains the usual bug and security fixes, but also brings Material Design to Windows.
Google has today announced a major new way to interact and search for information on Android devices. The new “In Apps” search mode available via the Google app lets you quickly find content from installed apps, currently working with Gmail, Spotify, and YouTube with more third-party apps adding support in the coming months…
Google Maps is a service we all use almost daily, but a lot of work goes into making it as great as it is. Lately, Google has been pushing users into its Local Guides program which lets them “level up” by writing reviews, uploading pictures, and adding/editing places on Maps. To help those users better do those tasks, the company has today added the ability to sort saved places into lists within the mobile app.
Google+ is the odd one out in the social space. Despite millions of users who love the service, it always seems to be the forgotten platform. For those who are using Google+, today Google has announced several major updates coming to the platform just ahead of a switch to the new UI which was announced last year.
Rooting your Android device can bring a lot of benefits, but in today’s safety first world, Google is pushing root out of the picture for many important apps. A great example of this is Android Pay. Since its debut, developers have been working hard to get the service working for users who are rooted, but unfortunately, they haven’t seen much success.
Millions of people rely on Google’s services daily, whether that’s Google Maps, Google Translate, or even just Google Search. Now the company is asking for users help to further improve those services, just a few seconds at a time. Users can do this by helping out with image transcription, handwriting recognition, translation, translation validation, and maps translation validation.
Following the announcement of Allo, Google reiterated that Hangouts would remain as an enterprise-focussed messaging solution. To that extent, Hangouts will continue to receive new features, including an updated Chrome extension that introduces a tablet-like UI.
After being announced at Google I/O, Duo made its official debut just last week, and it has already jumped up to the top of the free apps chart of Google Play and has amassed an impressive 5 million downloads on Android.
At CES in January, Samsung announced that the Gear S2 would get iOS compatibility later this year. With the announcement (via SamMobile) of a beta program for the iOS Gear Manager app, a wider release is likely imminent.
From Doodles marking significant occasions to countless Easter Eggs, Google is quite a whimsical company. The latest fun additions add solitaire and tic-tac-toe right into Search on both mobile and desktop. Just try not to get too distracted.
In April, Google added a podcast directory and player to Play Music. The feature is quite barebones, but provides some advanced features like playback syncing and a web client. An update to the Android app adds a sleep timer that is especially useful when listening to music.
In a fairly minor update, Google has jumped Hangouts up to version 12.0. Within this update there’s nothing too new, but we do get one fairly long-awaited feature, the “/shruggie” command which was added to the desktop version a while back.
VPN services can increase the security of your net connections when using public WiFi hotspots, as well as sometimes allow you to appear to be in a different country when accessing geo-limited services, but they usually cost money. Opera has today launched Free VPN, which is both free and unlimited …
Following a slight redesign of the Google Drive website last week, the Android client is getting a number of small updates like homescreen shortcuts and the ability to upgrade your storage plan through the app. Additionally, version 2.4.311 will be the last update for devices running Ice Cream Sandwich.
Slack is one of the best services for communication between co-workers, and it continues to improve. Just this week, Slack has updated its Android app yet again, this time to include improved support for Android tablets.
A report earlier suggested that Pokémon Go usage is in decline after a fever pitched launch two months ago. Direct battling and trading might spark a revival in the game, but so far Niantic is still focused on international expansion and stability. Version 1.5.0 on iOS and 0.35.0 on Android adds a new Pokémon appraisal feature, minor fixes, and the promise of new features.
During its time as a developer preview, we saw quite a few features pop up in Android Nougat, later to be dumped. Among those included a dark UI mode, something fans have been wanting for quite some time. Unfortunately, it didn’t make the cut. Another feature which we were glad to see what “Night Mode.” With a simple toggle, users could enable a blue-light filter onscreen to make their devices better for use at night.
Microsoft and Lenovo have today announced a new patent cross-licensing deal that will result in a handful of Microsoft apps being pre-loaded onto Lenovo’s various Android smartphones. These apps would include the company’s most popular apps, possibly Microsoft Office, OneDrive, and Skype.
Using a login party like Google, Twitter, or Facebook is much more convenient than remembering a username and password for individual services. To improve security for this type of sign-in, Google is deprecating third-party app logins from web-views in favor of the native browser.
There are nearly 1.5 million applications currently on Google Play and with so many to choose from, finding interesting new experiences can be a hassle. As we have the last couple of months now, today we’ll be showing you another 5 Android apps that you should definitely give a shot…
Google has put considerable effort into making the web more app-like by pushing various standards that allow for notifications and offline access. The company now believes that the web is powerful and feature-rich enough to phase out packaged and hosted Chrome apps on Mac, Windows, and Linux over the next two years.
Google Play Music’s web app has remained mostly unchanged since it received a Material redesign last year. While the interface is largely similar to that of the Android app, a small update today (via Android Police) takes better advantage of the extra screen real estate offered by a desktop.