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Earlier today, Google unveiled its highly anticipated Android M update. One of the highlight features of Android M is the support for standardized fingerprint recognition, which Google says developers will be able to take advantage of via new APIs in the operating system.
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Google gave some stage time today at the I/O conference to a few family-focused changes coming to the Google Play Store. Families can now find age appropriate digital content from apps to game to books to movies and TV shows by tapping a new “Family” button.
This will take you to a section for each media type that allows you to browse for content by age and interest. When you browse the Play Store after tapping the Family button, you’re presented with more than just a curated section of content as other elements of the digital store change as well.
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Google has taken the wraps off its new Google Photos product at its I/O conference today. Google says Photos is a private single home for your personal photo and video collection that you can access from any device. Photos boasts the ability to automatically organize your photos for you as well as built-in sharing capabilities.
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Google today updated its Hangouts Chrome app with an entirely new interface. Perhaps more notably than that, the app has support for Mac OS X users in addition to the trio of Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS. The UI has been refreshed to be more similar to the Android version of the app, a trend that has been increasingly common for Google services over the past few months.
Logitech, maker of the popular Harmony series of remotes, announced in a blog post today that it is partnering with Google-owned Nest for deeper integration between their respective products. Logitech says that owners of the latest Harmony remotes can now have all of their entertainment devices automatically power off when a Nest Protect alert begins to sound.
Following the launch of Shazam for Apple Watch just last month, the long-time well-known music recognition app has finally made its way to Android Wear. With the app, you can recognize songs without ever taking your phone out of your pocket, see the list of songs you’ve tagged in My Shazam in the Android app, and watch the lyrics for the song that’s playing right on your Android Wear device.
High five, Shazam is now on Android Wear!
- Keep your phone in your pocket – see what’s playing with 2 taps
- Songs are added to My Shazam, and to your My Shazam Tracks playlist for connected Rdio or Spotify users
- Watch lyrics unfold in real time, right on your wrist
You can grab the app right now by downloading the latest version of the Shazam app for Android, and the Android Wear counterpart on your watch should appear soon after. We’ve tried it out and it doesn’t look like the update has rolled out quite yet, but it will likely pop up very soon.
Twitch announced today that its mobile application now supports video on demand content, a feature that has been requested by fans of the service for quite some time. While the app was previously streaming-only, users can now access “highlights and past broadcasts” from all Twitch Partners and what Twitch says is a growing list of broadcasters whose videos are HTTP live streaming (HLS)-enabled.
While the official change log for this version only mentions this one major new feature, looking at reviews for the Android version reveals a few more details. The latest version of Twitch reportedly also sports a new colored status bar, and a new emote panel as well. At least one user reported that “some of the emotes are very small and hard to see” in the new emote panel.
Twitch says that they encountered a security concern that required them to re-list the app on the Play Store, rather than simply providing a new version. So for those that already have the app, you’ll need to head over to the new app listing and download version 4.0. Twitch recognizes that this might be an annoyance to some and says they’re going to do their best to “make it a one-time deal.”
Microsoft has this morning launched the smartphone counterpart of its previously tablet-only word processing suite for Android. Microsoft’s Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps on the Play Store have now—appropriately—ditched the “for Tablet” part of their name, and beta testers now have access to these apps with smartphone support baked right in…
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via <a href="http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/05/18/google-app-v4-6-enables-translucent-status-and-navigation-bars-for-google-now-screen-on-custom-launchers-apk-download/">Android Police</a>
With Google I/O right around the corner, the company is prepping its apps with minor updates ahead of the expected larger changes to come later this month. This evening, the Google App on Android received a minor update with a few visual changes. For users of custom launchers, the update enables full screen mode for Google Now.
Samsung isn’t one to go light on advertising campaigns. In late April they showed off the “Super Charging” power of the Galaxy S6, they tried hijacking iPhone 6s search results not long after that and, most recently, they pitted the S6 against Jetman Yves Rossy in a fast-charging race. Now, they’re back at it again, this time sharing some Snapchat “Edge-ucation” by way of renowned snapchatter (snapper?) Shonduras…
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Update: Google has now updated the I/O app in the Play Store with the changes below ahead of May 28 – May 29 event. Grab it on the Play Store now.
The Google I/O app has received a few major updates over the last few years, each one landing right around the time of Google’s huge developers’ conference taking place in San Francisco, California. Now, some users who joined the beta channel of the Google I/O app last year have started receiving the update to its Google I/O 2015 version, and it packs a nifty super-Material redesign…
As of sometime yesterday, apps in the Play Store can now be listed in search results as “Coming soon”, and clicking on them takes you to a standard listing page that offers the opportunity to “Pre-register”. The first app to take advantage of this functionality is the upcoming Terminator Genisys: Revolution game from Glu…
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Sega announced in a post on its blog this evening that it is going to remove a number of games from its catalog of apps on the Play Store. Sega says that a number of its games on the Play Store no longer meet its “high-quality” standards. Sega will also remove the games from the Apple App Store, the Samsung App Store and the Amazon App Store.
AppChat is a really interesting new app. First released just a week ago in a humble thread on XDA-Developers, the app—which creates little chatrooms for all of your currently-installed apps—has seen the creation of almost 80,000 of these rooms and more than 70,000 messages sent within them. The response has been pretty big, and the app has gone through 6 releases over the last week to make the experience as great as possible.
But what exactly is AppChat?
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YouTube Creator Studio, Google’s mobile app made for YouTube users to manage their channel, has today been updated with Material Design—including a new hamburger button and slide out drawer—among other minor changes.
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Dropbox has today updated its Dropbox for Gmail Chrome extension with several new features, including—most notably—the ability to attach folders and several files at once. The update also includes the ability to more easily send larger files, send files to anyone (regardless of if they have the extension or a Dropbox account), and the ability to quickly save files that you receive via Gmail to your own inbox.
Here’s the full change log:
- Easily send large files. Just click the Dropbox icon in the compose window, select files or folders, and click Insert Link(s). No waiting for uploads to complete, no file size limit, and no eating up space in your inbox.
- Say goodbye to zip files. Attach folders and multiple files instantly, without having to zip files up.
- Send files to anyone. Even if they don’t have Dropbox or the extension, recipients can see and download the attachments you send them.
- Quickly save files sent to you. Add files to your Dropbox with a click so you can access them anywhere.
You can grab the Chrome extension in the Chrome Web Store right now for free. It’s still in beta, so don’t expect everything to work perfectly, but it looks like the app is nearing a full release soon—as today’s release is version 0.9.6.
Google has announced today, in the midst of teacher appreciation week in the US, that it is bringing some new “Classroom treats” to its mobile app. Most notable among the changes is the ability to grade assignments from the app (as you can see above), and the ability to “add private feedback to give students guidance, encouragement, constructive criticism or personalized feedback.”
Other features are also being added, including the ability to create and edit assignments while on a mobile device, as well as the ability to create an assignment simply with the snap of a photo. Google says that teachers can learn more about how to use these features at its new Support page, which outlines how to create and modify an assignment within the app:
You can create an assignment in your class stream, attach materials to it, assign it to one or more classes, and grade and return it to students. After you create an assignment, all students in the class receive a notification by email (if they haven’t turned off notifications) and can see the assignment in the class stream.
These features should be rolling out “this week,” according to Google.
Wearables are slowly but surely making their way into our daily lives, but one very critical aspect—health—is already helping to bring them mainstream. It’s something that every person is conscious of on a daily basis, and wearable device makers—as evidenced by the countless fitness trackers on the market—want to make it easier to stay on top of exercise, diet, and more. But another aspect of our health, chronic illness, is also big opportunity for wearables to make a difference—and they already are.
About half of all American adults have some kind of chronic illness, and diabetes is one of the most common. With the advent of smartwatches, we all now have quick access to at least one useful stat: our heart rate. But what if those with diabetes could just as easily monitor blood glucose levels? No mainstream smartwatch can monitor this alone, yet, but now one developer has released an app for Android Wear that will plug into a Dexcom CGM (continuous glucose monitor), providing glanceable updates every five minutes on blood glucose levels.
According to a report this morning from The Information, Google is planning to introduce an interesting new feature for Play Store listings at this year’s Google I/O developers’ conference. A common practice within apps themselves, new “A/B testing” would allow developers to test multiple versions of their app listings to see which ones bring the most conversions…
Popular feed reader app Feedly has been updated today to version 27 with a handful of new features. First off, the update adds Google Now integration. The app will now push the most interesting stories to Google Now every morning at 7:00AM, allowing you to quickly digest the most important news of the day.
Google today has started rolling out an update to the Play Store app that bumps it to version 5.5. The update doesn’t add much, but it keeps with Google’s trend of enhancing the design of its in-house apps. With Play Store 5.5, Google has added a new circular animation that appears when you tap on a TV show title.
If you’re a developer, you’re probably very familiar with the ADB commands used to capture screenshots and screencast video footage from your Android device. If you’re an end-user, you’re probably very familiar with the key combinations used to grab screenshots, and have an app to make those screencasts. Whether you fall into one of these categories or somewhere in between, there’s now a better way to accomplish these tasks—using a brand new app called Android Tool…
HTC has today pushed an update to its Camera app, packing a plethora of great new features for owners of HTC’s current flagship and past flagships alike. Most notably is the addition of Raw Camera mode, which lets users take photos and save them in their original, unchanged —hence the name “raw”—state…
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Google has updated its default Messenger app (not to be confused with the Facebook-made app by the same name) with a feature Android users have been awaiting for a very long time. Now, with version 1.3 of its Messenger app, Google has now introduced an official means of quick replying to text messages…
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