In response to a research paper outlining the data collected by Google’s Phone and Messages apps, including call and text records, the company has updated both apps to better respect privacy.
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Google’s 2021 Smart Home Developer Summit today sees a number of developments around Matter, including Android support via Play services. The announcements start with “Google Home” now serving as the name for the company’s entire smart home platform, developer program, and tools.
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Smart Lock dates back to Android Lollipop and was Google’s solution for reducing the number of times users had to enter their passcodes before the ubiquity of fingerprint readers. Smart Lock in Android Settings was recently updated with a much-needed modern UI.
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Last year, Android 11 introduced a clever privacy feature that removes permissions granted to “unused apps” that haven’t been opened in some time. Google is now bringing this auto-reset to older phones and tablets via Play services over the coming months.
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Google Play services is responsible for a slew of user–facing capabilities, like account management and Chrome OS integration, while also providing third-party app developers with a number of background features. Google announced today that Play services is dropping support for Android Jelly Bean next month.
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The latest beta version of Play services rolled out last evening to reveal that Google is working on a “Find My Device network” capability named “Spot” that leverages your Android phone to locate other devices.
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Android 12 will feature a slew of privacy features from a new Setting dashboard to the ability to disable app access to the camera and microphone. Another update later this year will make it so that users are better able to opt-out of personalized ads in Android applications.
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The news slipped through the cracks last week with the madness that was I/O 2021, but Google had another notable announcement. Starting with future versions of Android, Google and Qualcomm will offer a faster way to roll out neural network updates to Android users on Snapdragon chips.
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Ahead of the launch of the Pixel 5, the Google Camera and Google Recorder apps, among others, became unable to be sideloaded due to verification errors. Thankfully, a solution — if, perhaps, a temporary one — has been discovered.
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This week, those enrolled in the Google Play Services beta received an update to version 20.45, which includes work to sync Wi-Fi passwords between your Android phone to your Chromebook.
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For a few months now, we’ve been keeping an eye on a new feature for Chrome OS called “Phone Hub” which will deeply connect your Chromebook to your Android phone. Now we’re beginning to see the feature come to fruition on the Android side by way of an update to Google Play Services.
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With App Preview Messaging, the person you’re contacting doesn’t need to have that app installed to receive a message. Available on Android, Google leveraged Play Services and the capability saw a notable launch with Allo and Duo. Google earlier this month announced that it has “deprecated” APM.
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Being pre-installed on most Android devices, Google’s apps rack up quite a lot of downloads and cross milestones on occasion. Now, for the first time ever, an Android app has crossed 10 billion installs on the Play Store — Google Play Services.
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Earthquake early warning systems (EEW) can quickly detect tremors and provide a warning before shaking arrives. ShakeAlert is the system funded by the United States Geological Survey and other partners for the West Coast. Google now looks to be building earthquake alerts from that system into Android as part of Play Services.
Instead of requiring a full OS update, Google is bringing exposure notifications to Android by leveraging Play services. Ahead of this month’s launch, the two companies are previewing contact tracing apps and what settings Android users will have to control COVID-19 contact tracing.
Google and Apple earlier this month announced a partnership to build contact tracing into iOS and Android. Ahead of the capability launching in mid-May, both companies are previewing the exposure notification API for health agency developers.
On Friday, Google and Apple announced a surprise collaboration to integrate contact tracing for COVID-19 into iOS and Android. That first phase of this plan is coming next month, but deeper OS-level integration is also planned. In rolling out these features to Android, Google will be bypassing the platform’s usual update process by leveraging Play services.
If you’re practicing good account security, you may have your phone number attached to various accounts as part of two-factor authentication. Google Messages is rolling out a new feature to autofill any one-time security codes that your apps may need.
Google appears to be working on a new and simple way to share files between a variety of devices, including Android and Chromebooks. We’ve managed to fully enable “Fast Share” on Android today, and here’s how it works.
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Every mobile Google app on Android and iOS lets users quickly get help and send feedback about the service. Google is now testing a Material Theme revamp of these two pages to match the company’s latest design language.
Slowly but surely, older versions of Android are disappearing from the active monthly user list, being replaced with newer releases. This week, Google Play Services is officially dropping support for Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich.
Google’s casting platform is massive, and works with hundreds of apps and services, and just as many different types of hardware. Google introduced a tool over a year ago which made controlling cast media a bit easier on Android, and now that notification is getting a big revamp in functionality…
Over the weekend, we spotted a Material Design “refresh” for Chrome on Windows, while we’ve previously managed to enable “Material Design 2” in the Google app and Feed. Today, we’ve been able to access it in Google Play services with revamped “My Account” settings in what is likely our best look at Google’s future design language.