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Play Store tweaks category icons with new mint green and blue colors
The 'top categories' carousel is also gone in this latest test
Google is rolling out a handful of minor visual tweaks to the Play Store in a recently spotted test. The change rearranges the Categories section to remove the "top categories" carousel at the top, increases the whitespace between listed categories, and updates the icons themselves. These changes also apply to other parts of the Play Store that include categories, like the Family tab.
Feed-addicted news junkies have another reason to hit that "Tap to update" button. Google appears to be testing a change to the fickle feature-foisting framework which provides expandable topics filled with more articles on a given news category, accessible via the labeled tags above each.
Google has been testing a ton of changes on the Play Store recently, both in the app and on the web. It's been a mixed bag, with some good new features such as initial release dates for apps, and some not so popular design choices. We've now received a couple of tips about another new element appearing — a 'Discover something new' card.
42matters is an analysis firm that monitors broad trends on mobile data, specifically on the Play Store and the App Store. The company is mostly B2B, that is, most of their products are only helpful if you're working on some other aspect of the mobile market. But they've made a sliver of the data they've collected through their API free to the public, and it's fascinating. While the 42matters data isn't official, it does give us an interesting look into the Play Store as a whole.
Google often makes small improvements to the Play Store without any announcements or fanfare, and this appears to be happening with the latest update to the mobile Play Store search engine. Some (but certainly not all) users are seeing quick links to category pages when they make relevant searches on Android, complete with easy-to-spot icons right in the drop-down field. The icons are showing up both for straight searches and for popular related apps.
The user experience on Android is never standing still, which is no more evident than in the Play Store itself. It seems Google may be trying out a new behavior for search queries that match the names of the Play Store's predefined categories. Instead of presenting a list of apps, searching for a term like 'action' or 'puzzle' can bring up structured lists like those that would appear in the category itself.
Google's 20 Reorganized Play Store Game Categories Now Live, Including Game-Related Widgets And LWPs
At the end of last year, Google promised a big Play Store reorganization during which the 8 existing game categories would be cleaned up and expanded to 18. Two of the categories (Widgets and Live Wallpapers) weren't even games at all - they somehow ended up there and bothered everyone who noticed ever since.
Were you excited to hear the Google Play is getting an expanded list of game categories? Well curb your enthusiasm - the switch to the expanded list was tentatively scheduled for "February," but as one reader noticed, the new categories haven't been implemented yet. The relevant Play Store support page has been modified, and now it says that the change will come sometime "around March."
You don't have to spend much time on the Play Store to see that games are a big part of the service and the platform. Google has already done a lot to highlight gaming with Play Store categories and landing page promotions, but starting in February, developers and end users will have roughly three times as many categories to browse through. The new game categories are as follows:
With somewhere around 200 apps on my phone at any given time, it can be a pain to scroll through all of them to find what I'm looking for. Categorizing apps into handy folders can also be time-consuming. Fazik Logic takes the concept of sorting your apps one step further however with LiveSorter, a new app that automatically sorts installed applications into appropriate categories.
It's no secret that the Android Market isn't exactly the easiest place to find what you want. Unless an app is super popular, brand new, or you know its exact name, you could end up wandering in that virtual mall like a small child whose mother forgot to tell them she was heading to the next shop.
Continuing with the numerous Android Market updates, Google just refreshed the categories that users can use to filter and browse Market apps and games. The changes are now live on both the backend Developer Console and the live Market.
Let's face it: browsing the Android Market on your desktop currently sucks. For one thing, there aren't any categories - just "Top Free" and "Top Paid." For another, there's no search!