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Android 12's long-awaited Conversation widget appears on some devices
It's there for two of us on the Pixel 4 XL running Beta 2, though it could be on other models
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Android 12's Conversation widget is starting to appear for more folks again, following an early appearance in Android 12 DP3. It still isn't live for everyone, but it's started showing up on us for a Pixel 4 XL running Beta 2 without any digging around in activities or root to surface hidden features.
Android 12's hidden conversation widget finally shows up for some in DP3
With some new dynamic color-changing chops
While Android 12 is already available in its third iteration (Developer Preview 3), there are still many hidden options and features under the hood that we might only get our hands on officially once the first beta launches next month. The so-called conversation widgets are among them. We first saw them as part of mockups ahead of the first Android 12 build, and avid coders managed to activate them in the previous developer previews. But now it looks like these widgets are becoming available to a few people using Developer Preview 3 without any hacks, as spotted by 9to5Google. They're among the first publicly available interface elements to automatically change the color based on your wallpaper.
It's been a slow build, but we're beginning to see Android 12's upcoming design changes take shape. The newest developer preview features an all-new look to the settings menu, and now a long-awaited search bar is finally coming to the widget picker on Pixel phones.
Before the first Android 12 developer preview landed, some leaked mockups suggested that we're in for a pretty big redesign with wallpaper-based theming, a new notification shade, and conversation widgets. Most of these features have already been spotted hiding in the first developer preview, and now, we're also getting our first look at conversation widgets thanks to XDA.
All the smaller features in Android 11 Developer Preview 2 you might have missed
Files by Google takes over, a new wallpaper picker, conversation tweaks, and several works-in-progress
As expected, the second Android 11 Developer Preview had a few more features hidden inside it than Google let on in the initial announcement. We've covered several of the more prominent features in individual posts, but to save a bit of time, we've compiled the rest of the changes spotted (so far!) in this list.
Google has been progressively enhancing its speech-related technologies for years, starting in the early days with mostly straightforward commands before aiming much higher with natural language processing and conversational back-and-forth interactions. At I/O 2018, a demonstration included the next stage of this evolution, which has been dubbed Continued Conversation. A beta update to the Google app began rolling out last night, and it's preparing to unveil this new feature.
The popularity of smart speakers may be increasing day by day, but there are still some people who believe the speakers are secretly recording and uploading every word that comes out of our mouths. You might have heard about a story involving Alexa on an Amazon Echo sending a private conversation to a random person on a contact list today, spooking more than a few people. Amazon has come out with a statement to Engadget explaining why this occurred.
At I/O today, Google announced that Assistant on Google Home will soon be able to hold a conversation and respond to multiple requests without a user having to repeat "Okay Google" each time. The feature is similar to 'Follow-up mode' on Alexa, which became available a couple of months ago.
Google launched a new experience today that it's calling Talk to Books. It's pretty much what it sounds like: the demo asks for input in the form of regular old sentences, then tries to locate logical responses to those sentences from a pool of books. In a post on its Developer Blog, Google calls Talk to Books "an entirely new way to explore books by starting at the sentence level, rather than the author or topic level."
You've probably asked Google Now, Siri, or Cortana to tell you a joke or to direct you to a destination, but this video takes the idea of conferring with voice assistants to another level - not necessarily a higher level, mind you, but at the very least, a funnier one.
We're not sure when this behavior changed in WhatsApp — I was able to track it down as far back as version 2.12.134 but it might have been there before — but it's worth pointing out nonetheless, if only for its boost in convenience. It used to be that whenever you wanted to look for specific words in your WhatsApp chats, you first had to select the conversation where that word occurred and then perform the search. That was useful, but only to a limited extent, because if you were looking for that restaurant recommendation from a few months ago, you might have forgotten which friend mentioned it to you.
Besides fixing Google Experience Launcher on tablets and adding some new cards, the new Google Search update has another trick up its sleeve - it will now hold a conversation with you to perform certain functions, and talks to you in a new way.
Vocre, a voice and text translator that won audience choice in TechCrunch's Disrupt, came to Android today, bringing with it a promising challenger to Google's own Translate app and a "tabletop UI" meant specifically for extended conversations with those on either side of the language barrier.
Official CouchSurfing App Hits The Play Store, Allows Mobile Adventure Lovers Everywhere To Connect
CouchSurfing, if you haven't heard, is a service designed to allow "a global community of travelers, adventure seekers, and lifelong learners" to connect
CouchSurfing, if you haven't heard, is a service designed to allow "a global community of travelers, adventure seekers, and lifelong learners" to connect with one another so that they can arrange various get-togethers, from meals to places to spend the night. Recently, the developers of the service decided to take it to the next level with an official Android app.
Facebook Messenger Updated To Version 1.8 – Add Friends Of Friends To Messages, Switch Conversations With In-App Notifications, And More
Facebook Messenger, an app the social giant says provides "a faster way to message," got a significant update today, bringing it up to version
Facebook Messenger, an app the social giant says provides "a faster way to message," got a significant update today, bringing it up to version 1.8. The update, besides promising to speed up app loading, navigating (by way of some small UI tweaks), and message sending, contains several new features that are worth mentioning.