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- YouTube has officially announced this feature. I verified it on my end with YouTube v14.44.52 on Android: Muted playback is available in both Home and Subscriptions tabs and can be disabled by turning off the "Muted playback in feeds" setting under "General." You can also choose to only allow it on Wi-Fi or keep it always on if you like it.
Media companies want you to consume their content. The more you watch, read, listen, the better it is for them, and it's even best if they can require no active decision on your part to shove content into your ears and eyeballs. That's why things like autoplay and automatic video previews exist, and YouTube is one of the practice's worst offenders. The Android app is now testing another place it can automatically play videos for you — in your subscriptions tab — but thankfully, you can disable the option.
With the launch of Nest Wifi, we've learned that this new mesh system is backward-compatible with the existing Google Wifi, but if you're happy with your setup and have no plans to get a new Nest router or access point, you can still get a little benefit out of adding your old Wifi to the Google Home app. That lets you manage a few things from a central location and adds WPA3 security to the Wifis.
When you're researching or traveling to a new city, it helps to know where the popular attractions and landmarks are. Google Maps can provide this information, but most important points of interest are lost among a sea of blue, orange, and green icons. Thanks to a recent change, these major landmarks are getting dotted with a larger icon, providing quick, at-a-glance visibility.
One of the major benefits of having a smart display instead of a speaker is seeing relevant controls and information on the screen. For music, that means album art, playback controls, videos if available, and most importantly, lyrics. On Google Assistant smart displays, only titles from Google Play Music showed lyrics, but that's now rolling out to Spotify as well.
Affordable activity trackers are getting better and better. Xiaomi's Mi Band 4 offers a lot of value for its price, and so does Honor's Band 5. Huawei is getting ready to join their ranks with its new Band 4 Pro, which was just leaked in a render.
The Samsung Members app may not be your go-to destination for R-rated content, but for several hours today, it could've done the job just fine. A member posted his, erm, member for other members to see. Given the intriguing nature of the post, it grew enough in popularity that it popped up on the app's front page for everyone else's enjoyment.
The Pixel 4's Soli radar chip and Motion Sense features have made the news multiple times over the past weeks. From questionable utility to restrictions and resulting quirks, we've learned that this new technology comes with a few asterisks, but we didn't know whether developers would be able to tap into it. Google has now told us that an API isn't currently in the plans.
Google Assistant can understand a lot of weird and quirky questions, but it sometimes gets stumped by a name or a simple query. For a while now, you've been able to tap-and-hold on any voice command to manually edit it, but Google is trying to make that process a little more obvious and intuitive.
YouTube Music is slowly spreading its tentacles and establishing itself as Play Music's successor. While the service still lacks many essential features for some users, it's good enough for others. Its most recent addition is Siri support on iOS — while Android integration with Assistant is still iffy.
We all know Google Play Music's days are numbered and it's only been playing second fiddle to YouTube Music for over a year. You can't unring that bell, but at least Play Music is getting the opportunity to enjoy its swan song: the app has now crossed 5 billion downloads on the Play Store.
Holidays and special occasions are always a good time to catch up with friends and family. A few decades ago, we used to send them greeting cards by regular mail, then came email, and now we have a lot of instant messaging apps that help us record a spontaneous video to share with them. If you use Google Duo to talk with your loved ones, you can now add a bit of Halloween and Diwali flair to your pre-recorded video messages.
The new Pixel 4 has launched with some awesome photography chops that make owners of previous generations of the device jealous. While Google will eventually bring a few of these to its older phones, that's not the case for all and the Android community has already stepped up to fill the void. The most prominent Google Camera mod, Camera PX (aka GCam) by cstark27, has been updated to bring several Pixel 4-exclusive features to older Pixels.
With the Pixel 4 finally shipping to users and reaching more and more hands, we're starting to get wind of a few quirks we didn't expect. Due to the new Soli radar chip, some features you may have grown accustomed to might behave differently, like lockscreen notifications being hidden and the Always-on display automatically turning off after about 30 seconds.
Tile recently introduced a whole swath of new Bluetooth trackers and, to complement its new releases, the company has now directly its products with Google Assistant. The feature was announced last month, but is now live for all.
Google Home owners have been clamoring for years for an option to set up speaker pairs to get stereo sound. The feature rolled out to the Home Max, Insignia's cheap Assistant speakers, and the new Nest Mini, but Google's original Home and Home Mini were left out. Now, the feature is available on both.
The cat is out of the bag for Nvidia and its two upcoming Shield TV models, but that's not stopping the company from shrouding its upcoming plans with mystery. An enigmatic video was posted on its Twitter account with the date October 28, seemingly confirming what we all knew.
Google seems to have recently been reminded of the existence of homescreen widgets on Android. After adding a widget for Tasks, another relatively new Google app is getting the same treatment: YouTube Music.
Live Caption is one of the most impressive features coming to Android. It automatically transcribes anything being said in a video or audio on your screen for you to read, and can be an invaluable tool for hearing-impaired users — plus it could avoid awkward glances if you raise the volume too much in public. Now that the feature has launched exclusively on the Pixel 4, everyone has been trying it out and discovering a few nice, and perhaps unexpected aspects of it.
For some of us, task and calendar management is a chore on its own, and the faster we can do it the better. Assistant helps a bit, but now there's a quicker way to add an event from your browser, while sitting at your desk, thanks to Google's .new top level domain.
Ringtones are a great way to personalize your phone. Whether it plays fun music or an annoying tune, plays an abrupt sound, dings, knocks, beeps, or makes no sound at all, it's your choice. If you have one of Google's devices, you've probably used their Sounds app to pick a ringtone, notification sound, or alarms, and now you'll have more choice. The app just received an update to v2.2 adding two new categories: Play It Loud and Seasonal Celebrations.