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- In Chrome Canary v75.0.3748 (APK Mirror), you can swipe tabs away, left to right, in the grid layout. Thanks, Nick Cipriani!
If you're using Chrome on your phone and you suddenly notice that the tab switcher is no longer a scrolling list of cards but a grid, you're not alone. Chrome is testing this new layout — we've received reports of it turning on by default for some users on Dev and Canary. A few seemed to like it, while others weren't all that happy about it. If you're part of the second camp, know that you can easily disable it.
Keeping flagship devices on the latest and greatest software is a given, but updating the midrangers is a lot more complicated and this is where most companies falter. HMD has been good at that so far and now the affordable Nokia 3.1 (or Nokia 3, 2018 if you want) is getting Android 9 Pie... on Pi Day of all days!
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- Google has now officially announced IRCTC ticket booking in Pay, saying it now lets you search, see seat availability and trip duration, book, and cancel within the app.
Google Pay for India, né Tez, is a convenient mobile payment option, and it keeps adding new features. The most recent is the ability to buy IRCTC train tickets directly from the app — no need for any additional app.
Announced along with the Pixel 3, Call Screen lets you screen phone calls before you answer them, using Google's Assistant AI to ask who the caller is and what they want. It's excellent for avoiding those pesky spam callers and interruptions from unknown numbers. Call Screen has been available on all generations of Pixels in the US for a couple of months, recently added volume controls to hear the caller and saved transcripts, and now the feature is launching in beta in Canada.
One of the banes of my geeky existence is setting up and using smart home and IoT devices. Every manufacturer figures out one way to let you connect to their product and you have to follow their step-by-step guide to the letter, and even then, it's better to be prepared for frustration and a few retries. That's especially true for WiFi devices, but Android Q is ready to make things easier.
Google has been facing a lot of backlash from the EU (and other countries) regarding its dominance over several markets, including online search. "Backlash" is a tame word to describe it too, there have been lawsuits, huge fines in numbers we can't fully comprehend, and lots of politics at stake. But whether this latest change in Chrome's search engines is related to that or not, we'll let you decide.
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- Just like the flags that were behind it, the media icon in the notification to switch output appears to be gone in Android Q Beta 3. You can switch media output from the Sound settings, like in Android Pie, but the quick access icon isn't there in the notification.
There are tons of small improvements in Android Q, and one you may find very handy is the ability to quickly switch your audio output when playing music. A new button in Now Playing notifications shows up and lets you pick whether you want audio to play through your phone's speaker or a connected Bluetooth device.
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If you're trying to browse your very important news source now and notice it's down, it's not just you. Facebook is down, and we've got bigger problems to discuss because who gets their news on Facebook? ... Really?
If you asked me how long ago Google Photos' shared libraries launched, I would have guessed eight months, twelve at most. But, believe it or not, the feature has been live for nearly two years now, and Google seems to think it's ready to have less spotlight attention. Shared libraries, which were accessible from the side menu in Photos are now moving in the Sharing tab.
Technically speaking, Google Assistant has had native support for smart blinds and shades for a while now, but it was limited. Some brands, like Lutron Caseta and NeoSmartBlinds have had it implemented, showing you a special icon in the Home app and letting you immediately ask Google to lower the blinds or open them. But for most developers and smart home makers, the APIs weren't documented. Now they are.
One of the joys of having a few smart speakers around the house is being able to play music in all the rooms simultaneously, in sync, and without a complicated wired setup. But controlling volume levels across the house isn't easy, especially when you're in the kitchen and you can hear the bedroom speaker blasting super loudly and drowning out everything else. If you have a Smart Display, you can now control individual speaker volumes as well as group volume with a neat dedicated interface.
With every update, small or big, Nvidia's Shield TV gets better and better. Three years on, it's still easily the best standalone Android TV box you can buy. Today's update to Shield Software Experience 7.2.3 isn't a major one by any means, but it brings a feature I've wanted since the start: the option to restart WiFi and re-scan for networks.
Feature parity is a huge point of contention in Android, and now in Google Assistant speakers too. Whenever Google announces a new ability for its Home line-up, you can toss a coin and it's pretty much 50-50 whether this will work on Assistant speakers from other brands. For phone calls, the situation has been more dire. Even though Google Home users could make a voice call starting August 2017 (in the US first), those with third-party speakers didn't have that option. But things are getting better.
Being a parent in this digital age is a tough affair, so plenty of apps aim to help families manage their children's smartphone usage and online activities. Google's Family Link, which is available worldwide, is one such example, but as always, there's a delicate balance between features and restrictions. Duo is one of the latter.
Google Pay's international expansion is improving. Although not at the same rate as its US bank and credit union support, the mobile payment service keeps steadily adding more institutions and card options for its users around the world. So if you live somewhere where Pay has already launched but your bank wasn't supported before, take a look at the new additions and see if it now is.
Over the weekend, the Google Maps app reached 5 billion downloads on the Play Store and we celebrated that momentous occasion with virtual champagne and confetti — well, just a short post really. However, our eyebrows were a little raised when we noticed that the Google app still hadn't made it to that coveted number, but now they're dropping as it has just caught up.
At last year's I/O, Google surprised many of us by announcing that the Android P beta would not only be available on the Pixel line-up, but also on select devices from other manufacturers. Project Treble played a huge role in making that possible, and things are going to be even better this year: more companies will be part of the Q beta than P.
Being physically lost is apparently a much bigger incentive for app usage than being at a loss from an information perspective. The Google Maps app has just hit over 5 billion downloads on the Play Store, beating Google's own search app to the punch. The latter still hasn't reached that coveted number, but we all know it's a matter of time.
Every Google+ community is looking for a new home, and that's the case for the Android Beta group, which was previously hosted on Google+ with over 163000 members. The moderators are now packing up their things, taking the paintings off the walls, labelling all boxes, renting a big truck, and inviting all their friends to help them move to Reddit with the lure of free pizza*. (*free pizza is fictional.)
It's hard to believe now, but Gmail's interface revamp is almost a year old now. Really. One of the main features of the updated email service was a "confidential mode" that let senders set expiry dates on certain emails, require verification on the recipient's end before being able to open the message, and restrict them from forwarding or printing the content. Until now, confidential mode was only available to personal Gmail users, but it's just launched in beta to G Suite customers.