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- Mozilla officially announced Firefox Preview 3.0 today, and the update is now rolling out for everyone on the Play Store. The blog post mentions a few features that the changelog didn't previously reveal, including a 'Send to device' feature for sending multiple tabs to another Firefox browser, and a customizable search widget.
Mozilla has been working on a brand new version of Firefox for Android based on a revised rendering engine for some time and aims to publish it to the stable channel next year. For now though, Firefox Preview 3.0 has arrived, and it brings along enhanced tracking protection, an updated overflow menu, the ability to move the navigation bar to the top, and many other improvements.
Google Files started out as a Go app and has since been promoted and shrugged off that denomination. It's still a lightweight application aimed primarily markets with low-bandwidth internet, so most of its features don't rely on the internet, such as device cleaning and peer-to-peer file sharing. The app has now also gained support for local media casting, finally bringing it on par with many third-party apps that have supported this for almost as long as the Chromecast protocol has existed.
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- Samsung Pay 3.7.60 is now out of beta, and it should be rolling out to everyone soon. There's also a new section inside the app that wasn't present before for transit payment cards.
In a perfect world, digital wallets would let you leave your wallet at home. The world isn't perfect, but Samsung Pay gets you closer than most with support for your cards in almost all stores. The latest beta version of Samsung Pay adds two additional features, making it even more capable. Samsung Pay Cash is a mobile-only prepaid card, and Money Transfer lets you send money overseas from your phone.
Windows Insider is an open software testing program run by Microsoft offering pre-release builds of Windows 10 with new features (and bugs). Testers get to be on the bleeding edge, and Microsoft gets bug reports. It's a win-win situation for the most part and quite similar to beta programs run by Google and Samsung. A new build came out this week— version 18995 — and it brings to the table multiple Android-related goodies for Samsung owners. Insiders now have the Link to Windows feature on more devices, a screen mirroring feature called Phone screen, and a new paint job for the Your Phone desktop app.
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One of Android's advantages over the competition has always been customization. From third party launchers to manufacturer skins and even complete freedom over the homescreen layout, no two Android devices are certain to look the same. Thanks to yet another Pixel 4 leak, we now know that Google is taking Android's customization prowess one step further with the help of several new apps.
Just like the Pixel 3 last year, the Pixel 4 has already been leaked into oblivion, so we have a clear picture of the device's hardware and software more than two weeks prior to the official unveiling. And just like the Pixel 3, the Pixel 4 comes with a collection of live wallpapers that are unfortunately only functional on the new phone itself. XDA Developers forum member Pranav Pandey took it upon himself to port these backdrops so you can install them on any ARM 64 device running Android 7 or higher.
If you're a stickler for details, have we got a treat for you: the latest update to Google Keep Notes (née Google Keep) colors the navigation bar to match the note you're currently viewing.
Android Auto hasn't been playing nice with Android 9 Pie. There have been reports left and right of numerous bugs: missing text notifications, a disruptive buzzing sound in calls, and frequent crashes. Fortunately, the Android Auto team is aware of these issues, and reports that it's fixed at least one — Android Auto version 3.5 should solve the crashing problem.
Gboard added the option to use your phone's camera to create custom GIFs in May. The tool came with a few fun effects to apply over the clips, too, like question marks to express confusion and mock "breaking news" chyrons. An update today brings a few new GIF effects and custom text overlays, as well as more practical improvements like support for additional languages.
Google's Text-to-Speech app is what lets the devices it runs on read text out loud to their users. The functionality is used for translation and accessibility services, among other things. It's updated pretty frequently: January saw the addition of Estonian, Romanian, and Slovak; last October, Filipino and Greek. Text-to-Speech's most recent update adds Canadian French, Javanese, and Sudanese.
Snapseed's previous big update in September 2017 saw it fall prey to Google's current proclivity for lighter user interface design. Turns out a lot of people don't enjoy that. It should please many of our readers to know, then, that version 2.19, which is rolling out now, restores the option to choose a dark theme for Google's best image editor.
Two-factor authentication is a great way to make your accounts more secure, but using SMS messages for the codes is a bit of a hassle: request code, switch apps, copy code, switch apps, paste code (or read and remember the code, but what is this, the 1840s?). Android Messages has a new trick that makes the process a little easier: it now parses 2FA codes from texts and presents the option to copy them with a single tap.
Keeping track of what you're watching on TV is an absolute nightmare at the moment; there are just too many great series and not enough time. As with most problems we face these days, there's an app for that. TV Show Favs is a powerful tool that helps you track and manage the viewing of your favorite shows, with all sorts of useful features such as calendar integration and reminder notifications. The devs will probably be the first to admit it hasn't always been the prettiest app (Holo everywhere), but that changes with the latest update.
We've been expecting some changes to SMS functionality in Hangouts for some time, especially after Google started pushing Messenger as an SMS alternative inside Hangouts. As of Hangouts v11, it looks like the other shoe has dropped. This version of the app removes merged conversations as an option.
It's that time of the week again, namely Update Wednesday. With that in mind, there's a new update to Google+ which should bring a smile to many a person's face.
Google is rolling out the new version of Play Music, and it's not even Wednesday yet. This update jumps from 5.9 to 6.0, and it makes some significant changes, not the least of which is the addition of ad-supported streaming radio. Oh, and those ads, there are a lot of them.
The official Dropbox app took its first step into a material world several weeks ago with the v2.6 update. That was followed by v2.7, but both of these were beta releases. Now it's bumped up to v3.0 and is rolling out to everyone via the Play Store.