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Google Discover's latest makeover takes its cues from Material You
The Pixel Launcher's feed gets a new coat of paint
Google Discover is a key part of the Pixel Launcher, even if it isn't everyone's cup of tea. While some people still miss Google Now years after its replacement appeared, many users rely on it to access a curated list of recommended news stories and topics. With Android 12 bringing a whole new look to your phone, Discover just wouldn't feel complete without an extra splash of color to match your device.
This Google Discover hack has us yearning for the Google Now of old
Remember when the feed was actually useful?
Once upon a time, the screen to the left of the homescreen on Google's Nexus phones and tablets was called Google Now, and it was a genuinely useful feed full of contextual information about things like your commute, upcoming calendar appointments, package deliveries, and so on. This eventually went away as the screen, now Google Discover, was turned into a news feed. There's now a way to get it back, but it's unfortunately limited to those using Xposed on a rooted device.
An upcoming Chrome test fills its homepage with even more useless clickbait
There's no hiding from the Discover feed
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Google is no stranger to pushing its popular Discover feed across its various platforms and products. You can even find it in Chrome's new tab page on Android these days, with its curated news feed based on your interests. Discover was first introduced in Chrome 54 and has received iterative updates to make it more prominent. It isn't finished, though, as it looks to make Discover even more visible in Chrome while in turn sacrificing usability.
Google Discover will get a major theming overhaul in Android 12
Google Doodles spread their background color down the feed
Google is focusing on the visual experience of Android 12. The latest fruit of that endeavor is a bit of fresh paint on the Discover feed. Google Doodles, the little shifting variations on the Google logo, have appeared at the top of the feed for a while now. But with the latest version of Google search installed on Android 12, Doodles now theme the background of the feed itself. Neat.
Check if your Sony Android TV will get the new Google TV-inspired UI
Get a taste of the new Google TV experience on your Sony Android TV
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Google started rolling out a redesigned, Google TV-inspired facelift for the Android TV homescreen earlier this year, and now, that new interface is finally finding its way to Sony's Android TV sets. According to 9to5Google, the manufacturer is sending out emails to owners, telling them that their "Sony Android TV just got a whole lot better."
Android TV is now receiving its Google TV-inspired facelift (APK Download)
Say hello to a new three-tab interface
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Following a minor facelift of the Play Store TV interface and the completely new Google TV UI, the regular Android TV experience is in for an overhaul. After announcing a new three-tabbed look for Android TVs earlier this month, Google's beginning to start updating devices.
Hashtags are prevalent on many social media platforms these days. With regards to Google's own services, Google+ had hashtag support before it was killed off, and YouTube has had them for nearly three years at this point. Discover is the latest Google service to experiment with hashtags, though it does seem a little unnecessary.
Google is always tweaking its Discover feed ever so slightly to fit your taste even better, but sometimes, the company is also willing to make big changes. It looks like it's currently testing a brand-new look for Discover that does away with the signature card interface, and it's adding a share button while it's at it.
Google Discover starts rolling out heart button for adjusting feed preferences
The old More and Less options for tuning recommendations disappear as part of this test
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A new heart icon has been spotted in Google Discover (née Feed), replacing the previous button that triggered the familiar more/less slider for tuning its content to better match your tastes. This isn't just a visual change in iconography, either, as tapping the new heart button doesn't open any menu, apparently and simply indicating to Google that you liked a given piece of content. So far, the change seems to be in limited testing.
Most phone manufacturers have integrated the Google Discover feed into their home screen launchers for years, but OnePlus only started doing it with the OnePlus 8 series. The Discover feed completely replaced the old 'Shelf' pane that was present on previous models, but OnePlus later brought it back with a settings option, and now the company is testing an easier toggle for the process.
Discover's banking app now supports face unlock on the Pixel 4
More and more apps support the new biometrics API
The Pixel 4 and Android 10 brought us a new approach to biometric unlocks in the form of face recognition. To implement that technology, Google had to introduce a biometrics API that isn't compatible with the fingerprint interface of old. That's why all apps that have previously supported biometric fingerprint authentication have to be updated to work with the new API, which seems to be a painfully slow process. The latest app to add biometric face unlock is Discover's banking app.
Google's community mobility reports show how the coronavirus has changed society (Updated)
Google also provides banners and curated search results to keep the public informed during the crisis
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Google's apps and services are among the most-used in the world, so it's no wonder that people turn to the company when they want to find out more about the coronavirus pandemic. In order to suppress misinformation and help its users find trustworthy sources, Google took a lot of measures, including a COVID-19 website created in cooperation with the WHO and the CDC and many editorialized search results in all products. While it's pretty easy to spot all of this information yourself while you're using Google apps, we'd still like to give you a broad overview of some of the measures.
If you own an Android phone running a largely stock experience or use a launcher that mimics it, the chances are you have the Google Discover feed to the left of your home screen. The artist formally known as Google Now/Feed is now just a selection of articles (and, more recently, ads) from around the web according to what Google thinks you're into. Aside from the controls on each post, there's also a place in the Google app's settings to customize your content. It's been given a makeover and also a new name — Interests.
If you're still lamenting the loss of the original Google Now, this news won't help with anything but twist the knife in the wound a little further. The new Discover feed, after adding regular news articles, doodles, and even ads, is now surfacing restaurant recommendations among the different cards.
[Update: New combined Single Surface UI] Chrome tab switcher gets 'Explore' tab in new UI experiment
Google's recommended articles already exist in the Google app, the far left page of most app launchers, the New Tab page in Chrome for Android, and on the mobile google.com homepage. In case you need yet another place to find your favorite clickbait articles or mildly-relevant news, you might soon see them in Chrome for Android's tab switcher.
Google started testing ads in the Google app's Discover feed — then the Google Feed — around this time last year, with advertisements mixed in with non-sponsored content. The test wasn't popular; the proximity of the feed to many phones' home screens made the ads feel especially obtrusive. But it was apparently a hit with advertisers, as Google has announced that those ads will be the norm this year.
Discover, a rebranding for the familiar content list formerly known as "Feed," seems to be rolling out to a wider audience this week. The rename-associated redesign landed all the way back in October shortly after the announcement, updated dark theme and all. With more people experiencing it, I'm curious to know how many of you make Discover/Feed a regular part of your day.
Google probably has an internal logic for rollouts that makes all the sense in the world to the developers running things. However, the process can seem bizarre and illogical on our end. Case in point: Google started turning the Feed into Discover back in October, but accounts on the Google beta app never got the update. Well, now they have.
Last week, Google announced a rebranding of its Feed into Discover, tying together multiple server-side changes we had been spotting in the last year. From dividing cards with topic bubbles to having dedicated topic pages, more/less content controls, a new dark theme, and an asterisk-shaped icon, everything is there in the new update. And that new look is rolling out to more users now.
With the growing commercial use of AI, the platforms we use daily are becoming more and more customized. When a social media platform recommends the best content for you, it's distilling out things that you don't like — providing you with that infamous echo chamber effect. Of course, this isn't constrained solely to social networks. Google Search uses AI, as well. In fact, the tech giant has just announced that it's adding several "intelligent" recommendation features to its original product, with a focus on what it calls "longer [search] sessions," that span multiple days. In the announcement blog post, Google calls this a "fundamental transformation" — but is it one that could harm the discovery of different sources and viewpoints?