Articles Tagged:

google account

When Google locks you out of your account, begging the internet for help is your first (and last) resort
Time to make an account backup

Ryne Hager2021/03/08
4:28pm PSTMar 8, 2021

Google has a long-standing reputation for inadequate developer support — especially if you're a smaller, independent studio or team. But the company's general customer support is also lacking, and today's horror story is the kind that's likely to encourage a Google Takeout backup, just in case. Midnight last night, one customer's Google account was fully disabled. They claim that with no warning and no explanation, the full contents of their Google account — email, photos, Google Pay balance, even the ability to pay their internet bill via Google Fiber and cellphone bill via Google Fi — were unceremoniously snatched away.

Chrome is revamping user profiles on the desktop

Manuel Vonau2021/03/02
8:09am PSTMar 2, 2021

Sharing your computer with multiple people is a mess when using Chrome. You might run into your spouse's saved password or bookmarks, interfering with your browsing session and potentially even syncing over to your phone. You can mitigate these problems with the possibly little known Chrome profiles, accessible by clicking on your account image to the left of the ⋮ overflow menu. Google is rolling out a redesign to these profiles today, making it easy to pick your own color scheme.

You can now change your Google Account profile picture right from the Contacts app
Quick and easy

Ryne Hager2021/02/03
2:52pm PSTFeb 3, 2021

Changing the profile picture associated with your Google Account has never been difficult, but it's even easier to do now. A change to the latest version of the Google Contacts makes the process a two-tap affair, accessible quickly and easily from right inside the app.

How to back up all of your Google account data
Losing your phone is a painful experience but you needn’t lose all your data along with it if you’ve taken the right precautions

Henry Burrell2020/06/28
8:20am PDTJun 28, 2020

How to back up all of your Google account data

If you live in the West and use an Android phone then you’re more than likely entrenched in Google’s services. You live your mobile life in Gmail, sort your pictures in Google Photos, write your to-do lists in Keep and balance your books in Sheets.

If you’re fully in on Google (and you may well be without realizing) then you can save documents and access them across other devices with Drive, record your steps and workouts in Fit, and have Gboard remember that no, you never mean to type ‘ducking’.

Thanks to the modern smarts of Android your phone ensures that a lot of your Google account data is backed up automatically.

How to use multiple Google accounts on a Chromebook
There are two methods, both with pros and cons

Manuel Vonau2020/06/20
9:52am PDTJun 20, 2020

How to use multiple Google accounts on a Chromebook

This story was originally published 2020/06/16
5:00am PDTon Jun 16, 2020 and last updated 2020/06/20
9:52am PDTon Jun 20, 2020.

A lot of us have to juggle more than one Google account these days, be it for work, school, or personal stuff. On Chrome OS, where user profiles are intertwined with Google accounts, managing those can feel overwhelming, especially since there are multiple ways to tackle the problem: You can create two users for two accounts, add two Google accounts to one user, or build a combination of the two. There are advantages and disadvantages to all of these solutions, so let's dive into what you need to consider for your setup.

10 things to do when setting up a parent or child's Android phone
Helping to lay the groundwork for a great Android experience

Henry Burrell2020/05/17
9:20am PDTMay 17, 2020

10 things to do when setting up a parent or child's Android phone

This story was originally published 2020/05/02
5:30am PDTon May 2, 2020 and last updated 2020/05/17
9:20am PDTon May 17, 2020.

When setting up a phone for someone who's not especially tech-savvy (or simply doesn't care to learn about their phone), Android offers a nice amount of flexibility in terms of what you do or don't have to do. But just because the flexibility is there doesn't mean there aren't a few highly advisable, if technically totally optional, steps you can take to make that phone (and potentially the person using it) a lot less annoying. Here are 10 things we think will make any beginner's experience on an Android smartphone less frustrating, both for them and the person tasked with setting them up.

2FA security keys for your Google account can now be set up from Android devices
Also MacOS devices using Safari

Ryne Hager2020/03/06
3:30pm PSTMar 6, 2020

2FA security keys for your Google account can now be set up from Android devices

Most of us value our security, even if we might be a bit too lazy to make every single account as safe as it can/should be, and that's the problem. It's hard to get all your accounts set up with stuff like two-factor authentication/2FA between all the different methods and the fact that you can't even set it up for all your accounts from every platform. Google just eliminated at least one barrier with a change today, though, as the company is now allowing you to enroll security keys from Android using Chrome, as well as macOS devices running Safari.

Weekend poll: Do you use two-factor authentication to secure your Google account?

Ryne Hager2020/01/19
10:18am PSTJan 19, 2020

Polls

Weekend poll: Do you use two-factor authentication to secure your Google account?

Our digital security is tremendously important. With all the information stored online, and the necessity that the internet imposes on modern life, we must keep our most important accounts secure. One of the best ways to do that is via two-factor authentication, augmenting a password with a second identity challenge. With Android being the usual subject in these parts, and a Google account being a requirement to use Android to its utmost, do you have two-factor security set up on your primary Google account?

Google takes first steps to support both Fi and Voice on a single account

Ryne Hager2020/01/16
12:13pm PSTJan 16, 2020

Google takes first steps to support both Fi and Voice on a single account

Google has silently taken the first step in disentangling Google Fi from Google Voice, with the stated goal of supporting both on a single Google account. Late last year, the company revealed that it was changing how Fi would store voicemails, separating them from Google Voice, but keeping them accessible otherwise in all the same locations as before.

Google account switcher for web gets new material design treatment

Karandeep Singh2019/11/01
7:30am PDTNov 1, 2019

Google account switcher for web gets new material design treatment

Every piece of software that Google makes is being reworked to get design uniformity across the board under the new material guidelines. Then why should the poor account switcher be left behind? The Google account switcher on the web is undergoing a redesign after its mobile counterpart got switching gestures and direct access to account settings.

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