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Google brings us up to speed with what's new-new (and kinda-new) for Android
The teased Android TV remote, some Gboard improvements, and a few Pixel-exclusive features are coming to your phone
Today, Google has announced the rollout of a whole pile of "new" features for Android and Android Auto — 16 changes, by Google's count. Of course, this is Google, so "new" in many of these cases means they've been spotted in testing for months, and you may have been using many of them already. The tweaks cover a wide range, including accessibility improvements and Android Auto (which we'll cover separately to help streamline things just a little bit), but highlights include a new remote control for Android TV built right into your phone, an Assistant reminders hub, several time-saving Gboard improvements, and the trickle-down of a few Pixel-exclusive features.
Digital Wellbeing tool that saves you from walking into a pole is rolling out to more devices
Google: Heads up. Heads up. Heads up. HEADS UP
Digital Wellbeing on Android was already looking after your mental health. Now it's also taking care of your physical wellbeing with its latest feature, Heads Up. It was first made available exclusively to Pixel owners, but it's now rolling out to more Android phones.
June's Pixel Feature Drop is here, and there's more new stuff than we expected
Video astrophotography (astrovideography?), Locked Folders for Google Photos, Heads Up for Digital Wellbeing, and market/language expansions for existing features, plus lots more
It's June, and that means a few things: Nice weather, Pride Month, gardening, donut day, and the latest Pixel Feature Drop update. This month we're getting several new features: previously leaked long-exposure Night Sight videos for animated astrophotography, the debut of the Locked Folder feature for Google Photos, a new Heads Up feature for Digital Wellbeing that leaked last year to help pedestrians, Assistant-based voice controls for answering or rejecting calls, a new Gboard feature to pull details like phone numbers or URLs from bigger chunks of text in your clipboard, and an expansion of car crash detection. Recorder and Call Screen are also coming to more markets and languages, plus a set of new Pride-themed ringtones and backgrounds.
Read update
Over the last couple of years, Google has delivered a bunch of features for keeping your health, safety, and wellness in check as part of Digital Wellbeing. The tool originally designed to limit the time you spend on your phone is now picking up another capability that will warn you if you use your phone while walking.
Digital Wellbeing might soon help with physical wellbeing when you text while walking
Optional 'Heads up!' prompts incoming
Google's Digital Wellbeing mostly focuses on helping people get a healthier relationship with their phones, warning them when they're staring on their screen for too long or subtly hinting when it's time to wind down for the night. It looks like Google might soon expand that to ensure your physical wellbeing, too. XDA Developers' Mishaal Rahman discovered that the company is working on a feature that warns you to stop using your phone while you're walking.
Android P is packed with visual changes. Some of them are more popular than others, but Google has certainly been pushing out a ton of tweaks to the platform's design, especially when it comes to Android's animations. And the latest DP2 builds released just yesterday during I/O pack in a pretty slick new heads-up notification animation.
It's 2017, and we still don't have commercial flying cars, affordable jet-packs, or even automated package delivery. But thanks to HUDWAY, at least one sci-fi mainstay has made its way into the consumer market. Today the company launched a Kickstarter for its newest product, an affordable heads-up display called the HUDWAY Cast.
Floatify has been around for a little over a year now. It's an app that presents an alternate way to display notifications, specifically the Heads Up (AKA Peeking) notifications that were hidden in Android 4.4 and fleshed out in 5.0. The app has been continuously updated even as Lollipop has become public, and now it's a full-fledged alternative to most of Android's built-in notification systems. The latest update is something really special - we kind of wish Google would steal some of developer Jawomo's ideas.
Remember back when the CyanogenMod team discovered the code for heads up notifications hidden deep in Android KitKat, and everyone wanted to play with them? Now that it's been standardized in Lollipop, apparently at least some people aren't so keen on them. We've featured HeadsOff before in our app roundup: it's a neat little app that disables heads up notifications in Android 5.0 or later, and does it even without root permissions.
Remember when WhatsApp turned on its Read Receipts feature last week and caused panic all over the world? Well, the company wants nothing to do with your lover quarrels or business disputes — "He ignored my WhatsApp messages!" isn't a court-accepted argument, it seems. So to avoid becoming the second largest cause of divorce, WhatsApp is preparing another update to its app that should make the new feature optional.
Once the CyanogenMod team found and implemented the hidden Heads Up notification mode, it was basically inevitable that all the other major custom ROMs would follow suit. The unicorn-powered Android Open Kang Project has done so with their first nightly based on Android 4.4.4. They've also thrown in the usual bug fixes, as well as settings for automatic Immersive mode, disabling the full-screen keyboard, lockscreen orientation, and a few other goodies.
A while ago, we posted about explorations Google was undertaking in revamping Android's home screen. Part of this was a new notification shade that looked similar to Google Now.
Last year we told you about GravityBox, easily one of the most complete and far-reaching Xposed modules for rooted Nexus and AOSP ROMs. The creator is still expanding the module, and has quickly incorporated the Heads Up notifications recently featured in CyanogenMod nightly builds. Heads Up notifications pop up for easy viewing and action while in full screen mode. The feature is hidden deep in Android 4.4 code, and easily enabled here.
Here at Android Police, we're no strangers to digging around in Google's code and finding surprising stuff inside. Apparently some members of the CyanogenMod team did the same, and found a hidden feature in KitKat: Heads Up notifications. These floating notifications are meant to be used in full-screen apps or Immersive Mode, but for whatever reason, they aren't switched on in AOSP code. (Perhaps they're intended for the next major Android release.) You can probably guess what happens next.