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Spotify finally gets around to adding download support for Wear OS
It should be working on most recent Wear watches
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One of the more appealing factors of owning a smartwatch is being able to leave your phone behind and enjoy listening to music via earbuds. Unfortunately, after the death of Google Play Music, the platform lacked a single suitable service that could offer this convenience. However, Spotify is stepping up its game and delivering an app that it should have offered in the first place.
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You can spend all the time in the world framing your shots, getting your lighting just right, and capturing the perfect moment — none of which does you much good if you can't find any of these awesome pics when you need them. That's why so many of us are enamored with Google Photos, and the powerful tools it offers to search through, browse, and organize your collection of thousands upon thousands of snapshots. Last month Google teased the arrival of a newly reorganized grid to improve discovery even more, and now we're starting to see pieces of it begin to arrive.
Apple forced Google to re-think widgets for Android 12
A revamped Widgets API will hopefully encourage developers to up their game
When Apple announced that it was bringing widgets to iOS, it was hard not to be a little bit jealous as an Android user. Yes, we've had widgets since the beginning, but they've been so badly neglected for so long that most of them look awful — even Google's own — and there's no consistency in the way work. iPhone widgets are much more rigid and they look a lot better for it. Thankfully, Google is finally giving widgets the attention they've long needed.
You'll have to wait for Beta 2 to get Android 12's new camera and mic blocking toggles
When you want to be extra sure no app is accessing your camera or mic
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Android 12 is looking quite different from its predecessors, but the OS also has a few new tricks under the hood — particularly in the privacy department. The new Android version gives you clear indicators when an app is using your camera or your microphone in the top right corner of your display, so you're never caught off guard (many other manufacturers already include this in their custom Android software). But what if you want to be extra sure that no app can see or hear you? Google added two dedicated toggles for that, and they will go live on Android 12 Beta 2.
Your Chromebook and Android phone are getting a new tight integration
Your most recent photos will now live in the Phone Hub
Chrome OS and Android are becoming increasingly intertwined. You can already start your phone's hotspot through your Chromebook, and there are options for notification mirroring, smart lock, and sharing recent Chrome tabs. During I/O, Google has announced yet another piece of the multi-device puzzle: Photo sharing.
Google Photos Locked Folder might not be as useful as we thought it would be
Images are only saved locally for the sake of security
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Google Photos might cost you money going forward, but Google is working hard on making it an enticing service nonetheless, with Google One editing perks and automatic creations that you can't find on other platforms. Now the company has introduced another stand-out feature: a Locked Folder. As more details about it are emerging, we've also learned about a potential dealbreaker for some — the Locked Folder is purely local on your phone, with no cloud backups available.
Check out Google's new apps and tiles on Wear OS
Google and Samsung breathe new life into the platform
Wear OS has long needed a shot in the arm and 2021 is the year it's finally getting one: Google is joining hands with Samsung to introduce a unified platform that combines the best of Tizen and Wear OS. Apart from under-the-hood changes that make the experience a lot smoother and slicker, a few native apps and tiles are getting redesigned, with the latter finally opening up for third-party developers.
Android 12 Beta 1 changes the way you'll set your alarms for the next day
All 30 of them, to make sure you get out of bed on time
While some modern options exist for replacing your aging alarm clock, most of us have made the switch to waking up with our phones. Android's default clock app is a great way to wake up in the morning, alongside dozens of great apps available on the Play Store. Thanks to a new quick settings tile in Android 12 Beta 1, adding and modifying alarms is about to get a whole lot easier.
2021 is the year of the Chromebook — or at least, Google says a whole lot are coming
At least 50 new models will hit the shelves this year after massive growth in 2020
It's no secret that 2021 was a huge year for Chromebooks. Google's web-first operating system grew by leaps and bounds as people looked for ways to stay connected during quarantine. What's new in 2021? Well, lots of Chromebook hardware, for one.
Android is about to take over your world all over again
I/O 2021 makes it clear that the search giant has its eye squarely on the ecosystem prize
Every Google I/O, we get to see some impossibly cool shit from Google that, it frequently turns out, actually was impossible (at least in the practical, scalable sense of the word "possible"). That's not to say the company intends to mislead — far from it. I/O is a playground for the incredibly ambitious and often financially untenable experiments from a company that has more money than it is reasonable for a normal person to comprehend in anything but a purely mathematical and utterly abstract sense. The kind of money that could feasibly send not just one, but an entire colony of chimpanzees to space — each in separate rockets — dressed in adorable gold lamé suits with matching limited edition Rolexes and not incur a quarterly balance sheet impact worse than a particularly nasty EU regulatory fine. That kind of money.
Everything you need to know about Android 12's big Material You redesign
The biggest shakeup to Google's design language in years
Google unveiled Material Design at I/O back in 2014. An overarching design system was much-needed — it brought consistency to Google's digital products and allowed developers to easily build apps that looked at home on Android and the web. It has evolved a great deal over the years, but the next major iteration is upon us and it's going to be the biggest overhaul since it launched. Material You, as the name suggests, is all about personalization, and it's coming first to Google Pixels with Android 12 later this year.
How to give apps only your approximate location on Android 12
You'll soon have another decision to make when giving permissions
Apple and Google are each slow-stepping their ways to giving their customers more privacy options up front when they want to interact with apps. For example, Android has been offering users the choice to give specific permissions like access to location data to an app for one time only, while the app is in use, or not at all. With Android 12, users get to control how accurate the location data they give is.
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We're all excited for the new design coming with Android 12, but Google's also implementing a ton of changes under the hood as well. User safety is more important than ever these days, and the new Privacy Dashboard should help keep you informed about where and when your data is being accessed. Google is also adding a new toast message any time an app accesses copied text, though it's not active in Android just yet.
Google I/O is a busy time—announcements flying left and right, blog posts going up, and more Google talking heads than you can shake a stick at. It can be hard to keep up when you've got your own life to live, so Google was good enough to distill all the important day one announcements into a single 9-minute video.
YouTube Music's Wear OS app has a feature not available on the Apple Watch
The long-delayed app is finally coming to Wear OS with offline playback
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After years of stagnant updates, Google has finally refocused its efforts on wearables. A new platform for Wear OS is launching later this year in partnership with Samsung, and Google is bringing several of its apps to your wrist for the first time. YouTube Music is finally coming to Wear OS, though you'll have to keep waiting for its official launch.
Android 12's long-awaited privacy features are official — though a few won't land until Beta 2
Privacy Dashboard, mic and camera indicators, permissions tweaks, and more
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Android 12 Beta 1 is here, and with it are a handful of previously leaked privacy tweaks. On top of those already live in the current release, like the new approximate location permission and Bluetooth scanning tweaks, Google has also laid out the schedule for its new camera and microphone indicators and Privacy Dashboard. Some of these features have been in development for years. But today, at Google I/O, the company is finally showing them off.
Google is making finding Wear OS apps suck less
You'll soon be able to install apps on your watch using your phone
Wear OS is finally getting the attention it deserves as Google, in partnership with Samsung, is rejigging the platform to keep it from fading into nothingness. One of the key improvements will be in the area of app discovery, which is going to be a very welcome upgrade.
Google Drive is fixing the most annoying part about sharing docs
Finally, a solution to the spammers
Google Drive has always had some problems with spammers — no wonder, since there's no way to stop strangers with your email address from sharing files and folders with you in Drive. Google acknowledged the problem and promised that it would work on a solution all the way back in 2019, but has been radio-silent since then — though we assume there was some work in the background, as we've seen much fewer reports in recent times. But now the company is adding a user-facing solution to help against spam, phishing, and otherwise unwanted files: a blocking option.
The Android TV 12 Beta is going live, but the Chromecast with Google TV is excluded
Devs also get a brand-new Android TV emulator to play with
At Google I/O 2021, the Android TV team announced an important milestone — the platform now has 80 million monthly active devices, with more than 80% growth in the US alone. But the team isn't resting on its laurels. Instead, Google announced that the Android 12 Beta is coming to its development box today, the ADT-3, along with sharing that the current Android 11 version of the TV OS will finally be available as an emulator going forward.
Android Automotive is coming to a lot more vehicles this year — here's which brands are supporting it so far
Meanwhile, BMW is integrating Android Auto more tightly
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Google is trying to take over in-car software with initiatives like Android Auto and Android Automotive OS, and that effort seems to be well received among customers and car manufacturers. The company today announced that there are now over 100 million cars compatible with Android Auto on the road. And Android Automotive, Google's dedicated software kit for in-car infotainment, is also coming to ten more vehicles launching this year.