Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous two weeks or so. Today I have a survey app from Facebook, a website builder from Envato, and a social podcast app from Breaker. So without further ado, here are the most notable Android apps released in the last two weeks.
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Welcome, one and all, to Android Police's Black Friday app sales roundup. If you were here for Wednesday's post, you'll remember that I said today's list would be, and I quote, a "humdinger." Well, I was right.
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.
Enhanced tracking protection is now fully available on Android.
Opera has a handful of different browsers for Android, each with a slightly different use case. Opera Touch is an experimental app, with a gesture interface reminiscent of Paranoid Android's "PIE' gestures from back in the day. If you're using the browser on Android 10, you might be happy to know it can now sync with the system theme.
Opera Touch already offered white and dark themes, but as of version 1.22, there's a new option to sync the browser with the system.
Earlier this year, our APK guru Cody discovered signs of Verified SMS coming to Google's Messages app. At the time, we didn't know what the feature was exactly or how it'd work. With it starting to go live now, we've discovered that it doesn't work for all numbers, just businesses, and specifically those registered with Google.
In the Messages app, you'll find a new toggle in Settings -> Verified SMS.
Many of the Stadia Founder’s Edition preorders were canceled en masse days before the gaming service’s hyped debut on Tuesday. A fault in Google Store’s payment gateway initially put some orders with the limited-edition package on hold, but the issue was further aggravated when the troubleshooting steps also failed. In no time, Stadia’s subreddit was swarmed by affected buyers going on about the entire episode, which finally helped grab Google’s attention.
Stadia Pro subscribers who pay $10 a month for expanded access and perks to Google's game streaming service currently have free passes for Destiny 2 and Samurai Shodown — as long as members keep paying for that subscription, they don't need to purchase the actual game to play it.
In time for the holiday season, Google today announced that it's flipping on the Nest Hello winter ringtones. Just like during Halloween, you have a number of options to choose from in the Nest app to bring the festive spirit to everyone visiting your home.
Since the holidays pan out a little differently depending on your religion, there are a four themes with a total of ten tunes to choose from: Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year’s, and "nondenominational winter sounds" are all available, though the latter includes a sleigh bells ring that does have a strong Christmas vibe to it.
Hello, all, and welcome to the eve before Thanksgiving. I have quite a list of app sales for you, but be ready for a humdinger of a list on Black Friday. Anyway, have fun and I hope that you all have an excellent Thanksgiving with your families and friends.
Last month’s #AndroidDevSummit was jam-packed with announcements and technical news...so much that we wouldn’t be surprised if you missed something. So all this month, we’ll be diving into key areas from throughout the summit so you don’t miss anything. We previously spotlighted Jetpack Compose, Kotlin and Android Studio, and today, we’re highlighting the rest of Android Jetpack, with the top three things you should know:
#1: A number of new & updated Jetpack libraries ready to use:
WorkManager 2.2 (Stable) has landed significant updates in the last releases with features like on-demand initialization improving app startup time when using WorkManager and improved testing support. Hear more of the new features and best practices.
Room 2.2 (Stable) is packed with features you asked for too : pre-packaged databases, improved relationship support and now better support for Kotlin Flow as well. Check out the What’s new in Room session to catch up.
Benchmarking (Stable) helps you measure the performance of tasks in your app with confidence. Here’s a deep dive on how you can exercise the library in fighting performance regressions in CI, like we do ourselves for Jetpack libraries and Compose.
LiveData w/ support for Kotlin coroutines & Flow (RC) : Kotlin coroutines and Flows has been the Android developer community’s interest in simplify async patterns in your apps. Learn how best to take advantage of the liveData builder in your app:
View binding (Beta) is type-safe solution bundled with Android Studio 3.6 Beta with minimal build-time impact, no more findViewById(), no more annotation processors. Check out What’s new in Studio for a demo !
#2: We’re busy baking more libraries
CameraX (Alpha) simplifies the development experience and lets you focus on your app instead by addressing the differences between the many devices in the Android ecosystem, like Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Motorola, LG who are already unifying behind CameraX. Expected in Beta soon, learn what the Camera team has been up to since I/O 2019.
Security (Alpha) helps you simplify data at rest encryption for your app needs. Hear of best practices with encryption on Android from the Security library team.
#3:It’s time to migrate to androidx!
With all the new and updated Jetpack libraries and upcoming release of Jetpack Compose, it is time to get your app updated and ready. Nick and Tiem share a great step by step plan and best practices from the community in migrating to androidx namespace.
...and we also heard from you!
But Android Dev Summit isn’t just about what we’ve got to say; it’s also about you telling us what you’d like to see worked on to make your life easier. And this year, one thing that we heard strongly from our community was the need to provide a simplified Dependency injection developer experience for Jetpack libraries and expand improved Kotlin support to other Jetpack libraries! We’re on it!
A few months ago, Google Photos product lead, David Lieb, told us that manually tagging faces was on the app's update roadmap. We didn't hear anything about the feature until last week, when XDA developers managed to find it hidden inside Photos v4.32 and enable it. Now, it's going live for some users, though there's an important asterisk to keep in mind.
Still relies on Google's face detection algorithm
If you were hoping that the feature would allow you to point at any area in an image and add a tag to it, you will be disappointed.
A recent update to Google Photos is annoying a lot of users by removing the super handy tap-and-drag for selecting multiple images. Not all users are affected and it's not clear if this is a server-side bug or a sign of things to come, but if the latter's the case, then it sure is not a wise decision, Google.
Users have started noticing the absence of the gesture with version 4.32.0 of Photos, though others were unaffected until they updated to 4.32.1.
Google's Stadia release seems rushed, as many advertised features like family sharing, a UI for achievements, and the ability to use existing Chromecast Ultras for game streaming are still missing. At least the company is keeping one promise it had made to appease customers during the hectic launch: Buddy Passes are currently rolling out to people who purchased the Stadia Founder's Edition.
Some adventures are better with a friend!
Whether you’re gifting a Buddy Pass or are the lucky recipient of one, here’s everything you need to know to begin playing on Stadia.
In time for the holiday season, Google today announced that it's flipping on the Nest Hello winter ringtones. Just like during Halloween, you have a number of options to choose from in the Nest app to bring the festive spirit to everyone visiting your home.
Since the holidays pan out a little differently depending on your religion, there are a few themes with a total of ten tunes to choose from: Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year’s, and "nondenominational winter sounds" are all available, though the latter includes a sleigh bells ring that does have a strong Christmas vibe to it.
"Flip to Shhh" launched with the Pixel 3 as a way to quickly enable Do Not Disturb on your phone by simply turning it so the display was face down. Even though the feature shouldn't have required any special hardware or capabilities, Google chose to keep it exclusive to the Pixel 3 and didn't bring it to its older devices. That's changing with the latest Digital Wellbeing beta, which enables the feature on the Pixel 2.
Dark theme and night mode are a boon for those who like to stare at their smartphone screens in a pitch-dark room while regretting staying up late. What further adds to this convenience is an in-app option to automatically match the default system theme settings. Wikipedia is bringing exactly that to its beta app for Android.
Under the App theme section of the Settings menu, you’ll find a new toggle switch with Match system theme mentioned against it.
When Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note10, it also introduced a new game streaming platform called PlayGalaxy Link albeit with very little by way of concrete information. We learned soon after that it would be launching in September, and so it's come to pass.
Midnight turkey sandwiches, leftover pie for breakfast, a leisurely walk around the block—these are the ideal moments in my day after Thanksgiving. But if you’re like me and the millions of Americans who participate in Black Friday and Cyber Monday every year, chances are you’re also looking out for deals ahead of the holiday season. In fact, I hear that online shopping sales are expected to growup to 18 percent this year, and smartphone use for holiday shopping is rising—increasing by 11 percent since 2017.
Good news: Google has you covered across your holiday shopping needs, from making your list, checking it twice, finding out the best deals, and keeping an eye on each package arrivals.
Find the best prices and places to buy
With the recently redesigned Google Shopping, you can track prices for that espresso machine you’ve been keeping your eye on (and much more). Simply find the product you want, toggle “track price,” and you’ll receive a notification by phone or email when the price of that item drops. Plus, when you buy directly on Google we’ll offset the carbon emissions created from shipping your order.
If you’re committed to shopping local or worried about the shipping deadline, Google Shopping also lets you filter for nearby products, so you can find local stores that carry what you need and see whether they have it in stock.
Some of our Made by Google products have Black Friday deals this year
Check out the deals on the latest tech from Google
How about some shiny new tech for your Secret Santa? Check out the Google Store for these deals (also at select U.S. retailers):
Say it with a (very) smart phone: From November 24th through December 2nd, get $200 off an unlocked Pixel 4 and 4XL on the Google Store.
Give the gift of better Wi-Fi: From November 28th through December 4th, save $40 on Nest Wifi, our newest Wi-Fi router and point which comes in three chic colors ($229).
Help the new homeowner, parent, or caretaker in your life: From November 28th through December 4th, get $40 off Nest Cam Indoor, Nest Cam Outdoor, and $80 off Nest Hello.
Bring the party with whole-home audio: From November 28th through December 4th, save $20 on Nest Mini.
Stay organized, connected, and inspired in the kitchen: Save $30 on Nest Hub Max—and enjoy this exclusive bread pudding recipe from Ayesha Curry on Google Assistant displays.
Stuff all of the stockings: From November 28th through December 4th, get $10 off Chromecast and $20 off Chromecast Ultra.
Keep track of your deliveries (and spread cheer!)
When you’re expecting more packages than usual, keeping track of each delivery can prove to be stressful. Should you stay and wait for it? What happens if you miss it? With a Nest Aware subscription Nest Hello can alert you when a package arrives, so if it’s an important item you can enlist some help from a neighbor (or, for parents, intercept it before your child discovers an early gift from Santa).
And starting today you can get a festive Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s, or wintry ringtone for your Nest Hello. Whenever someone's at your door, they’ll hear some holiday cheer—including the person delivering your packages.
Stay zen through the shopping frenzy
Remain calm, cool and collected throughout the midnight madness on Black Friday with help from the Digital Wellbeing features on your Pixel devices.
Set a time limit on specific apps and sites so your day isn’t consumed by online shopping. When the timer runs out, the app or website is paused for the rest of the day.
Snooze alerts that are distracting and focus on the important ones. If you use an app to track discounts and sales, you can prioritize those notifications so you don’t spend extra time wading through notifications and hunting for the deals you want.
A nighttime shopping habit can interfere with your sleep. Set Wind Down mode to silence notifications from shopping apps or social media, put your screen into grayscale to signal it’s time for bed, and avoid a night of insomnia.
And when it is time to wake up for those midnight deals or early morning lines, try the Sunrise Alarm feature on Pixel and Pixel Stand so even in the dead of winter, you can wake up more easily with “sunshine.”
We wish you great deals, easy shopping, and minimal stress this holiday season.
Google's cloud gaming service, Stadia, begins trialing on November 19 — you'll need to buy a $130 Founder's Edition kit to get access — and is expected to expand to the general audience sometime in 2020.
People have been wondering about the full roster of launch titles featured in Google Play Pass — supposedly, we've got over 350 of them to go through. Here's the thing: Google doesn't make it easy to suss out all of the apps participating in the program, whether through the Play Store or external documentation on associated Google sites. Great. Well, guess what? We're gonna give it a try and list as many apps on Play Pass as possible.
Disney+ is the hottest video streaming service around, but being new, it lacks a lot of features. One of these is the ability to resume where you left off in a movie or TV show. Thankfully though, the option has started showing up for some users.
On the Disney+'s app homescreen, you should start seeing a new Continue Watching section with your ongoing movies and episodes, as well as next episodes to be played from the TV series you're following.
Dark theme and night mode are a boon for those who like to stare at their smartphone screens in a pitch-dark room while regretting staying up late. What further adds to this convenience is an in-app option to automatically match the default system theme settings. Wikipedia is bringing exactly that to its beta app for Android.
Under the App theme section of the Settings menu, you’ll find a new toggle switch with Match system theme mentioned against it.
Twitter and Facebook have both been targeted by malicious mobile SDKs on Android that accessed personal data, such as email addresses and user names. The companies have since informed Google about the issue, and Facebook sent cease and desist letters to the data collection firms behind the SDKs, oneAudience and MobiBurn.
Affected applications include Giant Square and Photofy, but neither Facebook nor Twitter shared a complete list of infected services.
It's been a while since there have been any rumblings about Ubisoft's Might and Magic series, with Might and Magic: Elemental Guardians existing as the last entry on mobile that was released in 2017. Today a new contender has entered the ring, and it goes by the name Might & Magic Heroes: Era of Chaos.
Last week we learned that Feral Interactive's port of GRID Autosport would arrive on Android on November 26th, and the studio has indeed kept its word since the racer is finally available on the Google Play Store as of this morning. The title has existed on mobile since 2017 thanks to an iOS release, but today marks the first day that Android users can get in on the fun. As expected, GRID Autosport is a premium racing game, which means you can grab the entirety of the title today for $9.99.
With phones getting taller and taller, Google has grown fonder of bottom bars in its apps. The latest app to get a new interface centered around moving essential shortcuts to the bottom is Google Duo.
In a server-side change, Duo has relocated action buttons during a video or audio call from the left side of the screen to the bottom. The camera off, mute, and switch cam buttons now flank the red call button on each side, with an additional overflow menu on the right.
Last week, Google went on a cleanup spree and deducted large chunks of Play Store credits that people had raked over time in Opinion Rewards. Our tips mailbox quickly filled up with reports of balances unexpectedly shrinking by tens of dollars, while Google stayed mum on what appeared to be a widespread concern. The company just broke its silence on this issue with a short explanation appearing for many within the Rewards app.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous two weeks or so. Today I have a survey app from Facebook, a website builder from Envato, and a social podcast app from Breaker. So without further ado, here are the most notable Android apps released in the last two weeks.
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