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Instagram is down for many people around the world

It looks like India took the worst hit

It looks like Instagram is currently down for many people around the world, with an influx of reports coming from India. Many people have taken to Twitter to say that the Instagram app on Android and iOS app isn't accessible for them. WhatsApp and Facebook are still up and running for most people, so it doesn't seem like all of Facebook is affected by the problems.

Down Detector's stats in CET time.

Instagram is down for many people around the world was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

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Apps , Apps/Games – Android Police – Android News , Games , Phones , reviews , Tablets 3:23 PM No comments

Google Chat gets GIF support to help you cope with the loss of Hangouts

The transition is still not going okay, though

The killing of Google Hangouts has been a tough one. Google has been trying to kill Hangouts since Google Allo and Google Duo were announced in 2016, which means Google has been going at it for at least 5 years. Right now, though, it's been trying to get Hangouts users moved over to Google Chat. And users of Hangouts are... not exactly in love. In an attempt to make them feel a little bit more at home, Google Chat is now rolling out support for GIFs.

Google Chat gets GIF support to help you cope with the loss of Hangouts was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

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Apps , Apps/Games – Android Police – Android News , Games , Phones , reviews , Tablets 6:29 AM No comments

Samsung Internet Beta 16 adds updated search in URL bar and blocks tracking pixels

Whether it's a good change or not is up to you

Did you know that there are tiny, invisible pixels hidden on a lot of websites, nefariously tracking your every movement across the web? Well there are. It's not really dangerous, just kind of rude and annoying. The newest version of Samsung's Android browser, one of the few tools that it shares with the rest of the Android world, detects and blocks this practice. So sayeth the changelog!

The version 16 beta also redoes the visual interface of searching from the URL bar.

Samsung Internet Beta 16 adds updated search in URL bar and blocks tracking pixels was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

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Apps , Apps/Games – Android Police – Android News , Games , Phones , reviews , Tablets 6:29 AM No comments

Latest Google app beta makes it much easier to disable explicit search results

SafeSearch gets its own space in settings

Google's SafeSearch keeps you from stumbling into the seedier side of the internet without warning. It's a super useful tool, especially if you're sharing your devices with younger family members. On Android, SafeSearch's toggle is buried within the Google app settings, but it's about to get a whole lot easier to access.

Previously, you had to dig pretty deep on your phone to enable or disable search filters. Google kept the toggle hidden in its app's "General" preferences, under options for Data Saver, the Discover feed, and trending autocomplete.

Latest Google app beta makes it much easier to disable explicit search results was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

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Apps , Apps/Games – Android Police – Android News , Games , Phones , reviews , Tablets 2:23 AM No comments

30 temporarily free and 33 on-sale apps and games for Wednesday

Don't miss out on the sales for Slayaway Camp, Peace Death, and Slaughter 2

Welcome to Wednesday, everyone. It's a busy day for sales, and so I have a packed list with more than a few standouts. First up is a solid discount on Slayaway Camp, an enjoyable tribute to 1980s slasher films that offers fantastic puzzle-based gameplay. Next, I have Peace Death, a quirky arcade simulator that's perfect for killing time. Last but not least is Slaughter 2, a fan-favorite first-person shooter.

30 temporarily free and 33 on-sale apps and games for Wednesday was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

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Apps , Apps/Games – Android Police – Android News , Games , Phones , reviews , Tablets 11:28 PM No comments

Chrome 93 is all about convenience, progressive web apps, and glimpses of Material You (APK Download)

Cross-device OTP support, tons of PWA improvements, and first few glimpses of Material You incoming

Update
Stable launch

Google has released Chrome 93 to the stable channel, and it should start to roll out to your phone and computer as we speak. We're in for quite a few changes, with Material You design elements, new flags to try, better cross-platform communication when it comes to SMS OTP codes, prettier (or at least more useful) windows for web apps, and much more. Here's a rundown of all the changes we spotted.

Chrome 93 is all about convenience, progressive web apps, and glimpses of Material You (APK Download) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

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Apps , Apps/Games – Android Police – Android News , Games , Phones , reviews , Tablets 6:23 PM No comments

RCS functionality in Google's Messages app seems to be randomly breaking

But there's a way to 'fix' them that may or may not work

Google Messages allows any phone to get RCS, which has considerably improved its push. This is why it's often considered as a competitor to iMessage, Apple's proprietary messaging platform for iDevices, instead of a replacement. But it's an imperfect competitor, and recently, users have found some annoying issues that have either kept their Chat messages in an eternal limbo or straight out keeping them out of the platform.

About the first one.

RCS functionality in Google's Messages app seems to be randomly breaking was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

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Apps , Apps/Games – Android Police – Android News , Games , Phones , reviews , Tablets 4:25 AM No comments

Google really wants you to test all the hidden experiments in Chrome Beta 94

You've probably already heard of them if you follow our Chrome coverage

It looks like Google is getting more aggressive about advertising experiments and tests it's running in Chrome. The company has shared what it's working on and how you can activate some of the experiments in the current Chrome Beta, version 94. None of the tests are exactly new, but Google publicly advertising them certainly is.

Google already teased some changes for the new tab page back at its I/O developer conference in May, and we've first spotted them in action in June.

Google really wants you to test all the hidden experiments in Chrome Beta 94 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

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