Category: App Update

The Google Play Games app for Android has an update rolling out that brings a fresh look to the gaming hub and a much improved way of finding your games that you have installed or have purchased/played in the past.  The new build is version 5.3 for those keeping score at home (pardon the pun) and should be coming to everyone over the course of the next few days via an OTA update.

The first thing you’ll notice after the update is the game carousel.  Here you can swipe to find games that Google has built into the app like Cricket, Pac-Man and Solitaire but also games that you have installed on your phone.  If you want to play any of these games, simply tap the Play button below them and off you go.

Google Text-to-Speech is an underlying app that your Android phone and apps on your phone leverages to read text on your screen.  It is mostly used for those who need to enable accessibility for vision challenges and is generally one of those “set it and forget it” type apps.

That doesn’t mean Google isn’t keeping things up to day with it however.  A new build, version 3.14.9 for those keeping score at home, is rolling out with support for three new languages.  Those new languages are Estonian, Romanian and Slovak, further expanding the global reach of the app.

With the 2018 F1 season just 79 days away, the Liberty Media owned sport is already ramping things up to get fans ready.  This morning a new update to the official F1 app was released for Android, bringing with it the 2018 race schedule and some overall changes to the look of the app.

The update is version 10.004 for those keeping score at home and if you have the app already installed, you should get the OTA update over the course of the next few days.  The first change you will notice is the app’s icon has changed to reflect the new, and somewhat controversial, logo for the sport.  The logo had not changed since 1994 but with new owners comes new looks.

The sleep tracking app Sleep as Android has a major update rolling out today that brings a number of new features along with several improvements and fixes.  The new build is version 20171223 and should come to all users of the app over the course of the next few days.

This update brings support for a new time-based theme to the app which will be the traditional dark theme until sunrise where it turns to a light theme automatically.  You’ll also see that the sleep charts have been improved for easier reading and clarity of information.  In fact most of the app has had some type of face lift in this update.

For those that aren’t familiar with Sleep as Android, it is an app that allows you to track your overall sleep and the quality of that sleep using your Android phone or Android Wear device.  It is an app that I use daily and highly recommend for those who want to keep tabs on their sleeping patterns in this hectic world of ours.  You can read my review of it here in case you missed it.

The Microsoft OneDrive app for Android has a new update rolling out that those who are running Android Oreo will appreciate.  The update, version 5.2 for those keeping score at home, brings improve support for the latest version of Android including support for Notification Channels.

For those who aren’t familiar with Notification Channels, it allows you to set the priority of notifications for apps that support it so that you are constantly alerted to anything related to the app or, the opposite, no notifications at all.  The team over at Android Central put together a great primer on Notification Channels in Oreo that I highly recommend reading.

A small, midstream update to Chrome App for Android is now rolling out in the Google Play store for users.  The update is build 63.0.3239.111 for those keeping score at home and is a bug fix update to the browser.  It is the second update of the month for the browser, following the release to Chrome 63 a week ago and fits with Google’s normal update scheme of these past few months.  That is, a major update early in the month with a mid-month minor update.

Functionally, you won’t find any difference in this new build compared to the one released last week.  This update is purely focused on bug fixes and is a pretty small download once it does get to your Google account.