Category: App Update

The awesome podcast app Pocket Casts has a new update rolling out that Android Oreo users are going to love.  The update, version 6.4 for those keeping score at home, brings a plethora of updates, many aimed at users who have the latest version of Oreo on their devices.

The biggest Oreo feature in this update is the support for Picture-in-Picture.  Now you can start a video podcast in the app, tap your Home button and the video will be minimized to your Home screen.  There you can keep watching while doing other things on your phone or tablet.

Additionally, support for Adaptive icons and Notification channels, both Oreo features, are supported in this latest update.

If you don’t have Oreo just yet, there are still plenty of things to love about this update.  Battery and Background improvements have been made to the app as well as improved image loading and other general performance fixes.  Show notes are now updated too when they are updated by the podcast’s author.

Google has begun rolling out an improved look to the overflow menus in the Google app for Android.  The update is a server-side change, meaning that as long as you have the latest version of the app on your phone, it will be pushed down behind the scenes to your phone.

That latest version is 7.13.28.21 for those keeping score at home.

Previously, when you were looking at cards in the Google app or in the Google Pixel or Now Launcher page, you would get a pop-up card on the display when you wanted to dismiss a card.  Now, when you tap the three vertical dots in the right-hand corner of any card, you get a bottom-up card.  It looks much cleaner and refined over the pop-up card.

If you are looking to have the new Pixel 2 launcher look and feel on your current phone, the latest update to Action Launcher is your ticket.  The update, version 30.2 for those keeping score at home, brings all of the goodness that is in Google’s new default launcher to any phone without rooting.  In fact, looking at it side-by-side with the Pixel 2 launcher, it is all-but identical plus you have a lot of tweaks that you can do that are not available in the Google launcher.

Action Launcher in this update has brought the At A Glance feature, giving you the date and weather at the top of the display on your Home page and updating with calendar notifications when you have an upcoming appointment.  Functionally, it is the same as the Pixel 2 launcher and it looks identical.

The popular save it for later app, Pocket, has a new update rolling out to Android users.  The update, version 6.6.3.2 for those keeping score at home, brings the ability to have articles read to you while you are on the go.

For those that aren’t familiar with Pocket, it is an app and service that allows you to save an article or other find on the web for viewing or reading later.  There are apps for Android, iOS and plug-ins for popular browsers like Chrome.  It is a great way to save and share articles of interest.

The new text-to-speech feature works great.  Once you have an article open in the app you want read to you, go to the menu (three vertical dots) and tap on “Listen (TTS)”.  The app will automatically start reading the article to you.  The voices used by the app are a little robotic but not to the point of distracting and the app supports playback in the background too.  If you are playing it in the background, the ability to play/pause the reading is available to you in the notification shade.

The Chrome team has released the latest update of the browser for Android.  The updated build is version 62.0.3202.66 for those keeping score at home and should be rolling out via the Play Store over the next few weeks.  This is the first build in the 62 train for Android that has hit the production release.

This new version contains the normal security and performance improvements that you have come to expect from this big monthly updates so no real news there.  No, the news is in the new features.

Accelerated downloads are now a part of the browser to allow for faster downloading of files while on your phone or tablet.  If you aren’t familiar with Download Accelerators, essentially what they do is break up large files into smaller bits which are faster to download than one big file.

An updated version of the ClintonFitch.com site app for Android is now rolling out to the Google Play Store.  The update, version 10.05 for those keeping score at home, brings mostly behind-the-scene changes to improve the overall feel and function of the app.

One new feature in this build is the ability to pull down on your device’s screen to refresh the news feed.  This was something that has been needed for a while and now you don’t have to exit the app or wait for the app to refresh itself using background services.  In order to work with Oreo better, this feature needed to be added.

The overall look of the ClintonFitch.com app has been tweaked with a new color scheme and font changes that should make it more readable on smaller devices.