Category: App Update

Update – Now Live in the Stable version

A new and pretty exciting feature is making its way to Microsoft Authenticator for iOS.  The feature will allow the app to keep a user’s credentials so they don’t get locked out of their accounts when they move to a new device.  The feature is a long requested feature by users and should make the migration from one phone to another more simple.

Today, if you migrate to a new phone, you have to pre-configure the Microsoft Authenticator app on your new phone prior to wiping your old one.  If you wipe the old one prior to doing this pre configuration, you run the risk of losing access to your two factor accounts – which is a gigantic pain, let’s be honest.  This new feature should make it a lot easier.

Microsoft has begun rolling out an update to the Android and iOS Microsoft OneDrive app that brings a much improved sharing experience.  The update now makes it clear which file or folder you are sharing and the extent of that sharing.  It is a much cleaner and easier to understand experience.

The update to the mobile apps falls in line with the updates that Microsoft has been doing to OneDrive online as well as the Windows and Mac clients.  File sharing from the cloud storage service is a fundamental element of the service which is used widely, especially with OneDrive for Business users.

A new update to the Google Pay app is rolling out in the Google Play Store today.  While the update itself, version 1.57 for those keeping score at home, doesn’t bring a lot of excitement on the surface, there are some potentially exciting things in the code that could bring big improvements to the app.

A teardown of the app by the team over at Android Police points to code within the Google Pay app where airline boarding passes could be supported.  This would allow for the Pay app to be the center of your travel, not just a tap-to-pay app.  Given that the app already supports some transit tickets with more coming, supporting airline boarding passes isn’t a big stretch.

The SwiftKey team at Microsoft has rolled out another new update to the SwiftKey for Android app.  The update, version 7.0.3.19 for those keeping score at home, brings support for five new languages, Alsatian, Fongbe, Norman, Urdu (English), and Warlpiri, as well as several bug fixes to the keyboard alternative for Android phones.

With the addition of Alsatian, Fongbe, Norman, Urdu (English), and Warlpiri, SwiftKey for Android now supports well over 200 languages natively, making it one of the most language diverse apps in the Google Play Store.

For the fourth time in as many weeks, there is a new build of the Chrome for Android beta app available in the Play Store.  The new build number is 66.0.3359.82 for those keeping score at home and if you have the beta app installed, you likely already have the update waiting for you.

As a reminder, with the Chrome Beta app is a seperate app in the Play Store which you can download without having to join a formal beta program.  You can use it along side your stable version of Chrome on your phone with no problem.

A new update to Microsoft Launcher is rolling out in the Google Play Store today, bringing several bug fixes and stability improvements to the app, as well as a few new features.  The new build is version 4.7.5 for those keeping score at home and if you have the launcher installed, you should get the OTA update to this new build over the next few days.

Microsoft characterized this new build as a maintenance build and it pretty much is just that.  There are several fixes included in this build including fixing top crashes and apps not responding errors in the launcher as well as fixing several badge count issues if you have that feature enabled in the launcher.  You will also find a lot of tweaks under-the-hood that bring performance, memory and CPU utilization improvements to Microsoft Launcher.