Category: Android

It looks like that Android app access to USB drives in Chrome OS is a little bit closer than anticipated.  When I wrote about this feature coming to Chrome OS back in April, it looked like the feature would land in the Chrome 68 build which isn’t due until July.  However, in the latest Chrome 67 build for the Chrome OS Beta Channel, the feature is available and SD cards or USB drives show up as a storage option.

The feature is a big deal for those who use Android apps in Chrome OS.  It means that you can store documents, music or videos on an external drive and not eat up what is often a small amount of built-in storage on your Chromebook.

The new Color Pop feature that was highlighted this past week at Google I/O in Google Photos is now starting to roll out to users.  The feature takes an image in your photos library that has a bright colored subject and then turns the background black & white.

The feature, at least right now, is 100% driving by Google Assistant, the AI built into Google Photos.  That means you can’t force the issue.  If the AI finds a photo in your library that meets its criteria, it will provide you the photo in the Assistant tab where you can save it to your library.

A second Chrome 67 based build has arrived in the Chrome for Android Beta app.  The app update, which is now live in the Google Play Store, is build 67.0.3396.42.  Unlike other beta builds of apps in the Play Store, you don’t have to join a beta program to try it out on your phone.  Just download it here and you can run it at the same time that you run the stable version on your device.

To a large extent, Chrome 67 is a bit of a maintenance release with not a lot of new features expected.  The only real notable change is the Home button near the omni bar at the top of the display.

Now that Google I/O has wrapped up for 2018, Android and Google fans are starting to turn their attention to the next hardware event for the Mountain View company.  Rumors are already starting to fly about the upcoming Google Pixel 3 phone series but a new rumor yesterday suggests that we could finally see a Pixel Watch in the mix too.

Wear OS by Google has, much like Android, needed a hero device to show the ultimate experience of what the platform can bring.  It is something I wrote about shortly after the name change from Android Wear and it looks like that could be happening.

Yesterday at Google I/O it was announced that Google Assistant would be receiving six new voices that you could use to suit your personal preferences with as you interact with it on your phone or Home devices.  Just a day later, those new voice models are now live in the Assistant or Home app on your Android phone.

You can find the new voice models under Settings>Preferences>Assistant Voice.  There you can listen to a script read by each of the voices to pick the one you like the best.  There are three male and three female voices to chose from in addition to the stock male and female voices that have already been in Assistant.

With the release of Developer Preview 2 for Android P yesterday, there was also a new wallpaper amongst all the new features of the build.  The thing is, if you upgraded your phone to DP2 from the Android Beta Program, you didn’t get the new wallpaper… until now.

Thanks to Semih Celik, it is now available for everyone.  Semih posted it on his G+ page yesterday and I have no added it to the wallpaper page here on the site as well as to this post after the break.