Category: App Update

After doing a limited A/B testing of the new look, YouTube has begun a full scale roll out of a new full screen width thumbnails look to the stream site.  Instead of having smaller thumbnails with the titles of the just below them, you have have a widescreen looking thumbnail with the title under it in a cleaner font.

The update appears to be a cloud-side update so as long as you are running the latest version of the app, you should see this new look roll out to you over the course of the next few hours.

Twitter has begun the process of rolling out a new bottom navigation bar to everyone.  The update to the Twitter for Android app is a cloud-side update meaning that so long as you have the latest version of the app, you should get the new navigation bar in the social app.  For those that are curious, the latest version is 7.53.0.

There isn’t a lot of mystery here – you get a bottom navigation bar when this update is pushed to your account.  You have the Home (feed), search, notifications, and direct messages all a single tap away with the tab you are on highlighted in blue.

Google Clips, the autonomous AI-driven camera from the Mountain View company, has a new update rolling out for the Android app that supports it.  It brings a new timelapse feature to the camera as well as other improvements to things like recognizing facial expressions.  The new build is version 1.6.2026903322 for those keeping score at home.

The big new feature in the app is timelapse support.  Now you can setup your Google Clips camera in this mode and it will capture a continuous stream of everything that the camera sees.  It will then condense it into a fast-forwarded timelapse which you can then save to your Google Photos account.  While it goes somewhat against the grain of what Google intended Clips to be – a spontaneous event capturing camera with your family, kids and pets – this new timelapse feature should give you a quick and easy way to capture things like sunrises and sunsets.

After being in a limited test mode for the past several weeks, the new YouTube incognito mode is now rolling out to everyone.  The feature allows you to eliminate the virtual footprints you leave while watching content on the streaming service.  For Android users, you need to make sure you have the latest version of the app, build 13.25.56.

The new feature significantly cuts down on the amount of traceable information left when you view YouTube.  All of your activity will not be tracked by the app so you won’t see similar content pop up later when you return to the app.  Don’t want anyone to know about your cat video watching habits?  Incognito mode is your answer.

The Netflix app for Android has a great new feature that is rolling out today:  Smart Downloads.  The feature, which is enabled by default, will delete an episode that you have downloaded and completed watching and will replace it with the next episode in the series that you have not watched.  It means that you will automatically get the next episode in the series without having to manually go download it yourself.

Here is the scenario:  Let’s say you watching Season 1 of The Crown and have downloaded the first four episodes in the series.  When you complete episode one, it is deleted and episode five of the series is downloaded automatically to your phone.  It means that you will always have four episodes downloaded and ready to watch.

Google Play Games, the game hub for Android devices, has a new update rolling out to the Play Store today that brings a new game as well as a new search functionality to help you find games to play.  The new update is version 5.10 for those keeping score at home.  It has been released by Google to the store but it may take a day or two to get to everyone.

The first new bit in this update to Google Play Games is the classic game Snake.  Like you use to play it in the pre-smartphone days, Snake allows you to use swipe actions to move the snake around the screen to eat the apples without crashing into the walls.