#Pixel
Google enabled fitness & bedtime tracking on Pixel's At A Glance
Android Police

Google Pixel's At A Glance is getting a little more useful as it gains more app integrations to show statistics directly on your home screen without the need to scroll your notification panel. Just recently, Google has enabled fitness & bedtime tracking for it.

Now you can check out your fitness data on At A Glance with supported apps like Adidas Running and Strava, weirdly Google's own Fit app isn't working for now. Also you can get reminded of your bedtime schedule, At A Glance will do that for you when it's 15 minutes before your set time.

There are many more to come in the future, see what has Google has prepared for At A Glance over here.

#News #Pixel4
Google sued over false Pixel 4 radio ads
Android Authority

Google Pixel 4 series is released back in late 2019, but why suddenly talked about it again? Oh, it because Google is getting sued for misleading advertisement of the Pixel 4, here's the details.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filled in a lawsuit, which allege that Google forced eight of the radio DJs to say out the Pixel 4 in positive review from a first-person perspective. It includes phrases like “I’ve been taking studio-like photos of everything… my son’s football game… a meteor shower… a rare spotted owl that landed in my backyard…” At that time, the DJs asked whether they can some of the wordings, Google refused their request.

In early 2020, Google wants to run Pixel 4 ads again. and this time the DJs asked whether they can get the phone on hand or not, Google once again refused until they attempted to buy on their own.

In a statement, Google spokesperson José Castañeda said:
"We will review the complaint but the AG’s allegations appear to misrepresent what occurred here. We take compliance with advertising laws seriously and have policies in place designed to help ensure we follow relevant regulations and industry standards."

If Google found to be doing it, Google would need to pay up to $10,000 for each of the 2,405 broadcasts of the ads, which will be over $24 million of fine.

#Pixel #PixelWatch
Google Pixel Watch might launch on May 26
Jon Prosser

The long rumored Pixel Watch could make it appearance to everyone on May 26th, which is somewhere around Google I/O event date.

Besides that, we know that the Pixel Watch might come with new Assistant and likely Tensor chipset, also Jon Prosser earlier has provided leaked marketing images of the Pixel Watch, giving us an early look of how the watch will look like.

#Workspace #Chat
Google Chat finally support rich text formatting on the web
Google Workspace Updates

Rich text formatting helps make some words stand out from the rest, so that readers can catch the attention immediately, and after a long time, Google Chat is finally adding rich text formatting support, at least on the web for now.

Just like any other platforms, you can use keyboard shortcuts, markdown formatting or manual select to apply bold, italic, underline (no markdown format) and strikethrough to texts. Interestingly, you can also change text color which is something not other messaging platforms has offered yet.

The feature is rolling to all Google Workspace customers over the next two weeks.

#Workspace #Drive
Google Drive will warn you when you open up 'sus' files
Google Workspace Updates

To protect users' online safety, Google is rolling out warning banners to suspicious files that are uploaded to Google Drive.

Google will warn you files that might steal your personal information, this includes PDF documents, images... you name it. A minor update but kind of something useful so that people won't fall into the traps.

These type of warnings have already existed on Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drawing, now it is making its way over to Google Drive. It will take up to 2 week times to make it appearance for everyone.

#Google #EasterEgg
Google hop on the Wordle trend with Easter Egg
Recently Wordle went viral, it is a daily word puzzle game that you need to find out the five-letter word under six guesses or less. Once you used a guess, it will tell you whether you have place the letter in the correct place or whether the letter is part of the words but in the wrong place.

Talking about this, Google has joined the fun and created an Easter Egg to that. There are six boxes in this Easter Egg instead, and the animation first showed "Column" as an example of simply guessing out a word. Later, it progressed to "Goalie" then lastly "Google" is the correct answer.

You can see the Easter Egg when searching for "Wordle" on the web, for now it doesn't in the Google app. The first result is the correct website to play the Wordle game. If you want to improve your English vocabulary, this game will definitely help you with that.

Follow @PixelHubUpdates

#ChromeOS
If you have multiple Chromebooks, the experience is about to get much more seamless to use
9To5Google

The Chrome OS team is seeking ways to make the experience seamless for customers who use multiple Chromebooks.

9To5Google found out an a hidden feature under-development, given the name “Floating Workspace Demo,” this feature have the capability of syncing your Chrome windows and tabs automatically between multiple Chromebooks. For example, you are working in your office and after work time is up, you went back home and open up your personal Chromebook, all your windows and tabs will be restored just like how you left it earlier on the other Chromebook.

The feature isn't live yet for anyone, as it is still in early stage of development, it will be nice to see such feature launching soon one day.

#News
Google is working on an AR headset, codenamed 'Project Iris' and hope to ship by 2024
The Verge

More and more big companies are joining the metaverse, and Google is not excluded too. Apparently Google is working on their own AR headset.

The project is codenamed as "Project Iris." The headset will be running an unspecified “custom Google processor” which could be probably Tensor. Google planned to launch it as early as in 2024.

Here we just sum up a very short brief of story on what's Google is working with their AR headset, learn more over in the original article.

#News #Apps #Camera
Google Camera QR code scanner send people to the wrong site, issue has been fixed
Android Police

Google has installed their own Camera app in their own Google Pixel devices and it has the ability to scan QR codes, you need to first enable Google Lens suggestions in the camera settings though. If you have a Pixel device running Android 12, using the camera app to scan specific QR codes with special URLs might bring you to a different website.

First reported by a German site Heise, Google Camera has at least three distinct errors. These three are related to country-code top level domains, top-level domains that are longer than two letters and umbers in the subdomain. Seems like Google implemented something that is kind of like autocorrect but end up creating more issues than solutions.

These are only happening on Pixel device that are running Android 12, but later Google has rolled out an update through the Play Store which fixes the issue.

Download (8.4.400):
Play Store | APKMirror

#Pixel #Pixel6a
Google Pixel 6a might debut this May
9To5Google

By this point, after Google released its Pixel 6 series in last October, the next Pixel device they are likely to release is their mid-range Pixel 6a device.

Tipster Max Jambor said that the Pixel 6a is scheduled to be announce and release sometimes around this May. The device might launch on Google I/O event, which is going to be similar as how the Pixel 3a was first launched back in 2019.

There isn't any new leak of the Pixel 6a, but for now, we know that the design of the device is identical to Pixel 6 and it could possibly run Google Tensor. By the way, the long rumored Pixel Watch could also make it appearance at the event too.

#News #Pixel6
Accessibility freeze issue in Pixel 6 could be resolve in the February update, update releasing on the same date as other Pixels
r/GooglePixel

If you own a Pixel 6 and using accessibility services, there chances your device could freeze when you are scrolling. After nearly a month time, Google has managed to fix it and it will be available on the February update.

Talking about February update, according to Canada carrier Fido, Pixel 6 is likely to receive the update on February 7, same as other supported Pixel devices. Earlier Google delayed December 2021 and January 2022 update for the Pixel 6, also those who have updated to the December update had also faced network connectivity issue, resulting Google to stop rolling out and removed the December update altogether.

Anyway hope that every issue can be resolved and make the Pixel 6 a usable phone with the February update.

#Pixel #PixelNotepad
Google Pixel Notepad foldable could be price around $1,399
9To5Google

In case you missed it, Google upcoming Pixel foldable could be named as "Pixel Notepad." and the latest leak of the foldable shows how much it could be priced at.

According to 9To5Google, they reported that the foldable by Google could be costing for $1,399 in the US, which is $500 more expensive than the Pixel 6 Pro when first launched. For your information, Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 is having a $1,799 price tag.

International launch of this foldable is expected to be available by the end of 2022. Till now, we roughly know some of the spec details, camera setup and design of the foldable.

#News #Pixel6
Google is acknowledge of Pixel 6's DAC issue, fix might come in a few months time
Android Police

Earlier there are already Pixel 6 users who use DAC reported that it isn't working with the phone. After nearly a month time, Google is acknowledged of the issue and currently investigating on a fix.

A Google staff has commented on a Reddit thread saying that they will be rolling out the fix "this coming summer," which means it might take a few months time in order for Google to push the fix out.

External DAC let users have the ability to have advantage of listening music in lossless quality, of course you will still need a premium headphone too. Nowadays this stuff isn't popular and only a very few amount of users are using it, so it doesn't really affect a lot of users, but still, it affected those who use external DAC anyway, hopefully Google can release the fix earlier.

#News
Google faced another lawsuit for tracking users location even when they have turned location tracking off
Android Authority

Classic Google, you probably at least know that they used to collect users' personal data to personalise feeds, experience, contents and many more for you. Earlier they faced a lawsuit for "misleading" Pixel 4 radio ads, now they are yet facing another lawsuit for collecting location data even when users have turned off the location tracking.

"Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access," Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine's office said in a statement. “The truth is that contrary to Google’s representations it continues to systematically surveil customers and profit from customer data.”

Further detailed explanation over here. Even when users have disabled the “Location History,” Google didn't disclose that they can still collect location data from “Web & App Activity” and the option is turned on by default for all personal Google accounts. The office also claimed that Google will still find alternative ways to track a user's location even if they have location permissions denied for its apps.

#Workspace #Docs
Google Docs add text and image watermarks support
Google Workspace Updates

Google Docs is still lacking quite some features that Microsoft Office has to offer, but Google has been slowly adding more features to its own product. The latest feature they have manage to add is text watermarks.

Users will be able to insert watermark by heading to Insert tab and select Watermark. These watermarks will repeat across all pages of the document, you can use it to indicate the status of the document, emblazon purpose or something else. Importing or exporting Microsoft Word documents will preserved only text watermarks.

The feature will make it appearance for all Workspace accounts by the end of February at least, with Rapid Release domains receiving it in two weeks time.

#ChromeOS
Chromebooks will be getting Adaptive Charging soon
9To5Google

Most Chromebooks battery life can easily last longer than a Windows laptop, and Google wants to help you extend your Chromebooks battery life, and they are bringing in Adaptive Charging to Chrome OS devices.

A new code that is submitted shows that Google is working on Adaptive Charging for Chrome OS, and there is some difference when comparing to what Google has offered on their Pixel devices. Instead of charging slowly at night time, Google will be using machine learning to learn your usage pattern and determined the charging speed.

We typically only charge our laptop when we are using it, so it make sense that Google is implementing the feature in this way. When Adaptive Charging is active, Chrome OS will also shows you a notification about it. For now, no one is sure whether this feature will arrive on all existing Chromebooks or only in the upcoming ones, time will tell.

#News #Chrome
Google discontinued FLoC, proposes new 'Topics API' to replace browser cookies
9To5Google

Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) from Google didn't get much attention since 2019 as many other browser developers aren't planning to implement this feature. They didn't take any further actions as there are concerns that it is still able to track users. After receiving many feedbacks about it, Google is working on something new: Topics API.

Topics will only be kept for three weeks and after that it will be completely deleted from the browser. When a user visit a site, the browser will select and share three topics with the site and advertising partners. Google is also letting users to have control over the topics, the ability to remove topics is there too.

Anyway Google is planning to fully phased out third-party cookies in Chrome by 2023. For now, the idea of Topics API looks cool but time will tell whether it is something that other browser developers will accept or not.

#News #YouTube
YouTube Shorts is going strong: gaining over 5 trillion views from the past 2 years
YouTube Blog

YouTube Shorts is launched in 2020, and by today it managed to generate more than 5 trillion views.

As you might have noticed, videos that are in vertical and under 60 seconds long are considered as a YouTube Shorts. By today, on the mobile apps, it is almost impossible to access the normal player for those videos (still possible with Watch History though), and YouTube is also planning to add a Shorts option in the desktop web menu, with similar experience coming soon too.

Besides announcing the numbers, YouTube has also announced that they are expanding the "Remix" feature in the next few months time. To encourage more people to join the Shorts community, YouTube is trying their best by giving creators a new way to monetise their Shorts further with Shorts Fund and "BrandConnect."

#Google #Assistant
Google Assistant app shortcut in Play Store just hit 1 billion downloads
Android Police

Google Assistant is no doubt one of the smartest assistant of all time, not even Siri can surpass it. Anyway, the shortcut app in the Play Store has reached 1 billion downloads milestone.

Although Google Pixel doesn't preinstalled it, some other OEMs do though, which is why the downloads number can boost up in quite a few months time. Anyway the Google Assistant app in Play Store is basically just a shortcut to open up Assistant, there's no extra functionality after installing it.

In case you missed it, the last app to reach 10 billion installs milestone is Gmail.

#Google
A redesign Search's image viewer is making its appearance for some
9To5Google

Google is recently experimenting a redesigned Search's image viewer with several users, and it is something very similar to Material You but not entirely.

The first noticeable difference is the background accent color, which is extracting colors from the image, then we can see that the design is also a little different too. The site name and favicon is appearing on the top-left corner, meanwhile the close "x" button is being move to the right. Rest of the buttons like share and bookmark are now placed in an overflow menu.

The page noscript displayed in larger size, the "Visit" button moved toward the bottom. Related images is simply now a carousel, and lastly the Lens button is appearing at the bottom left of the page.

It's definitely something cool to see, hope Google can widely rolling out this new changes.

#News #Pixel5a #Pixel6
Netflix adds HDR support for Pixel 5a and Pixel 6 series
9To5Google

Netflix finally has confirmed that Google Pixel devices that are released in 2021 are indeed getting HD and HDR support viewing experience.

Just recently, they have updated their support pages to include these three new Pixel devices, Pixel 5a, Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, These Pixel users who have a subnoscription to the service might have noticed the HDR support is already there for awhile, and Netflix updating their support page is just to confirm that the device will be for sure having the HDR support.