Kategorie: Android

With Android, you can look forward to your device getting better and better throughout the year. From accessibility to Android Auto to features that make your life just a little easier, like Assistant and Gboard, we’re rolling out new features that help you do more, stay secure and have more fun with your Android phone.

Control your phone with your facial gestures

Inspired by people with motor and speech disabilities, Camera Switches and Project Activate are two new accessibility features that let you use your phone by making facial gestures. Beginning to roll out this week, Camera Switches is a feature within Android Accessibility Suite that turns your front-facing camera into a switch (an adaptive tool that replaces a keyboard, mouse, or touching the phone screen) so that you can navigate your phone. Project Activate is a new app that makes it easier to communicate and express yourself in the moment. You can use facial gestures and eye movements to activate preset actions like speaking a phrase (like „Wait!“), playing audio (like a laugh) or sending a text message (like „Please come here“). 

Also new in accessibility, we’re bringing handwriting recognition to Lookout, an app that uses your phone’s camera to assist people with low vision or blindness get things done faster and more easily. In Documents mode, Lookout will now read out both handwritten and printed text for Latin-based languages. Also, in response to Lookout’s growing global audience, we are adding Euro and Indian Rupee recognition within Currency mode, with more on the way.

Control your TV with your phone

Starting today, you can find something great to watch on your Google TV even when the couch has eaten your remote. We’ve built remote-control features directly into your Android phone so you can power on your TV, navigate through your recommendations or even start up your favorite show right from your phone. And you can use your phone’s keyboard to quickly type complicated passwords, movie names or search terms. Try it on your Google TV or other Android TV OS devices by adding the remote tile to quick settings on your Android phone, or by visiting the Google TV app — coming to 14 more countries over the next few weeks.

Manage day-to-day tasks using Reminders from Assistant

Keeping track of everyday to-dos is even easier with Reminders. You can now manage all your reminders in one place by saying, “Hey Google, open my reminders“ where you’ll also see helpful suggestions for recurring reminders that you can activate with a tap. And of course, you can continue to use your voice to create and automate your to-dos. Just say, “Hey Google, remind me to water the plants every morning.” Once set, Google will notify you at the perfect moment across your devices, whether you’re at home or on the go.

Stay entertained, connected and on track during your drive

With Android Auto, you can stay entertained by quickly launching and listening to your favorite music, news and podcasts with personalized recommendations from Google Assistant. You can also play a variety of games from GameSnacks while you’re parked waiting for a to-go order or charging your car. 

And for commuters, ​​Android Auto can help you stay on top of important work meetings and messages with new support for your work profile. Plus, if you’re a dual-SIM Android phone user, you can now choose which SIM card to use when making calls through Android Auto. 

To help you stay on track, Waze on Android Auto is also getting a refresh to create a more streamlined navigation experience. The new design includes touchpad support, night mode and lane guidance support, and puts the map and directions at the forefront so other elements aren’t in the way. With Waze, Google Maps and many more navigation apps, Android Auto makes it easy to get to where you need to be.   

These Android Auto features will be available soon on Android phones when connected to a compatible car. If you don’t have a compatible car, you can check out other ways Google can help on your drive including new updates to Google Assistant driving mode and more on your Android phone.

Add photos and videos to a passcode-protected space

Previously on Pixel only and rolling out soon to Android, Locked Folder in Google Photos gives you a passcode-protected space to save photos and videos separately, so they won’t show up as you scroll through Google Photos or any other apps on your device.

Express yourself with Gboard

Express how you really feel with new additions to Emoji Kitchen on Gboard. With over 1,500 stickers coming this fall, you’ll be able to create even more combinations of your favorite emoji like 🦉🐐🍞🍓. 

In addition to making your messages more fun, Gboard is also helping you communicate faster and more fluidly with new features.

First, when you copy text that includes multiple information like phone numbers, email addresses and URLs, Gboard will automatically extract and separate them into multiple pasting options, so you can choose the information that is most important to you. Second, when you open a messaging app right after taking a screenshot, Gboard will now show that screenshot as a suggestion to share. And finally, for devices running Android 11 or newer, the power of machine learning lets you quickly complete your sentences with just a swipe with Smart Compose.

Control who shares with you

With improved visibility settings in Nearby Share, you can take full control of who can discover your device and send files. Choose between everyone, your contacts, or no one, and you can easily change your preference through your phone’s Quick Settings space anytime.

And wait, there’s more

With the Heads Up feature, you can get reminders to look up and stay alert when you’re walking and using your phone. Launched first on Pixel earlier this year, Heads Up is now available through the Digital Wellbeing setting on devices running Android 9 and newer. 

We can’t wait for you to try out all these features. Learn more about each at https://www.android.com/google-features-on-android/fall-2021/.

From the beginning, Android has always been about personalization and allowing you to select the device, service and experience that’s right for you. By providing an open ecosystem that gives you choice, Android has grown to more than 3 billion active devices around the world.

Android 12 builds on everything you love about Android, and focuses on building a deeply personal phone that adapts to you, developing an operating system that is secure by default and private by design, and making all your devices work better together.

Today, we’re releasing the first beta of Android 12, and giving you a look into some of the features that will be available in future releases.

A more personal experience

Android 12 includes the biggest design change in Android’s history. We rethought the entire experience, from the colors to the shapes, light and motion. The result is that Android 12 is more expressive, dynamic and personal than ever before.

Personalization

Starting with Android 12 on Pixel devices, you’ll be able to completely personalize your phone with a custom color palette and redesigned widgets. Using what we call color extraction, you choose your wallpaper, and the system automatically determines which colors are dominant, which ones are complementary and which ones just look great. It then applies those colors across the entire OS: the notification shade, the lock screen, the volume controls, new widgets and much more.

This work is being done in deep collaboration between our software, hardware and Material Design teams. We’re unifying our software and hardware ecosystems under a single design language called Material You.

Fluid motion and animations

From the moment you pick up an Android 12 device, you’ll feel how it comes alive with every tap, swipe and scroll. Your phone quickly responds to your touch with smooth motion and animations. For example, when you dismiss your notifications on the lock screen, your clock will appear larger so you know when you’re all caught up.

We’ve also simplified interactions and recrafted the entire underlying system to make your experience more fluid and efficient. Your Android devices are now faster and more responsive with better power efficiency so you can use your device for longer without a charge. This was achieved by some under-the-hood improvements including reducing the CPU time needed for core system services by up to 22% and reducing the use of big cores by the system server by up to 15%.

Redesigned system spaces

Some of the most important spaces on your phone — like your notification shade, quick settings and even the power button — have been purposefully reimagined to help you get things done. 

The notification shade is more intuitive and playful, with a crisp, at-a-glance view of your app notifications, whatever you’re currently listening to or watching, and Quick Settings that let you control practically the entire operating system with a swipe and a tap. The Quick Settings space doesn’t just look and feel different. It’s been rebuilt to include Google Pay and Home Controls, while still allowing for customization so you can have everything you need most in one easy-to-access place.

To make sure you always have help from Google at your fingertips, you can now long press the power button to invoke Assistant to make a phone call, open apps, ask questions or read aloud text-heavy articles.

Private and secure by design

Android 12 includes new features that give you more transparency around which apps are accessing your data, and more controls so you can make informed choices about how much private information your apps can access.

The new Privacy Dashboard offers a single view into your permissions settings as well as what data is being accessed, how often and by which apps. It also lets you easily revoke app permissions right from the dashboard.

We’ve added a new indicator to the top right of your status bar so you know when your apps are accessing your microphone or camera. And if you want to remove app access to these sensors for the entire system, we’ve added two new toggles in Quick Settings.

We’re also giving you more control over how much information you share with apps. With new approximate location permissions, apps can be limited to seeing just your approximate location instead of a precise one. For example, weather apps don’t need your precise location to offer an accurate forecast. 

Beyond these new privacy features in Android 12, we’re also building privacy protections directly into the OS. There are more opportunities than ever to use AI to create helpful new features, but these features need to be paired with powerful privacy. That’s why in this release we’re introducing Android Private Compute Core. It allows us to introduce new technologies that are private by design, allowing us to keep your personal information safe, private and local to your phone. 

Private Compute Core enables features like Live Caption, Now Playing and Smart Reply. All the audio and language processing happens on-device, isolated from the network to preserve your privacy. Like the rest of Android, the protections in Private Compute Core are open source and fully inspectable and verifiable by the security community. 

There are more features coming later this year, and we’ll continue to push the boundaries and find ways to maintain the highest standards of privacy, security and safety.

Try these features and more

Android 12 is packed with other useful experiences, like improved accessibility features for people with impaired vision, scrolling screenshots, conversation widgets that bring your favorite people to the home screen and ways for all your devices to work better together. We’re also delivering on our promise to make third-party app stores easier to use on Android 12. You can find many of these features today in Android 12 Beta, available on Pixel and other devices.

In a year when most of our relationships happen at a distance, digital communication can play a role in keeping us connected. When my brother shares pictures of his new puppy (when will I ever get to meet her?), Heart Eyes 😍 falls short of conveying just how cute she is. And not a day goes by when someone doesn’t send me a meme—and sometimes they’re so on point that Tears of Joy 😂 just won’t cut it as a response.

Since we introduced Emoji Kitchen earlier this year with a few hundred emoji combinations, people have shared more than 3 billion stickers to express the range of emotions they’ve felt in 2020. With today’s update, we’re expanding to more than 14,000 combinations and improving the mixing experience so you can convey your feelings in more ways.

When we first launched, tapping on an emoji yielded a curated selection of designs to express yourself with a little extra zhuzh. Now you have more control and can pick two of any smileys (and then some!) to create a wider array of expressions. Combine Earth 🌍 with Face with Medical Mask 😷 to convey the state of the world, or Fire 🔥 with Smiling Face with Sunglasses 😎  for when ‘this is fine’.

Other times, one heart ❤️ isn’t enough so you throw in a few extra hearts to convey the depth of your affection ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️. You can now amplify the sentiment with Emoji Kitchen when the occasion arises. Just double tap thinking face 🤔 and get a very introspective thinker. Or double tap rolling on the floor laughing 🤣 and your emoji will be falling apart at the seams.

The new Emoji Kitchen is available in Gboard beta today, and coming to all Gboard users in the coming weeks. We can’t wait to see what you make!

Anyone else been glued to their tablet lately? You’re not alone. People around the world are spending 70 percent more time on their Android tablets since the beginning of the year, and in the U.S., Samsung, Lenovo and Walmart (Onn) tablet purchases have been up 30 percent. If you’re looking to get into the tablet game (or if you’re already right here with us), here are five ways you can make the most of your Android tablet: 

1. Up your productivity game

Tablets can help boost your productivity in your work-from-home routine. Because Android supports multi-window and split-screen modes, you can use up to three apps at once on the large tablet screen on devices like the Galaxy Tab S7 and S7+.  

Say you’re planning a virtual holiday party—you can browse for party ideas on Chrome, watch baking videos on YouTube and set up a Calendar invite for party attendees all at the same time. If you’re feeling creative, use a stylus to plan out your holiday decorations in a popular drawing app like Tayasui Sketches, or check out Clip Studio Paint on Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 and S7+ (it’ll be available to all Android and Chrome OS users in mid-December).

2. Watch holiday classics, or find something new

Wrapped in a blanket with your favorite holiday beverage in hand, your Android tablet is the perfect screen for enjoying TV and movies. Your tablet’s Google TV app can help you easily find and watch classic holiday movies or catch up on your favorite shows from across your streaming apps. If you want to save it for later or watch with family and friends on the TV (via Chromecast with Google TV), add titles to your Watchlist. Your purchased shows and movies will always be available in your Library tab. 

3. Choose from one million tablet-ready apps on the Play Store

Apps and games are what makes your tablet so useful and fun. Once you’ve unboxed your new Android tablet, you can browse the Play Store and choose from more than one million apps for tablets, with more coming every day. With higher resolution and larger screens, your favorite shows and games will look and play better on a tablet. Whether it’s staying in touch with your friends on Facebook or trying to find the impostor in Among Us, your new Android tablet has what you need to stay connected, entertained and productive.

4. Browse enriching content for kids

To find the right apps for your kids, head to the Kids tab on Google Play, which features high-quality “Teacher approved” apps for kids, or Google Kids Space, which recommends quality content based on interests kids choose. Kids Space nurtures kids’ curiosity, with a library of teacher-approved apps and handpicked books from Google Play, and videos that spark creativity and offline play from YouTube Kids. Kids Space is available on select Android tablets including the new Lenovo Smart Tab M10 HD Gen 2, and will be coming to more models soon. And with the Family Link app, you’ll always be able to manage your kid’s experiences, from setting screen time limits to content safety filters, privacy controls and more. 

5. Stay connected even while social distancing

When you’re social distancing, there are still great ways to keep in touch that go beyond the standard phone call. With features like Family mode, AR effects and screen sharing, Google Duo offers simple and reliable video calling. Since the beginning of March, call minutes on Duo almost doubled on tablet devices. That virtual holiday party you’re planning? It will be full of good cheer with Duo, which lets you video chat up to 32 friends at a time.