Tag: Android

A new cloud-side change is rolling out to the Google+ app for Android that brings the same “Delete, Report, and Block” feature that is found on the web site to your mobile.  So long as you have the latest G+ app installed on your phone, you should see this new feature roll out over the course of the next few days.

Google+ has had a spam problem for a long time and the company has continued to try to give administrators of communities and collections the tools needed to deal with it.  The ability to delete a comment, report it and block the user is something that admins have had for a while but with this update, everyone gets it.

The Microsoft To-Do app has a new update rolling out that brings support for hashtags and improved readability of reminders in tasks.  The update is version 1.26.58 for those keeping score at home and has rolled out to the Play Store.  If you have it installed, you should get the OTA update over the course of the next few days.

The big new feature is hashtag support.  Now you can use them in your notes for tasks and can search for those hashtags later.  Think of it as tagging of notes, something that other apps have done for a while now.

Firefox for Android has a new update rolling out that brings several fixes as well as the ability to set it as your default Assistant app.  The new update is version 59 for those keeping score at home and has been released to the Play Store.  If you have the app installed already, you should see the OTA update for it over the course of the next few days.

The big change in this update is the ability to set Firefox for Android as your default Assistant app.  This is done via the Default apps settings on your phone.  For the Pixel devices, thats Settings>Apps & notifications>Default apps>Assist & voice input.  There you can select Firefox to be your default assistant app.  When you do this and you long press your Home button, you will see a search option via Firefox instead of Google Assistant.

Version 3.0 of Android Messages, Google’s SMS app, has started rolling out in the Google Play Store today.  While it doesn’t sport a lot of changes, mostly bug fixes and performance improvements, it does drop support for Android KitKat.

KitKat was released back in October 2013 so dropping support for the now 4 year and a bit year old version is not entirely shocking and it fits with Google upping the minimum supported API level in other apps.  Frankly, at this point nobody should be using KitKat purely from a security perspective.

Google’s efforts to have Google Assistant available on all the things took another step forward yesterday.  The company released an update to the stand alone app, essentially a shortcut to Assistant, for both Android and iOS that expand device availability and functionality.

First, for Android, two big changes came to the Google Assistant app.  It can now run on devices running Android Lollipop which greatly expands the overall number of devices that Assistant can run on.  Second, support for tablets has also arrived on the app.  So instead of the app looking awkwardly huge and only in portrait mode, it now works in landscape and looks like a proper tablet app.  Keep in mind that both of these were actually supported by Assistant last year.  This update to the Assistant stand alone app just adds the support.

After several weeks of beta testing, the Android Oreo 8.1 update for the Essential Phone has been released.  The update, some 1.7GB in size, is available to everyone so you should be able to check for the update and download it.

The update comes after the announcement early this year that the company would be abandoning the 8.0 build of Oreo due to stability issues and would focus on 8.1.  That process, fortunately, did not take long.  In fact, the first beta of Oreo 8.1 for the Essential PH-1 was released just last month.