Tag: Microsoft

Microsoft Cortana, the company’s personal assistant, has a major update rolling out for the Android version of the app.  Version 2.9 brings a major revamp of the user experience of the app, improved controls and settings and, frankly, is nearly an entirely new look and feel.

Microsoft has aimed the app to be much more streamlined with an emphasis on users being able to get to content more quickly.  Microsoft is referring to this as being more “hands-on” for things like reminders.  You can now, for example, pin your reminder to the top right corner of the page to make it easier to get to later.  You can also adjust contents, time, date and delete them from your reminders list.

Microsoft continues to tweak and incrementally improve their Android launcher app, Arrow Launcher.  The latest beta of the launcher has hit testers this week and with it comes a handful of refinements.  None of the new features in the version 3.8 build are major changes but collectively, there are a lot of small touches & improvements to the launcher to make it a more personalized experience and visually, more satisfying experience.

On the personalization front, your Microsoft account avatar is now shown in the settings of the launcher.  Linking your Microsoft account to Arrow Launcher has been there for some time but now you will see your avatar and can quickly launch into your account settings from Arrow.

Microsoft has begun rolling out a significantly revamped Bing for Android app to the Play Store.  The update brings a new look with a simplified search experience, a color refresh, and quicker access to specific content in search results.  The update also expands the search results you can get from the app such as searching for GIFs and being able to save them to your favorites.

While most Android users tend to think about Google Search on their devices, Bing remains the number 2 search engine in the United States and for those who are deep into the Microsoft ecosystem, especially Windows 10 users, this update to the Bing app will be a welcome update.

Microsoft To-Do, the daily task manager that was born out of the company’s acquisition of Wunderlist back in 2015, has a new update rolling out that brings a host of improvements.  The update, version 1.8.23 for those keeping score at home, fixes several issues with the task management app but also brings a new Quick add feature to the notification areas of your Android phone.

The new Quick add feature, when enabled, will put a notification for To-Do in the notification area on your phone.  By tapping it, you can quickly create a new task which is added to your list in the app.  All of this can be done without actually opening up the app itself.  By default, this new feature is not enabled.  If you want to enable it, go in the app to the menu, tap your avatar then find the Quick add notification setting in the General settings.  Toggle it on and you are good-to-go.

Microsoft Teams, the company’s Slack-like app for collaboration and messaging, has an update rolling out for both Android and iOS.  The update brings a handful of new features, once of which is expanded support for cloud storage services.  To this point, Teams has only supported OneDrive, Microsoft’s own cloud storage.  With this update, services like Box and Google Drive are now supported for you to share files from within the app.

The updated version for Android is build 1.0.0.2017062601.  The update was release late last week so it should be to everyone by this week.  The update to the Android and iOS apps reflect a similar update to the desktop version of the app released a couple of weeks ago.  Now, across all platforms, you can share from different cloud storage solutions.

Microsoft OneNote for Android has a substantial update rolling out in the Play Store today that brings improved navigation to the note taking app.  The update brings the same panel style navigation between notebooks, sections and pages that are in the Windows, Mac and iOS versions of the app.  It makes navigating much faster and easier as well as being the same on whatever device you happen to be using.

The new build for Android phones is version 16.0 for those keeping score and should be hitting devices with OneNote installed over the course of the next few days.