In this week’s top stories: The Material You redesign is starting to appear in the Play Store on tablets and Chromebooks, Pixel’s At a Glance is preparing a ride-sharing ETA, we’re using the hands-on One UI 5 based on Samsung’s Android 13, and more.
Ahead of the broader overhaul announced at Google I/O, the Play Store got the first few improvements to Material You on Chromebooks and Android tablets this week. Specifically, the search bar has been redesigned and the highlight color now uses Material You dynamic colors when available.
Material You is not yet used anywhere else in the app. Looking ahead, users can expect a compact navigation bar and main channels that display more than just wider carousels. Instead, side-by-side cards will be used. It’s funny how the look is somewhat different from the recently redesigned site.
Throughout this year, Google has been steadily expanding the At and Glance widget capabilities of the Pixel line. Another addition noticed by our APK Insight team will be showing the estimated time of arrival when your shared ride (Uber or Lyft) will arrive.
Earlier this week, we revealed a “Cross-Device Timer” feature for At a Glance, which would show what was set on your smart displays and Assistant speakers. Google has also been working on displaying food delivery information on your lock and home screen since April.
As the official release of Android 13 approaches, some have wondered how Samsung will use it to improve the look of One UI. This week our Max Weinbach got to work with One UI 5 and was able to see design improvements and new features like copying text from Gallery images.
To give some context, this build was provided by a source and is not a build that Samsung has released, so due to its original nature, it may not give the full picture of One UI 5. This is an early beta version, which unfortunately does not have a changelog, so everything new below is from using One UI 5 and comparing it to One UI 4.
With the latest version of Nest cameras, Google now requires you to use the Google Home app to view and manage them. But as our own Ben Schoon points out, Google has done very little to really make Google Home a viable replacement for the classic Nest app.
As I write this post, I can’t view the 6am footage from my Nest Camera with Floodlight without spending five minutes scrolling back and forth to finally get it to load, but I can easily from my older Nest Hello camera from the doorbell. Both are connected to power and both have the same Nest Aware plan with continuous recording. The only difference is in the Home app grapes recording history processing.
In Pixel news, Google has launched a new trio of “Curated Culture” wallpapers for the Pixel 3 and later phones. These wallpapers depict one part of a larger artwork, depicting three adorable frogs with sparkling eyes holding hands.
From the Google Weather app for Android to the Nest Hub clock face, the company has a strong affinity for frogs. Canonically, it’s probably not the Froggy – official name – we already know and love, but it’s still great.
The rest of this week’s top news follows:
Android |
Apps and Updates |
Made by Google |
Samsung |
Videos |
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