Daily Archives: January 13, 2016

Google+ Android app receiving new update with user-requested fixes

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Even though Google Plus may not be the largest social network on the planet, Google works very hard to keep the service polished and up-to-date. Today, Google is beginning to push out a new update to the Google+ Android app that includes some new tweaks and whole host of user-requested fixes. There’s a fair amount of minor things to cover, so we’ll dive right in.

  • Within the Google+ app, the bottom tab bar will auto-hide itself while you’re scrolling, allowing more visibility of content.
  • If you’re scrolling through the Home stream, you can now switch to different screen within the app and when you come back to your Home stream, it will remember your position.
  • The search bar has been improved, now offering auto-complete suggestions while you’re typing.
  • If you don’t have any communities or collections, the app will now prompt you to add one, further helping new users to explore Google+.
  • 69 bugs have been fixed.
  • 14 accessibility issues have been addressed.

While it’s not a significant overhaul, this new update shows that Google is continuing to listen to customer feedback and is responding in a way that addresses user concerns. The team also reminded customers that it will continue to listen to feedback and push out updates based on it, so keep letting them know what you think should be changed.

The update has begun rolling out today, but it may take a few days to arrive, so sit tight until it arrives for you.

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Google has appointed a dedicated virtual reality head

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Virtual reality is beginning to go mainstream, with more and more people showing a strong interest in upcoming products like the Oculus Rift. Other companies, such as Samsung, HTC and Sony, have all taken the leap into developing their own VR products. One company that has been surprisingly quiet in the field is Google, which hasn’t shown substantial movement away from its extraordinarily simple Google Cardboard VR headset.

As of yesterday, though, it appears that Google is getting serious about virtual reality. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, has moved a key executive, Clay Bavor, into a new role as head of virtual reality at Google. In addition, there is now a dedicated virtual reality office within Google that encompasses the existing Google Cardboard team.

Google’s move to create a VR department is unsurprising, considering that Facebook now owns Oculus and other companies are jumping into VR left and right. Nonetheless, Google could have some work to do if it hopes to catch up with the first wave of VR products hitting the market. While Google has been fairly secretive about its future VR projects, it could have something in the works that could surprise us.

We’ll keep you informed of Google’s future moves with VR.

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Google launcher for Android gets auto-rotation on phones in latest beta

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A new beta version of the Google app for Android is now out, and it has a couple of new features inside. First off, for those who use the Google Now Launcher, it has received support for auto-rotation on phones. The Google Now Launcher currently only auto-rotates on tablets, but if you want it to do the same on your phone, then you should grab this beta version.

Such a feature was present in early Android Marshmallow developer previews, but it mysteriously disappeared when the third one came out – and hasn’t returned until today. To enable auto-rotation you need to go into the settings of the Google Now Launcher and tap on the new option that shows up at the bottom of the list.

Another new thing in this beta release is icon normalization. This basically resizes app icons to make them appear more consistent with one another – so you won’t have a huge icon next to a small one, and so on. Google has some guidelines out for icon sizes, but not all developers adhere to those. Of course, there could be some instances where this auto-resizing doesn’t go very well, but that’s why this has been added to a beta release of the app. Things should improve before the finalized version is shipped to everyone.

If you’re interested in testing the 5.8 beta iteration of the Google app (and understand that bugs are pretty much inevitable in these cases), make sure you head over to the Source link below to download and install it (updating your existing…

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