Google

When Apple Music first launched in 2015, playing it on anything other than an Apple device was impossible. Thankfully though, over the years Apple has made its streaming service available to access through third-party devices and speakers, including Amazon Echo and Google-owned speakers. This article focuses on Google devices. If you have a Google Home mini or a newer Nest-branded smart...

Google includes a Live Captions transcription feature in version 89 of its Chrome browser for desktop. Live Captions uses machine learning to create a real-time transcription for videos or audio played through the browser, which can make online media more accessible for members of the Deaf community and other people with hearing loss. Once enabled, Live Captions appear in a box in the bottom ...

If you buy a new iPhone to replace your existing one and you use the Google Authenticator app to access online accounts protected by two-factor authentication (2FA), you should transfer those accounts to your new phone as soon as possible, because without the 2FA codes close at hand, you could find yourself locked out of your online accounts. 2FA adds an extra layer of security to your...

Google Lens can now recognize over a billion items in the world around us, the search engine giant announced this week. That's four times as many things that the AI-powered feature could identify when it was first launched last year, thanks partly to a huge number of Google Shopping products which have been added to its knowledge base. While its optical character recognition engine has...

In Chrome 66, rolling out now for Mac and iOS, Google has added a password export option to the web browser so that you can easily migrate your login details to another browser via a third-party password manager app. In this article, we'll show you how to export your passwords from Chrome on Mac and iOS. At the end of the process, you'll be left with a CSV file containing all your login...

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission watchdog is eyeing a potential probe into pre-installed software and pre-defined "default" choices on mobile devices, including Google being set as the default search engine on Apple devices. In a press release (via ZDNet), the agency is asking for consumer and industry feedback on the state of default settings, pre-installed web browsers,...

Apple this week introduced a new service that's designed to make it quick and easy for iCloud users to transfer their stored photos and videos to Google Photos. As outlined in an Apple support document, you can go to Apple's privacy website and sign in to see the "Transfer a copy of your data" option. If you select this and go through all the steps, Apple will transfer your ‌iCloud‌ photos...

After neglecting the app for several months, Google today finally updated Gmail on the App Store for the first time in exactly three months. Today's update, version 6.0.210124, says it includes "Bug fixes and performance improvements," but it is a notable update given it's the first one the app has seen in months. Alongside Gmail, Google Meet, Google Sheets, Google Docs, Google Calander,...

Google today quietly added App Privacy labels to its Gmail app, marking the first of its major apps to receive the privacy details aside from YouTube. Though App Privacy information has been added to Gmail, Google has done so server side and has yet to issue an update to the Gmail app. It has been two months since the Gmail app last saw an update. Earlier in February, the Gmail app was...

Google today announced that the Apple TV app has launched on the $50 Chromecast with Google TV, which is the latest version of the Chromecast dongle. Google said in December that the ‌Apple TV‌ app would be coming to Chromecast early in 2021, with the app set to expand to other Android TV devices in the future. Is this really happening? Are you really here?The @AppleTV app has finally ...

Google today finally updated its YouTube iOS app for the first time in over two months, becoming one of the highest-profile Google apps to see an update since early December when Apple began requiring that developers disclose privacy practices for each of their apps in order to have their updates approved. Most of Google's apps have yet to be updated since the requirement went into effect,...

Google is testing a new feature for its Google Chrome app for iOS, which will let Incognito tabs be locked with either Face ID or Touch ID on an iPhone or iPad. As highlighted by 9to5Google, the latest Chrome beta will blur Incognito tabs in the Chrome app until confirmed with the ‌iPhone‌'s biometric authentication. The feature can be enabled by going to Settings > Privacy > Lock...

Google has rolled out a suite of new video editing features for Google Photos on iOS that adds granular controls for editing things such as brightness, contrast, and exposure. In addition to the fine-tune controls, users will now have the ability to crop, change the perspective, and add filters to videos directly within the app. In September, Google announced a redesigned editor for Google ...

Google is testing a dark mode for its desktop search website that responds to a user's system display setting, a move that may have gained traction to alleviate eye strain issues for people working longer hours from home. Images via The Verge The test appears to have limited rollout at the moment, but as the images show, the very dark gray theme extends not only to the Google homepage but...

Starting with iOS and iPadOS 14.5, Apple will proxy Google's "Safe Browsing" service used in Safari through its own servers instead of relying on Google as a way to limit which personal data Google sees about users. Safari on iOS and iPadOS includes a built-in feature called "Fraudulent Website Warning." As Apple describes it, having the feature enabled will prompt Safari to warn users if...

Though Google has promised to update its suite of apps with App Privacy labels to comply with App Store rules that Apple began enforcing in December, many of its major apps have gone months without an update and still list no privacy information. It's been so long since Google last updated the Gmail app, in fact, that Gmail now displays a warning that the latest security features are...

Google today announced that "Google News Showcase," a new style of displaying the news within the Google and Google News mobile apps and website, has launched in the UK and Argentina, following an Australian rollout last week. Google says News Showcase offers participating publishers the chance to provide more context for stories such as through bullet points and timelines, and it has plans...

Google is expected to unveil the next-generation version of Android, Android 12, in just a few weeks. Ahead of the software's debut, XDA Developers has shared some leaked screenshots that give us an idea of what we can expect from the new software. According to XDA Developers, the screenshots are sourced from an "early draft of a document made to summarize changes in Android 12," and those...

Google today announced that it will be expanding Google Fi's built-in VPN service to the iPhone starting this spring, providing iOS users with another option to ensure that their connection is secure and private on a cellular or Wi-Fi network. Google also said the VPN is exiting beta for Android smartphone users. With the VPN, users can stream, browse, and download on an encrypted, private...

Google has released Chrome version 88.0.4324.150 with an important fix for a zero-day vulnerability in the web browser that the company says is likely to have been exploited in the wild. Google hasn't provided specific details about the heap buffer overflow memory corruption bug known as CVE-2021-21148, and says it won't do so "until a majority of users are updated with a fix." However, ZDNe...

Starting with iOS 14.5, iPadOS 14.5, and tvOS 14.5, all of which are currently in beta testing, Apple will be requiring developers to receive a user's consent to track their activity across other apps and websites and/or access their device's random advertising identifier. Users will be presented with a prompt with options to "Allow Tracking" or "Ask App not to Track" when opening apps that wish...

Apple will soon require iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV app developers to request permission from users to collect their random advertising identifier (known as the "Identifier for Advertisers" or "IDFA"), which advertisers use to deliver personalized ads and track how effective their ad campaigns were. Specifically, users will be presented with a prompt to allow or deny tracking as necessary when...

New universal chat app "Beeper" combines 15 different chat platforms into a single inbox and offers iMessage on Android and Windows (via The Verge). The app comes from a team including former Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky, and enables users to integrate a range of messaging services, including WhatsApp, SMS, Signal, Telegram, Slack, Twitter, Skype, Hangouts, Discord, Instagram, and Facebook...

As of December 8, Apple has been requiring developers submitting new apps and app updates to provide privacy label information that outlines the data that each app collects from users when it is installed. Many app developers, such as Facebook, have complied and now include the privacy labels alongside their apps, but there's one notable outlier -- Google. Google has not updated its major ...

Earlier today, Fast Company shared an article noting that Google has yet to update its iPhone and iPad apps to bring them in line with Apple's new App Store privacy labels requirement. Fast Company speculated that Google might be trying to delay revealing its privacy label data, but it turns out that's not the case. According to a report from TechCrunch, Google is not taking a stand against...