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...

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...

Last month, Apple introduced a new privacy section in the App Store to inform users about some of the data types that apps may collect, and whether that data is linked to them or used to track them. Developers have been required to provide this info to Apple when submitting new apps and app updates to the App Store since December 8, 2020. Interestingly, Fast Company noticed that Google has...

Apple has teamed up with Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla to block a web browser root certificate that was being used by the Kazakhstan government to surveil its citizens. The certificate allowed authorities to monitor people's online activity by intercepting and decrypting HTTPS traffic from residents in Nur-Sultan, the capital city of Kazakhstan. Local ISPs were required to block foreign...

Google's Stadia cloud gaming service is now available on iOS through a dedicated web app, which means that it is playable on the iPhone and the iPad for the first time. For those unfamiliar with Stadia, it is a gaming platform that lets you play your favorite video games on any device. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. Google was not able to bring Stadia to iOS...

Google today announced that the Apple TV app will be rolling out to the new Chromecast with Google TV dongle starting early next year, and to more devices powered by the Android TV operating system in the future. With the addition of the Apple TV app, Chromecast with Google TV users will be able to access Apple TV+ with a subscription, as well as their library of movie and TV show purchases...

Gmail, YouTube and Google Docs are all experiencing severe outages, with reports of problems accessing the services across much of Europe, the U.S., and India. Google News, Google Translate, Google Ads, Google Domain, Google Cloud Platform Dashboard, and Google My Business are also down. Other services that use Google to log in are similarly affected. It's not clear right now what's...

Google is reportedly testing a dark mode for its desktop web search site, following a trend of introducing darker user interfaces across its mobile apps. Image via 9to5Google Apple introduced Dark Mode in macOS Mojave and iOS 13, and support for the system-wide option is now a staple feature of most third-party apps on both mobile and desktop. For example, Google has added belated support...

Google today announced that Apple Music will begin rolling out today on Google Assistant-enabled smart speakers and displays in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan. This includes the Nest Audio, Nest Hub Max, Nest Mini, and more. To play music from Apple Music on Google Assistant devices, users first need to link their Apple Music account in the Google Home app. It...

Google has updated its 2FA Authenticator app for iOS with a new account transfer feature that makes it much easier to transfer two-factor authentication codes to a new iPhone. 2FA adds an extra layer of security to your online accounts by requiring a randomly generated six-digit code after you've entered your password. Google's app generates codes for your accounts on the fly, but until now...