Google is always working to improve its Android apps and the operating system itself, and relies heavily on public a / b tests that appear on some people’s phones, but not on others. But every now and then, the company takes the time to announce formal functions, and today is still one of those days. Google is officially making quite a few known tests and some brand new changes.
Password control
First up is Password Checkup for Android, a tool that helps you keep your passwords safe by notifying you if your credentials are compromised. As you’d expect, this feature only works when you use Google’s Password Manager (or ‘AutoFill with Google’), and it works on the same technology as the Chrome version of Password Checkup, which was introduced in 2019. against lists of known leaks, and will notify you and ask you to change your password as soon as it matches. Google also makes biometric authentication and password suggestions official for its autofill tool.
You can read more about the new autofill features in our dedicated post on the topic.
Schedule for messages
You may have heard of the ability to schedule texts in Google Messages, as Google only started testing the feature in November 2020. Now that it’s official, we know it’ll finally reach everyone who uses Google Messages on Android 7 or higher. To schedule a message, tap and hold the send button and select a date and time.
Read more about this in our dedicated article.
Dark theme for Google Maps
We’ve been at it for over a year, and today is finally the day: Google officially launches a dark theme for Maps. It launches today and will soon expand to all Android users worldwide. You can turn it on manually in the Maps app settings as soon as it’s available to you, but by default Maps will respect your system theme.
Check out some screenshots and more details in our dedicated article.
Android Auto Update
Custom Wallpapers, Shortcuts and Assistant Games are coming to Android Auto today. We’ve seen the previous two before, but the games can be a fun pastime if you have kids in your car. Only voice activities like trivia and Jeopardy are available when you say, “Hey Google, play a game.” There is also a new privacy screen that allows you to control when your Android Auto appears on your car screen.
Read more about the Android Auto updates in our dedicated post.
Hands-free assistant enhancements
Years ago, you could access almost any (voice-activated) feature you could ask for without unlocking your phone by talking to the Assistant. Google has long since done away with this security nightmare, but for the sake of convenience, it brings back a few options – and they are already alive for most. When you sign up Personal results on the lock screen in the Assistant settings, you can send messages by voice and make calls, all without physically communicating with your phone. Google is also introducing new, larger answer cards that are easier to read if your phone is a few feet away on a table.
You can read more about the hands-free assistant actions in this article.
New TalkBack Version
On the accessibility front, Google is launching a brand new version of Android’s screen reader, TalkBack. It offers those with visual impairments an easier way to navigate on smartphones. The revamp was developed in collaboration with Samsung and blind and poor vision communities. It has more intuitive gestures, a unified menu and new read controls.
Google has added a dozen “easy-to-learn” multi-touch gestures, first available on Pixel phones and Samsung Galaxy devices with one UI 3 and higher. The gestures make it easier to communicate with apps, and help select and edit text, control media, and find help, eliminating the need to jump through multiple menus just to stop music.
Changing the reading controls, for example, becomes easier: you can simply swipe left or right with three fingers to scroll through an entire page, headings, word-for-word or character-for-character only. If you swipe up and right, you can use TalkBack’s new voice commands. The gesture prevents Talkback from speaking, so you can use more than 25 different commands such as ‘find’ to locate text or ‘increase speech’.
Google also reduces the number of menus for the visually impaired, combining them all into one context-aware solution. Google says that some actions “such as link navigation or edit controls will only appear if they are relevant to the current context.”
Finally, there are two new braille keyboards: Arabic and Spanish.
The company has added a tutorial that discusses the changes to make the transition easier, and you can read a Google blog post for a detailed overview of all the new options.
Although we’ve seen most of these features over the last few months, it’s nice to get confirmation from Google that they’re here to stay. As the company a / b tests so many changes, it is difficult to keep track of what makes the cut and what goes into the drawer again. While this is not a decrease in the Pixel feature, we certainly would not mind that Google communicates new features and product updates to the public more frequently that way.