Google has spent most of the last year redesigning its lineup of Android apps ahead of the debut of Material You. Android 13 may not support all the new design language but that does not mean that the company is allowing its apps languish with last year’s look. Google Contacts was one of the first apps to get Material You-style design.
With the latest update to Google Contacts, this new user interface change applies directly to every person stored with your account. The new look removes old school lines separating the categories of information, now dividing everything up with various different cards matching your Material You theme. It just a small change but it is noticeable once you stumble on it. Most of the category names which include Labels and About, have carried over from previous designs. Phone numbers as well as email addresses now appear in a category of their own: Contact info. it has not change anything about how the apps will work though it looks a bit more unified with the rest of the layout. Contacts have been positioned in center below icons or profile pictures.

Nest Hub devices got an update last summer that has added a local air quality rating to the home screen, next to weather. Now after just few weeks ahead of summer 2022, Google added similar feature to Maps: a map of the air quality ratings in your area which is accessible from layer menu.
Google announced the change about an year ago and the air quality ratings range from zero ro 400+, with lower numbers being better. In order to view the ratings in Google Maps app you are required to tap the layers icon located near the top right corner and after that select the Air Quality under Map details. The data comes from the government agencies like EPA, Purple Air and Google says. It adds a Maps layer that shows live weather data were intended to launch in near future. It seems like Google is a bit late and you will see the weather layer in near future.

Google rolled out a workaround for the way iPhones handle message reactions sent to Android phones earlier this year, Its Message app interprets the reactions as emojis rather than text thus saving the space on screen as well as making for a smoother experience. Inspired by the approach of Google, iOS 16 is making similar change to the group texts. The conversations that include Android phones still don’t have full access to iMessage features which include an Android user in group text will no longer cause so-called Tapback spam.
In iMessage, iPhone users are able to tap the messages that they have received to react to them with little icons, thumbs up, thumbs down, a bubble that says Ha Ha and various others. Apple has named these reactions Tapbacks. When an iPhone user tries to send a Tapback to someone who is not using an iPhone that person will get a discrete text that says something like “Andre liked [message text]. Google Messages now translates those texts into in-line emoji reactions.

Dark Sky a very famous weather app was acquired by Apple with the consequence that its Android version will not function anymore. While the iOS version still lives on, it is also due to be sunsetted by the end of 2022. At WWDC 2022 we are finally getting to learn that what else Apple has been up to with Dark Sky’s resources all the time. And the good news is that the forecast looks like it has now included Android support once again i.e.WeatherKit.
WeatherKit is not an app itself, it is an API that can replace Dark Sky API Apple has deprecated and it is planning to kill off completely by next year. WeatherKit is not just only for iOS apps and it can also be used by web as well as Android apps. Apple won’t be launching Weather app for Android itself, a developer can use WeatherKit API to add Apple-sourced weather information to their Android apps. It allows you to have everything you want about the Dark Sky on your Android phone once again. WeatherKit needs iOS 16 so we can expect to see more after Apple’s betas gets started.

WhatsApp lets its users to delete the messages safely both which are both present in their chats and the ones sent to others. You can just imagine the horror feeling that would descend if you send something inappropriate to a group accidentally only to press the “delete for me option instead of delete for everyone. this might become a concern of past as WhatsApp has plans to introduce deleted message retrieval tool.
It is considered as a very handy feature where when a user taps on “delete for me” option, WhatsApp displays a pop-up at the bottom of the screen asking if one wishes to undo it. Like other messaging services like Telegram, users will have some time to recover the chat which they can keep or instead “delete for everyone”. It is not just only feature which WhatsApp is working on it. The company is looking to increase file sharing limit to 2GB, from previous 100MB limit. WhatsApp has also made giant leaps in recent times as they are working on introducing features like editing sent chats and the option to save disappearing conversations.

Password sharing for subscription streaming services is very common all over the globe. Netflix used to act very fine about it and the company is clearly having some second thoughts as it has been learned about the plans to start the testing crackdown on this practice in some markets. The plan is for Netflix to convert the freeloaders to their own subscriptions or at least charge a fee for non-household sub accounts if they continue to share.
Dozens of Netflix users were interviewed in Peru and the result of this test is not up to the expectations of Netflix. Here, sub accounts cost an extra 8 soles or $2 on top of the existing 24.90 soles subscription. For some of the users the introduction of this policy and the price increase that paying for sub accounts would entail has caused them to call off their subscriptions completely.

Google has been working on a Pixel-branded Android tablet which will be released next year. It will run on Android for sure but other details are still not clear. There were talks about smart phone focus but whether it was going to be predominant was doubtful.
Now Google joined Universal Stylus Initiative 4 years ago which has come out with two specifications on how active styluses should be designed and are to behave. Version 2.0 was released on the last day of February with the headline enhancement being the use of NFC to charge a stylus wirelessly. Pixel products serve dual purposes as the consumer-facing hardware brand of Google and as a developer workhorse for all the things Android. For the app developers, specifications are all the rage son this may give eager beavers an early advantage.