Windows Phone 8.1 may still be dancing through our thoughts, but there’s plenty of other non-Microsoft motion still happening today on the smartphone scene. Wednesdays are when we typically look for Google to release updates for an Android app or two, and the company does not fail to disappoint this week. Let’s take a look at what’s headed out to Android users today:
First up, we’ve got an update for Google Keep, bringing the note-taking app a slightly tweaked UI; the changes serve to help bring Keep in line with the latest design language Google’s been using across its various Android offerings. You’ll also find new settings to help you with organization within the app, a trash bin to act as a buffer for notes you don’t necessarily want gone for good just yet, and the ability to search images for text within.
Then there’s Play Movies, which also gets some polish to its interface. Video navigation is improved with new swipe controls; you can still navigate directly on the seek bar for bigger movements, or swipe right on the video for quick ten-second jumps. The app can now display app synopses for TV content, there are a few adjustments to closed captioning, and support for users juggling multiple Google accounts arrives.
Updates to both apps are on their way out now; look for them to hit your phone or tablet in the days to come.
Our third Google app update of the day is Google Play Newsstand, and again we're looking at light changes with a few new features that'll grab the interest of those who regularly use the app. Content discovery is a big deal for an app like this, and the most notable interface change is a new set of tabs in the "Read now" section with quick access to sections of content — like highlights, news, business, entertainment and sports —that you add all in one place. You can tap on each or swipe between them to check out all of the news in that category, and each one has its own color coordination that takes over the display to indicate you've switched.
The slide-in navigation drawer has also been refreshed, combining both "My News" and "My Magazines" into a single "My Library" (which makes sense). Curiously, the manual setting to choose whether or not to pre-download and keep the "Read Now" section on your device is gone — it isn't clear if this will happen automatically now or if everything will be downloaded when you view it by default.
Version 3.2.0 of Google Play Newsstand should be hitting devices now, and you can check for the latest version at the Google Play Store link at the top of this post
The Google app updates we just shared with you above – those for Keep, Play Movies, and Newsstand – are already on their way to users’ phones. But there’s one more update we’ve heard people talking about today that isn’t quite ready for prime time, and its changes aren’t yet set in stone, still the stuff of rumors. Although that puts us in a slightly less-than-enviable position for talking about it, it’s such a major component to how many Android users get things done on their smartphones that it’s worth giving an early look: it seems like Google’s been hard at work cooking up a new version of Gmail.
One big change appears to be the introduction of a number of additional categories for email. Instead of just grouping messages based on stemming from social sites, forums, or being promotional messages, the updated Gmail adds new categories for travel, finance, and purchases. You can already star an email in order to mark it for your attention, but unless you’re filtering to just view those starred messages, they can easily get lost in your inbox. To give you an easier way to make mails stand out, Gmail looks like it’s adding a pinning feature, keeping pinned messages up at the top.
Finally, we hear about “snoozing” emails. Snoozing is basically a time-delayed mark-as-unread feature. If you open an email but don’t want to deal with it until a little while later, you can “snooze” the message for a set period of time, after which it will reappear as unread and move back up to the top of your inbox.
There’s no telling which of these features might make it to a public Gmail release – and it certainly sounds like Google is still playing around with them – but you may very well end up seeing a lot of this arrive as new Gmail updates roll out in the weeks and months to come.
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