Google News | En

Google has announced 7 new features for Android phones, tablets and Wear OS watches.

1) Reading practice with PlayBooks — helps new readers improve their vocabulary and comprehension skills via hearing the pronunciation of unknown words, practicing mispronounced words and receiving feedback in real time. Available on thousands of children's e-books with “Practice” badge.

2) New widgets for Google TV and Finance, and revamped widget for Google News.

3) Commuters in Washington, D.C. and the San Francisco Bay Area can now use their Wear OS smartwatch to tap and ride with their SmarTrip and Clipper cards via Google Wallet.

4) New tiles and shortcuts from Spotify for Wear OS. (Podcasts, Heavy rotation and AI DJ);

5) Google Keep for Wear OS can now add a tile for quick access to a selected note or to-do list.

6) New Emoji Kitchen combos with Shark , Dolphin and Whale ;

7) 'Dark web report' is now available for most Google accounts in the US on the Google One website and app.

Google Blog

Google Search app adds a new "Finance watchlist" widget.

When you update to the latest beta of the Google Search app v.14.22.12.29, you will find a new widget that allows you to "follow stocks, indexes and crypto on Google Search to build a watchlist". The widget has a button to manually update the data, as well as a separate settings page.

In the settings you can choose which stocks, indices, etc. will be displayed as the topmost chart in the widget. You can select either a specific option, or the one for which there has been the biggest gain or loss.

You can also choose to sort the watchlist by name, by symbol, by % of change, and each option in ascending or descending order.

The watchlist itself can be changed at google.com/finance.

Google News | En

Hands-on: I finally got this fully working, so here's a full demo of Android 14's new partial screen recording feature.

This feature lets you record a single app without any System UI elements or notifications appearing in the video! A useful feature to have when you need to screen record something to share with others!

(In the app selector dialog, you can swipe up to show the full app list. You can also swipe left or right on the carousel to show more apps from your recents app list.)

EDIT:

If you leave the app you selected to record, then Android will continue screen recording but the content will be black. If you open the app again, the contents will once again be captured in the same recording.

The recording doesn't end unless you swipe down and end it manually.

Android 14 will improve drag-and-drop text and media between apps.

Until now, to drag a text or media file from one app to another, you had to open them in split screen mode. And you couldn't use system navigation while dragging an object.

It looks like Android 14 will refine this point, and you'll be able to grab an object in one app, go back to the homescreen or open the recents overview, open another app and paste that object there without having to go into split-screen mode.

*Yeah, just like iOS*

Google News | En