Latest news with #DamienWilde
Android Authority
17-07-2025
- Android Authority
Bluetooth pairing sucks on most Google TV devices, but Google wants to change that
Damien Wilde / Android Authority TL;DR Google's Fast Pair, meant to simplify Bluetooth pairing, is still not widely available on Google TV devices a year after its initial rollout. Despite a prior announcement suggesting a broad release, the feature is currently only supported on four devices, including the Chromecast models. Device makers must choose to enable Fast Pair on their TVs, and Google says it's working with partners to bring the feature to more devices. Pairing a new Bluetooth accessory with your phone can feel slow and clunky, but imagine doing it on a TV using just a remote. You have to put your Bluetooth device in pairing mode, open your TV's settings menu, navigate to the Bluetooth page, scan for nearby devices, select your accessory, and finally confirm the pairing request. To make this process less of a hassle, Google brought its Fast Pair service to TVs in 2024. Unfortunately, a year later, Fast Pair is still not widely available on Google TV devices, leaving most users stuck with the old tedious pairing process. Fast Pair simplifies the process of connecting Bluetooth devices like speakers, earbuds, headphones, and controllers to your phone, tablet, or laptop. When a Fast Pair-enabled accessory enters pairing mode, a pop-up appears on nearby compatible devices. This pop-up lets you connect the accessory with a single tap, saving you from having to dig through Bluetooth settings. Google first introduced Fast Pair for Android phones and tablets back in 2017. In January 2022, the company announced plans to expand the feature to Chromebooks in the 'coming weeks' and to Google TV and Android TV OS devices in the 'coming months.' However, these timelines proved to be optimistic. Fast Pair didn't actually begin rolling out to Chrome OS until March 2023, over a year later. The wait for Google TV was even longer, with the feature finally making its first appearance in February 2024 — a full two years after the initial announcement. To add to the confusion, the official 'Made by Google' account posted on X in March 2024 that Fast Pair was rolling out to all Google TV devices running Android 12 or newer. As we later discovered, however, this wasn't actually the case. A few weeks ago, I spotted a feature flag named — a flag I believed is exclusive to devices with Fast Pair support. When I searched the Google Play Console for devices declaring this feature, only four appeared: the two Chromecast with Google TV models (HD and 4K), the Google TV Streamer, and the Onn 4K Plus. Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority Given Google's prior statement, I was puzzled by the fact that only four devices were listed, so to confirm my findings, I reached out to Google. A company spokesperson verified this list is accurate, adding that any OEM can choose to enable Fast Pair and that Google is actively working with partners to bring the feature to more devices. It's unclear why OEMs must specifically add support for Fast Pair on Google TV, especially since it's part of Google Play Services and was rolled out widely on mobile and Chrome OS without needing device-specific support. Perhaps it has something to do with the quirky nature of the Bluetooth protocol. Whatever the case, it's encouraging that Google is working to expand this capability. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
Android Authority
15-07-2025
- Android Authority
Here's why you can't rate that system app in the Google Play Store
Damien Wilde / Android Authority TL;DR Earlier this year, Google started working to implement minimalistic app listings for system services in the Play Store. These listings do not include a review section nor allow users to rate the apps. Users are now starting to see this new format for system services roll out widely. Should all app listings be created the same? At first glance, it might make sense to expect all app listings in the Play Store to have the same stuff: description, screenshots, device compatibility, and a place to submit and read reviews. Back at the start of the year, though, we started to become aware of a change Google was working on that would seriously pare down the content available in Play Store listings for some apps, resulting in a minimalistic app listing just containing a basic synopsis. And now it finally looks like this new view is starting to roll out widely. Not all apps are built equally, and the ones we first saw associated with this minimal new Play Store layout were all Android system services — the sort of things the vast majority of users will never have to think twice about, let alone try to pull them up on the Play Store. At the time, we speculated that Google's reasoning for this change might involve wanting to limit the ability of users to take out their frustrations with undesirable system behavior by review-bombing these apps. A few months later, we spotted Google preparing a new list of 'System services' apps within Play Services that appeared to feature the very same apps we saw trying on that new Play Store listing look. Now in July, that list is finally starting to roll out. As if heralded by that release, we've started to receive reports from users who are now seeing the new listing format live on their devices. Odds are, you won't stumble across any of these naturally — these aren't the kind of apps most people go looking for in the first place, and they won't even show up in a regular search. But if you're browsing installed apps on your phone and tap through out of curiosity — well, now you've got no excuse for being surprised. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
Android Authority
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Android Authority
EmojiTracker returns to former glory to track the most popular emoji around
Damien Wilde / Android Authority TL;DR EmojiTracker was built to gather usage statistics of emoji. API changes following Twitter's sale in 2023 broke the site's old functionality. Emojipedia has now managed to get things running again with new user-sourced data, and support for the latest emoji. It eventually happens to all of us: One day you're merrily texting away, peppering your messages with a healthy serving of emoji, and then you stumble across some news in your feed — Your Favorite Emoji Are Now No Longer Cool! Are you so out of touch? (No, it's the children who are wrong.) Well, if you want to stave off that day, we've got just the trick, with the return of the new-and-improved EmojiTracker. World Emoji Day is coming up a little later this week, on July 17, and to kick things off early, Emojipedia just announced that it's launched an overhaul of EmojiTracker, now featuring real-time updates of usage around the globe. EmojiTracker got started over a decade ago, generating usage statistics based on social media to offer a ranking of every emoji by popularity. That worked fine for years, but when Twitter became X back in 2023, new API restrictions essentially killed that version of the site. In order to get around that obstacle, Emojipedia now relies on usage data provided by its own users. Additionally, the tracker's been updated to support the full set of 3,790 emoji define up through Unicode 16.0. While we imagine that most people are going to be focused on the top few dozen most popular entries, it's still nice to know we can dig down for statistics on even our most esoteric favorites. Over on the EmojiTracker site you can break statistics down by region, or take a walk down memory lane and even look at the old, archived Twitter dataset. Emojipedia even teases that 'a hidden feature from the original tracker remains intact for this new incarnation.' If you've worked that secret out, go ahead and spill it down in the comments so the rest of us can give it a try! Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
Android Authority
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Android Authority
YouTube is killing its Trending page a decade after its debut
Damien Wilde / Android Authority TL;DR YouTube is sunsetting its Trending page a decade after its launch. The company has urged users to rely on personalized recommendations and YouTube Charts to discover trending content. The Trending page and Trending Now list will be removed across all platforms on July 21. YouTube is pulling the plug on its Trending page, about a decade after its debut. The page and the Trending Now list will be removed across all platforms later this month, and the company is directing users to its category-based YouTube Charts to discover trending videos. YouTube announced the change in a recent post on its community forums, attributing the decision to a steady decline in traffic to the Trending page over the past five years. The company noted that users today discover trends in different places across the platform, including recommendations, search suggestions, Shorts, comments, and Communities. Therefore, it's 'shifting away from one all-encompassing Trending list towards category-specific charts.' YouTube Charts currently offers charts listing the most popular content for a few categories, including music videos, podcasts, and movie trailers. YouTube plans to add more categories over time. In the meantime, it urges viewers to rely on personalized recommendations or head to the Gaming Explore page to discover trending gaming videos. Viewers can also continue browsing content that isn't personalized in the Explore menu, on creator channels, and in their subscription feed. YouTube has also urged creators who rely on the Trending page to research video ideas to use the Inspiration tab in YouTube Studio. This tab offers personalized video ideas based on what's popular with the creator's audience. The support page for YouTube's Trending feature notes that the page will be removed on July 21, 2025. As of now, YouTube hasn't revealed what new chart categories are in development or when they'll be made available to users. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
Android Authority
01-07-2025
- Android Authority
Samsung's One UI 8 Watch update is so good, I might give up on the Pixel Watch
Ryan Haines / Android Authority One UI 8 beta is already rolling out to Galaxy Watches, and I'm equally annoyed by and in awe of it. The reason is that I was a Galaxy Watch 4 user back in 2021, but I migrated to Google's wearable when the first Pixel Watch launched. My decision was mostly guided by my desire to stay within Fitbit's ecosystem, which had many years of my personal activity and health data. Since then, I've had the first, second, and third Pixel Watch, and I thought that this year, I'd upgrade to the Pixel Watch 4. Except that One UI 8 has so many nice features that it's making me second-guess this decision. Would you switch from the Pixel Watch to the Galaxy Watch? 0 votes Yes, already did that. NaN % I'm actually considering it now. NaN % Not now, but if there's enough to tempt me away. NaN % No, I'm sticking with the Pixel Watch. NaN % I really want One UI 8's hand gestures Damien Wilde / Android Authority Back in the Android Wear days, Google had rolled out support for hand gestures on its watch OS. At the time, I found the feature a bit gimmicky, but I slowly grew fond of it. For me, it was the one-handedness of it that made such a significant impact. Instead of having to wait until both of my hands were free to be able to interact with my watch and check or dismiss a notification, for example, I could simply flick my wrist. Scrolling up and down was also possible. It's been years since Google removed that handy (ha!) feature, and I still catch myself flicking my wrist and trying to interact with my Pixel Watch. Most times, it's even easier for me to get my phone out of my pocket to do something only because I can use my phone with one hand, whereas watch interactions lock both of my hands together. I still miss Android Wear's hand-flick gesture. It was a convenient way to navigate my watch with one hand. Samsung has been offering hand gestures on its Galaxy Watches for years now, but One UI 8 takes this to the next level. The double-pinch gesture has been taken to the next level with custom actions on the watch face, music controller, as well as alarm, calendar, and reminder notifications. That appeals to me so much. It'd allow me to do exactly what I want in each situation, like pause or skip music, dismiss or snooze alarms, and act on notifications. I'm sure Samsung will keep on improving these gestures and adding more customization to them. I'd love it if I could pause tracking my hike or swim, for example, with a double pinch, then resume it with another. I'd love it even more if the double-pinch gesture was open to third-party devs to allow us to control each app however we want. But even in their current state, hand gestures on Galaxy Watches seem so practical to me in everyday use, and for that alone, I'm so tempted to ditch my Pixel Watch and move over. Combining two apps in one tile is a big space and time saver Ryan Haines / Android Authority A smartwatch should save me time and be more practical to use and access than my phone. At least, that's what I think. Yet, most of the time, doing something on my Pixel Watch requires more swipes and taps than getting my phone out, so I end up avoiding using it. One of those time wasters are tiles. On paper, it's a good idea to take out the most essential part of an app and create a widget-like tile out of it that remains accessible from the watch's main home screen. In reality, though, once there's more than four or five tiles, they become less efficient than opening the actual app. Swiping aimlessly through 10 tiles, for example, is a huge time waster for me. The more tiles I have, the less I use them. I don't want to swipe multiple times to get to the one I want. With One UI 8, Samsung is improving the concept of tiles by letting us create them from scratch. The best part is that you can mix and match two small tiles from two different apps into one big tile, thus reducing the time it takes to swipe across them. I love it! It would allow me to use more tiles on fewer screens and with fewer swipes, all while keeping the most essential information or icons that I care about. For example, instead of having five favorite contacts, I could have my husband and my mom; and instead of having actions to quick-start six sports tracking activities, I could only keep swimming, walking, and hiking, i.e. the ones I care about the most. That's more than enough for me, and it would let me use tiles more often and more efficiently. Now Bar or Live Updates would be a game-changer on a watch Rita El Khoury / Android Authority Google already has an At A Glance complication, but I never use it because it takes up too much space away from my main watch face without providing enough value most of the time. I would much rather have this info surfaced right when I need it, which is the exact concept of Samsung's Now Bar. It first started on the Galaxy S25 series and now the Now Bar is coming to Galaxy Watches. With it, Samsung will have a way to surface timely info on your wrist, without cannibalizing your watch's main display all day long. The bar is even customizable between a simple icon or a small horizontal bar, expandable, and should with time gain even more capabilities, especially with the arrival of Android 16's proper support for live updates. Timely and context-aware live updates on a smartwatch make so much sense. Why did we wait this long to have them? I imagine seeing the progress of my Uber or food delivery right there on my watch's face, without having to unlock or swipe or tap or do anything. In everyday life, it'd also be super handy to see elapsed time on timers or the progression of my subway journey and next stop. That's the kind of convenient and functional updates a smartwatch is made for, but sadly, until now, almost all of these haven't been seamless and have required some form of interaction with the watch. Now Bar should fix that main sore point. All of this to say that Samsung is doing a kick-ass job with One UI 8 for watches, and that I'm seriously considering ditching my Pixel Watch 4 dreams and joining the Galaxy Watch camp. The only hiccup is Fitbit — I have a Galaxy Ring and I'm not a fan of Samsung Health. Besides that, though, Samsung is hitting every right note and adding all the practical features that I dream of having on Wear OS 6 to make my smartwatch smarter, more useful, and more convenient in my everyday life. I have a tough decision to make in the next couple of months.
