YouTube Music starts rolling out the ability to swipe on album art to change songs

Compared to its competitors, YouTube Music is still considered a newcomer to the music streaming scene. This isn’t Google’s first rodeo, though, as they’ve previously made Google Play Music. Since Google Play Music is shutting down, the YouTube Music team is working to bring new features to the service, ranging from major changes to minor quality-of-life improvements. Earlier this year, YouTube Music introduced a feature that lets you upload music, they redesigned the player page, rolled out an Explore tab, and much more. Today, some users noticed that a very useful feature has just been added to the Android app.

A Reddit user named /u/AMO124 from the /r/YoutubeMusic subreddit noticed that they could now swipe left or right on the album art to change songs. Previously, this was only possible by pressing the previous and next buttons, which can be difficult to tap if you’re not able to glance directly at your phone. I’ve been following the YouTube Music subreddit for a long time and users have been requesting an album art swiping feature for a long time, so it’s good that Google finally added this basic feature that’s found in dozens of other music players. Apart from the new album art gesture swiping, the player buttons have been slightly updated, too. They now trigger a smooth animation when you’re switching tracks.

Credits: Amadeo Iafelice (/u/AMO124) on Google Photos

The new feature is only available for a small number of users as of now. We all know that Google likes to roll out new features for users in a staggered manner. There is no way to manually enable this feature via a setting or APK update, so all you can do is sit and wait for the server-side update. We recommend that you download the latest version of the YouTube Music app for Android from the Google Play Store link below, though, in case this feature does require the latest version of the app.

YouTube Music - Stream Songs & Music Videos (Free, Google Play) →

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Google will now automatically delete Web & App activity, Location history, and YouTube search history for new users

Whether it’s fair or not, Google has a reputation for collecting a lot of data about people. To its credit, Google has been making improvements in how it lets users control their privacy. Today, CEO Sundar Pichai announced some changes in how the company handles data for new users.

Pichai announced several privacy improvements to help users better control the data they’re sharing. Google logs Search history, YouTube history, location history, and voice commands through Google Assistant on the My Activity page. Last year, the company made it possible to have this data automatically deleted every 3 months or 18 months. Now, that feature will be enabled by default for new users.

New Google users will have their search history, location history (which is already off by default), and voice commands automatically deleted every 18 months by default. The user doesn’t have to do anything to make this happen. YouTube search history will be set to delete after 3 years to ensure it can “continue to make relevant entertainment recommendations.”

Existing Google accounts won’t have this enabled by default, though the company will begin promoting the option more prevalently on those services. You can adjust the frequency on the Activity controls page (scroll down for the YouTube section).

The company will also be making it easier to check in on your Account controls more easily. Users will be able to simply do a search for “Google Privacy Checkup” and “Is my Google Account secure?” to see a box with your privacy and security settings. And to browse more privately, Incognito Mode will be accessible by simply long-pressing your profile picture in Google Search, Maps, and YouTube.

Data is very valuable to Google’s ad network business, so it’s nice to see the company make some compromises. Obviously, a user’s recent data is the most useful for targeted ads, but it’s still great to be able to scrub older data from your account.

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Source: Google

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This 9-Course Bundle Can Get You Started in Coding, Programming and App Development

While some industries are on the ropes right now, demand for developers is still high. Recruiters are looking for people with a variety of coding skills, and many jobs come with handsome salaries. If you would like to jump on this opportunity, The Software Developer Certification Bundle is a great place to start. This bundle contains nine courses, covering some of the most important languages and frameworks today. You can get the training now for just $39.99 at the XDA Developers Depot.

Whether you want to become a full-time programmer or simply improve your résumé, learning to code is a smart move. It’s also a great way to start a career from home and boost your finances.

Offering 41 hours of premium training, this bundle provides an extensive education in code. Through hands-on tutorials, you discover how to build apps from scratch, design for the web, and jump into high-level programming. 

Along the way, you learn about Python, Java, C#, and JavaScript including Redux and React. The training also covers HTML and mobile app development, with tips on marketing your creations. Additionally, each course offers a certification of completion. 

The bundle is worth $1,391 in total, but you can currently get all nine courses for $39.99 with lifetime access included.

 

The Software Developer Certification Bundle – $39.99

See Deal

Prices subject to change 

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It sure sounds like the OnePlus 8 Lite/OnePlus Z will be called the OnePlus Nord instead

OnePlus burst onto the smartphone scene by making affordable phones with impressive specifications. However, as time has gone on, OnePlus devices have begun to creep up in price. We’ve been hearing about the company’s return to affordable phones with the rumored OnePlus Z/OnePlus 8 Lite. Evidence is starting to pile up to suggest the phone will actually be called “Nord.”

The Nord name was teased earlier this month by leaker Max J on Twitter. That sounded a bit strange to us because “Nord” sounds more like a codename than a final product name. However, new evidence seems to back up the idea that Nord is the actual name.

Earlier this week, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau tweeted the OnePlus logo in a new cyan blue color with the hashtag #NewBeginnings. Then an image featuring the same cyan blue color and the phrase “New Beginnings” was shared by Nils Ahrensmeier on Twitter. And to pull the whole thing together, OnePlus inadvertently leaked (and later removed) the Nord logo in a photo of an invitation on Instagram.

As you can see, the back of the invitation features the same “NORD” logo and the cyan blue color from the previous images. The original Instagram post was from the company’s “onepluslitezthing” account and it included photos celebrating the development of the phone. We can’t read the other text on the invitation, but it seems to suggest something special for the “first 100” buyers.

“Nord” is certainly a strange name and it’s interesting that OnePlus isn’t using a more traditional “Lite” naming scheme. A recent survey suggested that the specs of the device could include a 6.55-inch AMOLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate, Qualcomm Snapdragon 765 SoC, 5G support, 6GB RAM, 128GB storage, and triple cameras. However, we’d suggest taking those specs with a grain of salt since we haven’t been able to independently confirm them.

There’s still a lot to learn about this “Nord” device. Will it be called the OnePlus Nord? Will it be called “Nord by OnePlus”? The device is expected to launch in India and Europe in July so we’ll soon find out.

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Via: Android Authority

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Pokémon Unite pits Pokémon in a 5v5 battle arena game for mobile

It may not seem that long ago, but Pokémon GO launched almost exactly 4 years ago. The game is not the insane phenomenon that it was that first summer, but it’s still one of the most played mobile games on the market. The latest Pokémon title for mobile is a DOTA-style arena battle game called Pokémon Unite.

Pokémon Unite is developed by Tencent, the company behind other popular games such as PUBG Mobile, Call of Duty Mobile, and Honor of Kings. It’s a free-to-play game for Nintendo Switch and mobile devices, Android included, of course. It’s similar in concept to MOBA games like DOTA and League of Legends.

Gameplay consists of teams of 5 battling against each other in different arenas. Players will pick a Pokémon at the start of the game and in true Pokémon fashion, your pocket monsters evolve and gain new abilities as you play. Multiplayer crossplay means you can play with people regardless of which device they use.

The idea with games like DOTA is that there are tons of characters for players to choose from, which is obviously something Pokémon has in spades. One big difference between Pokémon Unite and other Pokémon titles is that the monsters won’t have type advantages. That’s what gives water Pokémon advantages over fire Pokémon. In this game, those advantages will be removed to make the strategy simpler.

Another difference between Unite and DOTA is that you’re not “killing” other characters to earn coins. Instead, you are capturing the Pokémon. In other MOBA games your HP recovers if you don’t take damage for a while, but in Unite you have to return to the friendly base to heal.

A release date or timeframe for the launch was not given, only that there will be “more details in the future.” Pokémon games are very popular and the idea that you can play Unite across the Switch and mobile devices is very cool. We’re excited to learn more.

Via: Kotaku, The Verge

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Google rebuilds DevTools from scratch in Flutter for better performance and greater versatility

Flutter is a cross-platform programming framework, aiming to solve the woes of developing cross-platform apps without the mess of non-native code. With knowledge of the Dart programming language, a developer can build apps for Android, iOS, web, and desktop with a unified UI across all. Flutter 1.9 brought macOS and Catalina support in an alpha state while the v1.12 release matured their support past the pre-alpha state and the v1.17 of Flutter and v2.8 of Dart marked their first stable releases in 2020. Today, Google is releasing a new version of DevTools for Dart and Flutter code, that has been rebuilt from scratch in Flutter and comes with several improvements.

In the previous announcement, Google had mentioned its intent of swapping out the current version of Dart DevTools with a new Flutter version. This has now happened as the new DevTools has been rebuilt from scratch in Flutter. This new version of DevTools adds improvements such as changes to the performance and memory pages, as well as a completely new network page.

But why rebuild something when it still works? The team behind Flutter claims that the productivity benefits are important when building high-performance UIs, and the best way to demonstrate confidence in these claims is to adopt the very same tools for themselves. Rebuilding in Flutter also enables the developers to select a distribution model after writing the code, which is a departure from the current decision-making flowchart wherein the distribution model would dictate the code.

DevTools is shipping as a web application that makes it easier to integrate the tool into the existing tooling experience across all of the target platforms and IDEs. DevTools is a standalone suite of tools that runs in the browser, and it works for mobile apps, desktop apps, and web apps.

DevTools incorporates the following features:

• Flutter Inspector: a tool to visualize and explore widget trees. You can select widgets in your running app, slow down all animations, see text baselines, and more.
  • One of the new features is Layout Explorer which you can find in the Flutter Inspector tab next to Details Tree. Layout Explorer lets you inspect Flutter’s flex layout model. The team gives an example of how this tool can help debug why a row of widgets doesn’t look the way the developer had expected, for instance.

Flutter Inspector

• Timeline view: shows build times for each frame and a flame chart. This makes it easy to identify problematic frames in context.
  • This pane now incorporates the new Track Widget Builds button which adds build times of all widgets in your app to the timeline (at the expense of the performance of your profile build—so it’s not on by default). This is handy when you’re trying to find out which widgets, exactly, are behind a slow frame.

Frame Rendering Chart

• Memory view: shows you how your app is using memory at a given moment.
  • This view now shows a heatmap of the allocated memory and allows tracking platform memory too.

Memory Anatomy

• Performance view: This is a traditional CPU profiler. It lets you record a session of your app and see in which functions the CPU spent most of its time. You can use this to decide where to spend your time optimizing.
• DevTools even includes its own Debugger. This can be useful if you are not using an IDE but still want the option to add breakpoints, step through code, peek at variable values, and so on.

Debugger

• Network view: This is completely new.
  • As its name would imply, it lets you inspect network traffic. You can see the whole history of requests that your app made since it started and get detailed information about each one. This frees you from having to log these events on your own when trying to debug a network issue.
  • The Network tab currently shows HTTP traffic; future improvements include showing general socket I/O traffic.
  • Network requests are also shown in the Timeline view so you can see them in context.
• Logging view: shows events from your app and the framework. With it, you can easily filter messages (for example, you can specify “-gc” to filter out Garbage Collector events or “flutter.frame” to only show frame events). In Dart, logging messages can be structured, and the Logging view makes use of that.

To make complete use of DevTools, you can read the documentation. If you find any bugs, or if you want to vote on new features, you can do so on GitHub.

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Microsoft Defender ATP antivirus is now available for Android in preview

If you’re a long-time Android user you’re probably aware that antivirus apps aren’t really necessary for the average person. As long as you visit safe websites and only install apps from trusted sources, you’ll be fine. However, for those users who require extra security, Android antivirus apps can be useful. That’s why Microsoft announced it would be bringing Defender to corporate devices this year.

Defender is Microsoft’s antivirus software for Windows PCs. There was a time when Defender was very lacking, but it’s improved a lot and actually performs on par with other antivirus software. Microsoft is now launching the public preview for Defender ATP (Advanced Threat Protection) on Android through the Intune Company Portal app. The ICP app is a Mobile Device Management solution for deploying apps in an enterprise environment.

Key Capabilities

The public preview of Microsoft Defender ATP for Android will offer protection against phishing and unsafe network connections from apps, websites, and malicious apps. In addition, the ability to restrict access to corporate data from devices that are deemed “risky” will enable enterprises to secure users and data on their Android devices. All events and alerts will be available through a single pane of glass in the Microsoft Defender Security Center, giving security teams a centralized view of threats on Android devices along with other platforms. These capabilities empower enterprises to enable strong security while ensuring their employees remain productive working on their Android devices. Let’s dive into each of these capabilities in more detail.

Microsoft will be rolling out more capabilities in the coming months. They are also planning to release Defender ATP for iOS later this year. The requirements and installation instructions for Defender ATP on Android can be found here.

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Source: Microsoft

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