Google is treating its Android users with fun presents this holiday season. Your Android devices including wearables and services are getting a slew of new features in December. These include upgrades to Wear OS, Google Messages, and more.
More intuitive Google Messages
According to Google, there are more than a billion monthly RCS message users around the world. To celebrate the milestone, it is adding a bunch of new features to Google Messages. The app is getting visual upgrades in message interactions. For instance, when you react to a message, it will show an animated emoji like and twisted thumb when you thumbs up a message.
Google is adding more combinations to emoji kitchen in Gboard to offer a wider range of silly emoji combinations. Plus, in Google Messages (beta), you’ll be able to add a visual clue to define the mood of your audio by adding a background and emoji theme to your audio note – so the other person knows what to expect before playing the audio message.
You can now finally personalize chats by changing the color of the bubble and chat background – something that chat apps like WhatsApp and Telegram have offered for a long time. These features are now rolling out but some of them might be device and region-specific.
Upgrades to Google Services: Google TV, Wear OS and Accessibility
Google is releasing 10+ new free channels on Google TV, which join other 100+ free channels to offer you a wider range of content in movies, gameshows, and sports.
Wear OS is receiving a new Assistant at a Glance shortcut that will help you with key information about your day, access Google Home’s status and change it to Home or Away without taking out the phone from your pocket. If you are all in on smart home with multiple smart lights, you can now change the color of the bulbs right from your wrist. Additionally, Assistant Routines will be rolled out to Wear OS soon.
Google is also using AI to enhance accessibility. TalkBack can now create image descriptions and reads them aloud with the help of AI. It can do so on images from apps, social media, or an image you just clicked. As of now it only works in English.
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