Apps & Services
Apple Music’s new widgets and features are perfect for Galaxy phone users
Apple has recently introduced its Music Player for Android devices. This is the US giant’s first application that brings all the same iOS experience to Android users. However, the application is in its initial phase, so it lacks a lot of features that are already available for iOS users, so now it is getting new features with new updates and will be available to Galaxy users.
Apple Music gets a new update
Apple has released a new beta update of Apple Music with version number v4.5 for Android. With the latest update, it has received some new features, like two new widgets that bring all your music playlists into different categories: recommendations and top charts. In the recommendation, you will get three categories of songs, including Top Picks, New Releases, and other suggestions from Apple Music, while Top Charts brings all the songs that are trending in a location or city of your choice.
Apple gets dynamic color support and some more useful features
Apple has also brought dynamic color support for all the widgets, which means that the widgets can now appear in the same color according to the device’s theme or wallpaper. However, the widgets, including “Now Playing” and “Recently Played Widgets,” may not get the support of dynamic color because they use blurred album artwork as their background.
Moreover, some new features are introduced that will enhance the experience of listening to songs from the application on Android phones. We are talking about these three features:
- SharePlay in the Car: It lets everyone in the car control what’s playing on the speaker; however, it is only compatible with Apple CarPlay.
- Suggested songs in playlists: It will allow you to quickly add a selection of songs designed to fit your playlist.
- More to Favorite: All your favorite songs, albums, and playlists will appear in your library.
How to get all the new features
All these features are currently available in the latest beta version of Apple Music, i.e., v4.5, so if you want to try them all right now, then you have to join the beta program from the Play Store. However, these features will soon be available in the stable version.
Thanks to “9to5Google”
Google is continuously working towards the betterment of the Android ecosystem. It has brought several new features and innovations to its own designed applications, including Google Wallet, Google Maps, Google Messages, and many more. Now, with the latest development, the company is getting a new option in settings that lets you turn off the expressive animations.
Google Messages introduced expressive animation two months ago. Under this functionality, users get a cool animation feature that enables your still emoji to be expressed in an expressive way and makes the conversation more interesting. Now, with the latest development, if you don’t like this animation, you can also turn it off.
You can follow these simple steps to turn off the expressive animation: Navigate to the settings and then scroll down. Here you will find the new toggle option’show expressive animations’. Just tap it to turn it off.
The new option for turning off the animated expressiveness appeared with the latest Google Messenger beta 20240426_01_RC00, which indicates that the new changes are limited to those users who have already joined the beta program, while for other users it will take a while to expand this feature.
If you haven’t enrolled in the beta program and want to try this new option, you can apply for it now from the Google Play Store. Once you get registered, it will provide you with a new update immediately. Now you just need to install it and check for the option.
Apps & Services
ByteDance wants to kick off TikTok in the US market rather than selling it to an American firm
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, would have to shut down TikTok in the US market rather than sell it to an American firm. Following many assertions and statements for years, finally, it appears that ByteDance wants to ditch TikTok from the US market. Menahile, earlier reports significantly suggested that eventually TikTok will get banned in the US and was officially approved by the US House, Senate, and President of the US, Biden.
According to a source shared by Reuters via Android Police, ByteDance, which is the parent company of TikTok, seems looking up to ditching TikTok in the US completely rather than selling it to an American firm, while after the official approval, ByteDance was given the last 270-day deadline that either the company needs to release TikTok from its ownership forever or completely stop TikTok in the US market.
ByteDance counts a small part of TikTok’s revenue, though:
Meanwhile, the company is currently eyeing over some other legal options, but if all the legal options proved unsuccessful, then it’s quite clear that TikTok would be leaving the US market forever. On the flip side, some sources also reveal that the highly engaging properties of TikTok are due to its core algorithms, while these core algorithms are the most essential section of ByteDance’s technology. Moreover, this ditching of TikTok in the US will not really impact ByteDance’s current operations in the US market, as the company accounts for a small part of revenue through the app.
Sources further added that last year, TikTok gained about 25% of its revenue from the US market, which significantly means that it could be a sudden decrement within the revenue stream. However, ByteDance’s dedicated app, Douyin, which is certainly a Chinese version of TikTok, Also, no American firm is willing to pay billions to acquire TikTok without its core algorithms. Meanwhile, all these factors significantly indicate that if the legal efforts proved to be a failure, TikTok would have to leave the US market for sure.
Over the years, Google has made several improvements to its most crucial application, the Google Play Store, and it constantly provides new utility features and improvements. Now, with the latest development, the company is working on a new capability to handle multiple application downloads.
According to the information, Google is looking to bring a new capability to download multiple applications together. Previously, when you tap on the install button of the applications, it starts downloading them one by one. When one application fully downloads, it starts downloading the second application.
However, it is worth noticing that the phenomenon of multiple downloading is limited to only two applications, meaning if you tap on more than three applications to download, it will start downloading two applications while the third one is still pending.
Additionally, the simultaneous download is limited to the new installs, but it will not apply to the update section. We hope that Google may expand the multiple downloads to update phenomenon and may increase the number of downloads together in the next developments.
As per the information, the new change has already started working on several devices, at least for the Android 14 installed devices with the latest version of the Play Store (40.6.31).