Welcome to the 451st edition of Android Apps Weekly. Here are the biggest headlines from the last week:
Android OEMs are considering adding a Dynamic Island-style feature. Namely, Realme is polling users to see if people would be interested in such a feature. Such a move may prompt some app developers to integrate it with their apps. However, without full Android integration, we don’t see any Dynamic Island clones being too useful overall.
Google Reminders is changing. Google is migrating both Google Assistant reminders and Calendar Reminders into Google Tasks. Users can then convert all of their reminders into to-do tasks for which they get notifications. The move makes sense. To-do list apps are often superior to just reminders when it comes to some stuff. Still, we think things like birthdays don’t necessarily need to become tasks. In any case, hit the link to learn more.
It turns out that YouTube’s dislike button does virtually nothing. Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser, conducted a study that shows the dislike button does nearly nothing for a user’s recommendations. They found the better solution was to tell YouTube to stop recommending the channel, but even then, it wasn’t a great solution.
Google Chrome is implementing a new feature. It lets you lock your private browsing sessions behind a fingerprint. Basically, you’ll be able to lock your incognito mode so that snoopers can’t see any tabs you leave open. The rollout is pretty slow but hit the link to learn how to enable it right now.
Android 13 may finally bring seamless updates to all Android phone brands, including Samsung. Google is doing this by mandating that all phones running Android 13 use virtual A/B partition support, which is necessary for seamless updates. Hit the link to learn more.
Center Stage
Price: Free
