Google announced a slew of new features for Android, Chromebook, and Wear OS designed to improve connectivity, productivity, and accessibility. The announcement was timed to coincide with the Mobile World Congress (MWC), which kicks off today in Barcelona. New features include upcoming support for Fast Pair on Chromebook, Google Keep shortcuts for your phone and smartwatch, and new accessibility modes for Wear OS.
The company has revealed that Fast Pair will soon be able to connect new Bluetooth headphones to a Chromebook with just one click. If a user has already set up headphones with their Android phone, their Chromebook will automatically connect to them as well. Google didn’t provide specific information on a release window for this update, but did note that it will be rolling out “soon”.
Picture credits: Google
Another audio improvement announced today will see Google Meet soon offer noise cancellation on more Android mobile devices to filter out background sounds when talking during a meeting.
The company also revealed that users will soon be able to easily increase the size of content on Chrome, including text, images, and videos, by up to 300% while preserving the layout. Users will be able to set their preferred default content size so they don’t have to change it every time they launch the browser. The new update is available starting today in the Chrome beta and will be rolling out to all users soon.
Picture credits: Google
The company also plans to release a unique Google Keep note widget that will help users quickly manage their notes and check off to-do lists from their home screen. The widget will display reminders, background colors, and images added to Keep app notes while syncing with your smartwatch. Google Keep will also feature two new shortcuts for creating notes and to-do lists by simply tapping a user’s watch face.
Google is rolling out another productivity feature that lets users use a stylus or just tap the screen to annotate PDFs in the Google Drive app for Android. You can play with different ink strokes to write notes or comments, or use the highlighter tool to save important text to your tablet or phone. Then you can hide, undo, delete or save a new copy of your annotated documents. Freehand annotation in Google Drive for Android is now available.
Additionally, Wear OS is getting two new sound and display modes designed to improve the accessibility of the watch. Users will soon have access to mono-audio mode to help limit disorientation caused by split-audio. New color correction and grayscale modes will give users more choices for their watch display.
Picture credits: Google
The company is also launching new emoji combinations in Emoji Kitchen, a Gboard feature that lets users submit merged or remixed sticker versions of Google’s emoji designs. There are new basketball and spring team options that users can play with and then share with others.
Another fun new feature is the upcoming rollout of new touchscreen animations in Google Wallet to help confirm your in-store transactions. Google hinted that users will start seeing “happy penguins” and other characters from next week.
