Android launched 5 updates on Tuesday as a part of its newest launch of the cellular working system. Out there for smartphones, tablets, and Put on OS watches, the brand new options embody audio descriptions of photographs, text-to-speech expertise for net pages in Chrome, and the flexibility to search for songs with “Circle to Search,” amongst different issues.
Initially introduced in Might, all Android customers are formally getting “TalkBack,” an accessibility characteristic for people who find themselves blind or have low imaginative and prescient. The characteristic is Google’s model of a display screen reader, which supplies detailed audio descriptions of digital photographs. TalkBack is powered by Gemini Nano, Google’s large-language-model-based platform. Customers can now hear descriptions of all kinds of photographs, like on-line merchandise, photographs of their digital camera roll, or photos in textual content messages.
One other new accessibility characteristic is “Listen to this page,” which permits customers to hearken to webpages within the Chrome browser, whether or not that’s a weblog submit, information article, or recipe. The characteristic is useful for individuals who are blind or have a studying incapacity, and individuals who choose listening over studying. Customers can pause, rewind, and quick ahead, in addition to set their most well-liked listening pace and the kind of language and voice. It helps a number of languages, together with English, French, German, Arabic, Hindi, and Spanish.
Google’s Circle to Search characteristic, which was introduced earlier this 12 months, permits customers to go looking from wherever on their telephone by making gestures like circling, highlighting, scribbling, or tapping. The characteristic now permits Android customers to seek for songs by way of a brand new music button, eliminating the necessity to open a third-party app like Shazam. Customers can merely activate Circle to Search by lengthy urgent the house button or navigation bar.
The brand new music functionality can establish songs enjoying from the telephone or within the background via close by audio system. Along with displaying the monitor title and artist, it additionally directs them to music movies by way of the YouTube app.
Based on some Reddit customers, the music functionality has been step by step rolling out to Samsung machine customers for a couple of weeks now.
Android’s earthquake alert system has been out there for a while. Nevertheless, it’s now increasing to all U.S. states and its six territories. It was first launched in California in 2020, and it makes use of smartphone sensors to detect tremors and assist folks put together for pure disasters and emergencies. For earthquakes of a magnitude of 4.5 or greater, Android sends out two forms of warning alerts, both supplying you with a heads-up a few mild quantity of shaking or an alert recommending extra instant motion if it detects excessive shaking.
Android smartwatch customers can use offline maps, a Google Maps functionality for folks to get round in the event that they go away their telephone behind, get misplaced, or discover themselves with out cellular phone service. Watch OS additionally launched two new shortcuts to permit customers to seek for locations utilizing their voice or shortly faucet the watch face to see the place they’re on the map.
These options are launching alongside Android 15, which is able to roll out to extra units later this 12 months, together with Pixel units.
