Latest news with #JoeHindy
Android Authority
a day ago
- Android Authority
YouTube Shorts is about to look a little more like Instagram Reels
Joe Hindy / Android Authority TL;DR YouTube Shorts now lets creators place product stickers on their videos. Tapping on the sticker will redirect the viewer to the retailer's website for that product. Viewers can see the full list of products the creator tagged by tapping on the down arrow. You may see something new on the screen the next time you watch a YouTube Shorts video. The platform is giving creators a new tool to get you to buy the products they're advertising. If you make or watch Instagram Reels, you may be familiar with the concept of stickers. Simply put, they are just little graphics you can place on your videos. However, if you're a business, partner, or have a qualified account, then you can also create product stickers for brands and shops to earn money. What does this have to do with YouTube? The company is taking this concept and applying it to YouTube Shorts. In a post on the YouTube support site, the company announced that the previous shopping button on Shorts is getting upgraded to product stickers. If you're wondering why this change is happening, it appears to be more than just a way to make the shopping button more fun. According to Google, an experiment conducted in May 2025 showed that users were 40% more likely to click on product stickers than the shopping button. If you're a creator, you'll be able to create a sticker by tagging products. You'll be able to tag multiple products, but the generated sticker will appear as the first product in your list. If you want the sticker to look like a different product, you can reorder your list so the desired product is listed first. Additionally, you'll be able to change the size of the sticker and place it wherever you want. However, sizing and placement can only be done in the YouTube mobile app. For viewers, if you tap on the sticker, you'll be redirected to the retailer's website. If the creator tagged multiple products, there will be a down arrow on the sticker you can tap on to see the full product list. With the exception of South Korea, this feature is available globally. However, Google says it plans to expand the feature to that market soon. So you'll likely start seeing stickers on Shorts sooner rather than later. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
Android Authority
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Android Authority
YouTube Music's new lyrics sharing feature is finally reaching more users
Joe Hindy / Android Authority TL;DR YouTube Music's new lyrics sharing feature is now available widely on Android and iOS. You can use it to share up to five lines from a song in a custom image. The feature is live in YouTube Music version 8.24 and appears as a new 'Share' button in the Lyrics tab. YouTube Music has been working on a new feature to help users easily share song lyrics for quite a while. We first spotted references to the feature in a teardown this January, and YouTube Music briefly rolled it out to some users in April, giving us an early look. The feature is finally receiving a wider release, and you can try it out in the YouTube Music app for Android and iOS. The lyrics sharing feature is live in version 8.24 of YouTube Music (via 9to5Google). You can access it by opening the Lyrics tab and selecting the new 'Share' button. This opens a 'Select Lyrics' screen, where you can choose up to five lines to share. Once you're happy with your selection, tap the 'Next' button, and you'll see a preview of the lyrics card. The card features the song name and artist at the top alongside the album art, followed by your selected lyrics and the YouTube Music logo. The card's default background matches the dominant color from the album art, but you can switch to a different color by tapping on one of the ten options in the carousel below. You can then select the 'Share' button to save the card to your gallery or 'Share with other apps.' Spotify has had a similar lyrics sharing feature for a while, and it's great to see YouTube Music catching up and making it easier for users to share meaningful lyrics with friends and family. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
Android Authority
12-06-2025
- Android Authority
Google is killing Android Instant Apps, but you probably won't miss them
Joe Hindy / Android Authority TL;DR Google is discontinuing its Android Instant Apps feature in December 2025. The feature allowed users to try parts of an app without needing to perform a full installation from the Play Store. Low developer adoption is the likely reason for the shutdown, as creating the small, instant-enabled app versions required a lot of work. There are many different ways to interact with a digital service, but the average smartphone user tends to prefer using a mobile app over a website. However, installing a new app every time you want to try a service can be a hassle, which is why Google created the Android Instant Apps feature. Android Instant Apps allow users to try parts of a mobile app without fully installing it, speeding up content delivery, reducing data and storage use, and providing a more optimized mobile experience. The feature was rarely implemented by developers, though, so Google is discontinuing it by the end of 2025. Google announced the Android Instant Apps feature back in 2016 and began rolling it out to users in early 2017. The way it works is that when you tap on a link, the Google Play Store checks if an instant app exists and runs it without installation. Instant apps are kept on your device temporarily and take up much less space than the full versions of the apps available on the Play Store. Here's a demo of the Android Instant Apps feature featuring Ilta-Sanomat, a prominent Finnish evening newspaper: Companies like Vimeo and Wish were some of the earliest to use Android Instant Apps, allowing them to acquire new users by getting their apps in front of people casually browsing the web. While the format seems like an obvious win for developers and users, supporting it isn't trivial. Developers must create a special 'instant-enabled' version of their app that is under 15MB, allowing it to be pushed to a user's device almost seamlessly. Trimming an app down to this size can be difficult, especially for those with large, complex dependencies. This difficulty may be why few developers added support for Android Instant Apps over the years and is likely why Google is comfortable shutting the feature down. While using the latest canary build of Android Studio, developer Leon Omelan spotted a notice when hovering over the Instant Apps dependency. This notice reads as follows: 'Instant Apps support will be removed by Google Play in December 2025. Publishing and all Google Play Instant APIs will no longer work. Tooling support will be removed in Android Studio Otter Feature Drop.' Android Authority can confirm this notice is present in Android Studio, as shown below. Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority Google hasn't updated its online documentation yet to reflect the winding down of Android Instant Apps, but we imagine this notice will be published elsewhere soon. Since few developers used the feature anyway, most users probably won't notice it's gone. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
Android Authority
30-05-2025
- Business
- Android Authority
YouTube Shorts are about to get some Google Lens magic
Joe Hindy / Android Authority TL;DR Google Lens integration will be added to YouTube Shorts in the coming weeks. The feature will allow users to fire up Lens within a Short and quickly search for what they're watching. Ads in search results will likely be a part of the experience when it rolls out widely to all users. Shorts is one of YouTube's most important and fastest-growing categories right now. The company is constantly adding more features to the format, and another one coming in the next few weeks will bring some Google Lens magic to YouTube Shorts. According to a recent community post by Google, YouTube Shorts will soon gain Google Lens integration. You'll be able to use Lens to search for what you're watching in a Short. For instance, if you're watching a YouTube Short filmed at a location you would like to visit, you can fire up Lens, select a landmark in the Short, and get search results for it. To try out the feature once it's live, you'll have to pause the Short you're watching by tapping on the screen and selecting Lens from the top menu. You can then draw, highlight, or tap on anything you're watching to search via Google Lens. If you're wondering why this sounds familiar, it's because the feature overlaps with Circle to Search, an AI tool we're sure you've heard of already, and one that many Android phones, including Pixels and Samsung Galaxy devices, promote in abundance. The only difference between Lens in YouTube Shorts and Circle to Search might be the UI of how those search results are displayed. Google writes, 'You'll see visual matches and search results overlaid on the Short, and from there, you can easily and quickly jump back into the content you were watching.' Unfortunately, the company didn't show an example of what this would look like in its post, but we're sure we'll get to see it soon enough. Lens integration in YouTube Shorts will start rolling out to the beta version of the app this week. Google notes viewers won't see ads in the search results during the Lens in Shorts beta phase. That means ads will likely be a part of the experience when it rolls out widely to all users.
Android Authority
23-05-2025
- Android Authority
Google's fresh, clean account switcher is rolling out now to more apps
Joe Hindy / Android Authority TL;DR Google's been developing a new account switcher since last August. The new account switcher is rolling out in Translate, Wallet, and Tasks. This new look appears more like the web version, and recently showed up in Maps. Many of us have multiple Google accounts, and it can be annoying to switch back and forth between them all the time. Thankfully, Google lets users add all those accounts to their apps and devices and switch when needed. However, Google's account switcher has been undergoing a redesign that brings it more in line with the web version, and now that new look is showing up in more apps. The redesigned account switcher is now rolling out to these three Google apps: Translate (version 9.9.58.761479923.3-release), Wallet (version 25.20.761154377), and Tasks (version 2025.05.19.760395213.0-release). We saw it surfacing a few weeks ago in the Google Maps app as well, and an earlier APK teardown revealed it in Calendar and Keep. The previous version of the account switcher involved a lot more taps to actually change to a different profile. You had to view your primary account, then tap 'Manage your Google account,' and then tap your account email to reveal a menu with your other accounts — a bit convoluted and requires a lot of tapping. This new look is much more streamlined and more like what you see on the web. You'll see the profile photo of your primary account at the top with 'Manage your Google Account' underneath, but now there's a collapsable 'Switch account' menu. Tapping this brings up your other accounts, the 'Add another account' option, and 'Manage accounts on this device' setting. It's a lot less tapping, which is always welcome. The new look hasn't hit all of Google's apps yet, but we can only imagine that it'll be a matter of time. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
