Mishaal's Android News Feed

🔎This app brings the Pixel Screenshots experience to any Android device A new app called PixelShot collects and analyzes your screenshots so you can search through them later, and you don't need a Pixel 9 to use it. More details on this app can be found in this article. By the way, for those of you who enable notifications on any new posts I make, I'm sorry for what I'm about to do to your notifications 👀

Wow: the DoJ's antitrust enforcers are "set to propose that Google uncouple its Android smartphone operating system from its other products, including search and its Google Play mobile app store," according to Bloomberg. The DoJ has reportedly also "pulled back from a more severe option that would have forced Google to sell off Android," but forcing the company to stop bundling GMS would still be huge. Details are sparse on what exactly this would mean. Notably, device makers can technically already ship Android without GMS (it's just AOSP in that case). However, if they want the Play Store and Play Services (which they do because that's where all the apps/useful APIs are), then they currently have to bundle Chrome, Google Search, and other Google apps as well. The EU already put an end to the forced bundling of Google Search and Chrome, which is why there's a separate GMS license for EEA launches. But that hasn't happened in the U.S. yet, which is possibly what the DoJ wants to see happen.

💻 Source: Google is turning Chrome OS into Android to compete with the iPad Android is becoming Google's operating system of choice when it comes to PCs, and in a few years, I've heard we'll even see Chromebooks ship with Android. More details can be found…

💻Source: Google is turning Chrome OS into Android to compete with the iPad Android is becoming Google's operating system of choice when it comes to PCs, and in a few years, I've heard we'll even see Chromebooks ship with Android. More details can be found in this article on Android Authority.

🌐The Pixel Tablet finally gets Google VPN support in Android 15 QPR2 Google's tablet was initially excluded from the rollout of its free, Pixel-exclusive VPN by Google service, but that's finally changed with the latest Android beta. Details can be found here.

UPDATE: It turns out that Health Connect exports DO work ... it's just the initial export that's broken! Subsequent exports work! This means you can finally backup & restore your health and fitness data stored with Health Connect. Unfortunately, the exported…

Google is rolling out a new feature in the Digital Wellbeing app called screen time reminders. This feature gives you gentle reminders when you've been using selected apps for a long time. The reminder comes in the form of a pill that appears at the top of the screen. The rollout of this feature was first spotted by Nail Sadykov a few days ago, but I and several others have just gotten it. Let me know if you see it! (By the way, the code-name for this feature is Mindful Nudge, as discovered by @AssembleDebug.)

The "limit to 80%" charging feature has returned for Pixel users running Android 15 QPR2 Beta 1! When QPR2 Beta 1 first rolled out, the feature was missing, but now it's back. This feature first rolled out with QPR1 Beta 2 and is expected to go live in the stable QPR1 update next month. This feature's availability is controlled by server-side flags. Thanks to nemy_new on X for the image!

The Terminal app in Android 15 QPR2 Beta 1 doesn't work currently, and the reason is because it's currently set up to only install Linux images supplied in a /sdcard/linux/images.tar.gz file. However, it only does this if the build is debuggable (ro.debuggable=1)…

How Android feature development is changing with Trunk Stable You may have seen me mention something called Trunk Stable before. It's one of the BIGGEST changes to Android in years, but Google hasn't really talked about it much. Here's how it changes things. Thanks to the folks from Code with the Italians for having me on their show last week to talk about this!

Here's a first look at Android's upcoming all-in-one Terminal app, which downloads, configures, runs, and interfaces with an instance of Debian running a virtual machine! Currently, the Debian images are hosted on a Googler's GitHub, but Google plans to host…

If you rely on the Termux app on Android for anything and daily drive a OnePlus, OPPO, or Realme device, heads up: the OxygenOS 15/ColorOS 15 update seems to be killing off Termux processes, but only if you install the app from outside the Play Store. It…