Files By Google Gets USB OTG Support

Last month, Google has rebranded its Files Go app to Files by Google. The app basically manages all the file and apps in the phone and gives recommendations for clean-up activity.

The updated version of Files by Google app brings USB OTG support. This simply means from now onwards, you can take advantage of USB OTG support on the app. You can explore the files available on your external USB storage device through this feature.

Many popular file manager apps like ES File Explorer has already this support. To compete with them, it is an impressive step by Google.

You can view full folder structure of any connected device on phone. The app requires minimum Android 5.0 Lollipop or above.

To get this advantage your smartphone must need USB OTG support. If you want this feature, then you need to go to Google Play Store and download Files by Google app which is 9.6 MB size. If you have already, then update this app.

Google revealed that this app has 30 million monthly active users.

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Indian Android Apps Seeks More User Data Than Global Counterparts

You must remember that whenever you install an app on your device, you accept its T&C and allow some permissions that the app seeking for.

Well, there is nothing new about it. They ask for the permissions to fetch some users data in order to function properly.

If you ask how much data you would be comfortable to share with those apps or in other words how much data do they need to function properly?

In a report says  Some top Indian Android apps across categories seek as much as 45% higher permissions from users compared to their global counterparts.

The permissions they access includes SMSes, microphone, camera, contacts, call logs calendar, and storage.

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According to an annual study by enterprise cybersecurity and data privacy platform Arrka Consulting, about a third of the permissions that these apps are seeking for have no relation with the core functionality.

Interestingly, most of the data and permissions they takes from you are then forwarded to companies like Google and Facebook.

After which they show relevant ads and search results to you.

Both the Android and ios apps are able to access users data from their phones.

Some of these permissions are essential but the ones demand by most Indian apps aren’t.

As per the Arrka consulting survey report, Indian Android Apps that had over 1 million of downloads across several categories like communication, finance, travel etc. both on Google play and Apple store.

The report also says that the communicational apps are the biggest culprit.

Financial apps like mobile wallets also demanding for high level permissions.

Most of the dangerous permissions accessed by apps remain same across India and US.

Where as Indian apps are found that they access dangerous permissions 3.5 times more in compare with global apps.

The app eco-system run by Google and Apple and they also set the guidelines for app permissions.

However, they don’t question the app makers once they passed the guidelines.

On an average, Indian app seeking for 8 permissions when you install them on your device.

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Xiaomi Has Launched A New Mint Browser

There are a plethora of web browsers present on Google play store and Xiaomi has thrown its hat in the ring.

The Chinese smartphone manufacturer company has launched its own Android web browser called “Mint Browser”.

This web browser is not only for Xiaomi smartphone users but also for all Android smartphone user.

Xiaomi says “This web browser is lightweight, fast, ad-free and offers safe user experience”.

The web browser is actually light-weight and takes only 10MB space of your Phone. So, this browser is perfect for smartphones with low storage and RAM requirements.

It comes with a slew of other features like Dark mode, Ignition mode, read mode, voice search option, data saver and many more.

The dark mode feature is under the spotlight as many popular apps like YouTube, Google Chrome, Google Maps, Twitter, Instagram and many other apps offering this significant feature.

By activating this mode, it turns the background color of the web page into the dark theme.

Which consumes less battery and offers comfortable browsing experience under low light by putting less strain on your eye.

With the help integrated voice search option, you can browse and navigate the web via. your voice command.

By enabling the ‘Read mode’ it removes all unnecessary elements and only leaves text and relevant images.

The ‘data saver’ option will minimize the data usage by disabling images and unnecessary elements from the web page, as a result, you can experience faster browsing whenever you are in the area with patchy connectivity.

This web browser also let you switch between one user agent to another and choose the iPhone or desktop version of your favorite website.

It also comes with the pinch-to-zoom feature, which allows you to zoom any web page for the better reading experience.

When you will enter into the Mint Browser, it welcomes you with a homepage listing pre-selected websites.

If you are not ok with those pre-selected websites, you can remove any of them by the press and hold on the shortcuts.

You can also add your favorite websites as shortcuts by tapping on the Add button on the homepage.

This web browser comes with the bottom navigation bar which will very helpful for one handoperation as smartphones are getting larger these days.

It seems like Xiaomi’s Mint Browser is a direct take over Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera Mini, UC browser etc.

But one thing might bother you that it won’t come with any Ad-blocker, which is a very crucial feature among mobile browsers nowadays.

This browser is free and now available on Google play store to be download on devices that running on Android 4.4 (Ice-cream sandwich) and above.

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Google Fit Add Monthly Challenges Wants You To Start 2019 On A Healthy Note

Yes, we all set with our new year’s resolutions to make 2019 more luxurious.

We all determined to achieve bigger goals, better experience, more happiness and more focused ever.

From all the goals that set in our resolution list, we can’t ignore that one related to our Health.

As you know “Health is Wealth”.

To successfully achieve all the resolutions we must have to stay fit throughout the year.

Here comes the tech giant Google with a new announcement for all new and existing Google Fit users.

In honor to the new year, Google is going to offer monthly fitness challenges on the Google Fit App.

Google named this health campaign as #GetFitWithGoogle.

The main element of this campaign is the upcoming-30-day challenge. Which is starting from January 1, 2019.

If you want to be a part of this campaign, go to Google Fit app and sing in for the 30-day challenge program.

Apart from the daily challenges, the app will show you different encouragement words to help you complete these challenges.

To spread the campaign more on social media, Google teamed up with 36 influencers from nine countries around the globe to show us how they’re earning their Heart Points.

You can also follow #GetFitWithGoogle on Instagram and YouTube to see how others are tackling the challenge

If you want to share your own tips and tricks on how you #GetFitwithGoogle with your favorite Heart Points workout.

The whole thing will revolve around gaining Heart Points.

A Heart Point is Google’s metric to major how much exercising you get done.

Workout at a higher pace to gain more point. Gain one point for each minute of moderate activity, while doing something more intensive like running or kickboxing gain two.

For example: for a simple walk you will gain a single point and that becomes double while running.

Google in a blog post writes “Hit 150 Heart Points per week to meet the American Heart Association (AHA) and the World Health Organization (WHO)’s physical activity recommendations shown to reduce the risk of heart disease, improve sleep and increase overall mental well-being”.

This shows how the tech giant aiming to keep us fit and stay on track.

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Google Is Planning To Change The Android Messages Web Address From Android.com To Google.com

Big news coming out in the middle, In yet another nail in the coffin for Android brand, Google is planning to change its “messages web app” from Android.com to Google.com, according to the upcoming Gerrit source code to Chrome OS.

Messages by Google is one of the oldest app on Play store, having very similar web interface like WhatsApp.

It allows you to manage SMS/MMS messages on your phone from another device.

From the beginning, it has long been hosted at the straightforward URL of “messages.android.com” but in coming weeks this service could be moved to “messages.google.com”.

If you are a using Android Messages App  (Renamed to Messages Only) through the web interface you can chat with people from your phone using the desktop.

To do this you just need to head over to ‘messages.android.com’. However, the commit suggests that Google shift its users to a new address i.e ‘messages.google.com’.

The change in the code simply replicates that Google, remotely tells Chromebook everywhere to stop allowing the ‘messages.android.com’ URL while using the ‘better together’ features and transition to ‘messages.google.com’.

Currently, this change has not come to all versions of Chrome OS.

It only made its appearance in v72 and v73 of Chrome OS where the ‘better together’ features are available for integrating Android and Chrome OS.

It is not clear that when the change will be fully implemented but Google may also keep using both the features for a while, to make the users transition over ‘messages.google.com’.

It seems like Google avoiding the Android branding more and more and slowly removing the word ‘Android’ from its wide variety of services that were closely associated with the Android brand.

For example:- ‘Android Messages’ was recently changed to only ‘Messages’, ‘Android Pay’ renamed to ‘Google Pay’ and ‘Android wear’ to just ‘Wear OS’.

So, there will be no surprise in it, if the tech giant removes the word ‘Android’ completely from its platform in upcoming years.

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Google Search Now Scrolls To Relevant Featured Snippet On AMP Links

Here comes the newest Google search update, that it now scrolls you to the relevant featured snippet on AMP links.

One of the useful features option in Google search is “featured snippet”, that pulls answers to common, easy questions from relevant web pages and puts them front and center whenever you enter a question. As a result, you can quickly see an answer to your query at the top of your search results.

Google figure out the relevant part of the answer from an article and display it as the first result in its own highlighted box.

What happens when you tap on article Google got the response from you and does nothing other than takes you to that web page.

But as per the new update, it has been noticed that when you click on an article it will take you to the highlighted snippet answer on that web page.

This feature is like what Google does with YouTube videos.

Although the text content model only seems to be work on AMP (Accelerated Mobile Page) articles as of now and only for basic questions.

A few days back 9 to 5 google covered the full report on this newest Google’s search update.

When you click on an article and fortunately if it is an AMP page, Google will scroll you to the relevant part on the article with a pop up at the bottom saying “scrolled to the section” and a button to go back to the top.

The snippet will be highlighted with orange color to make it easier for you to find what you exactly want.

This feature is now available widely to help you find quick answers to your queries. So, that you can able to do more browsing than less searching.

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Facebook Is Tracking Your Data Even If You Don’t Have The App On Your Android Device

Facebook would want to forget the Data breach controversy as a nightmare that made 2018 even more worse for it.

But it seems that he doesn’t want this at all, as a report has come from UK based charity privacy International, Facebook routinely tracks users, non-users and logged out users data outside its platform.




The charity keeps its eye on Facebook after the scandal surrounding the now-defunct London based political consultancy, Cambridge Analytica.

That improperly swept personal data of 87 million users on behalf of political clients and used it to influence the people during the US 2016 presidential election or the UK Brexit referendum.

Privacy International has found on latest study that, 34 Android Apps with user base between 10 to 500 million shares users data with Facebook.

The researcher at Privacy International also found that 23 apps immediately sent users data to Facebook at the moment they opened it.

The report also says that “App developers share data with Facebook through the Facebook Software Development Kit (SDK), a set of software development tools that help developers build apps for a specific operating system”.

The apps included language-learning tool Duolingo, job database Indeed, flight search engine Skyscanner, travel and restaurant website TripAdvisor.

The researcher tested all of the apps between August and  December 2018 and analyzed what kind of data these apps share with Facebook through the Facebook SDK.

The research, presented at Chaos Computer Congress in Leipzig, Germany, found that at least 61 percent of apps that Privacy International tested automatically transfer data to Facebook the moment a user opens the app.

According to the report; It doesn’t matter whether you have Facebook app installed in your phone or not or whether you logged in or not.

Every time you opened those apps they share some of your data with Facebook.

The report lastly added that “Data from different apps can narrate well-detailed information about someone’s activities, interests, behaviors, and routines, some of which can reveal special category data, including information about people’s health or religion”.

Which then use by Facebook to show you relevant ads on your Android devices.

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Reliance Jio Launches JioBrowser For Android

Reliance has established its presence in India with the successful launch of Jio 4G VoLTE service. Jio phone, Jio GigaFiber, Jio TV are also some successful.

Now the telecom

giant, head to browser space. Reliance Jio has launched a new web browser named “JioBrowser” for Android users.

In a statement, Reliance said “one of the first Indian browsers that’s developed keeping the Indian users in mind.” The browser is lightweight and only 5MB size. So low-end device owners can easily use this browser.

As it targets Indian users, the browser supports up to 8 regional Indian languages. It includes Hindi, Telegu, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada.

Some features include private browsing with Incognito mode, jump to top websites on the Internet, and the ability to share news or videos on social media. Users can also customize the browser to “Local News category”. It helps you to get relevant updates that are happening around you.

The home screen of the JioBrowser shows you some links of the top Indian content websites. The referred websites contain a wide range of contents like news, cricket, entertainment, shopping etc.

Reliance is also collecting users feedbacks. You can place your feedback on Google play store page feedback section or you can write to jiobrowser.feedback@ril.com. Feedbacks will help Jio to improve the browser.

Currently, JioBrowser is not available for Apple iOS platform. The company also clear about the release for the Apple ecosystem.

The app is available on Google Play Store. You can download the app here.

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