Better search and suggestion options in Gmail

Quick summary 

Over the years, we’ve made advancements to the search capabilities and suggestions in Gmail through search filters, search operators, search chips, and more. 


Starting today, Gmail has more accurate and circumstantial search suggestions with better customization as a result of our new machine learning models. When searching for a conversation, file, or a colleague’s contact information in the Gmail Search Box, you will notice:
  • Better and more contextual contact suggestions with intent matching for names and email addresses. For example, suggestions are reordered to more likely match contact queries with first names or email addresses rather than last names.
  • Personalized suggestions based on historical exchanges, such as how often you interact with a colleague via Gmail.

Getting started 

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about Search in Gmail. 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Frontline, and Nonprofits customers 
  • Available to users with personal Google Accounts
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Enterprise Essentials customers, and legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers

Resources 

Roadmap 

Assignments audit data now available in the Admin console

Quick summary 

Google Workspace for Education admins can now view Assignments data in their audit logs. Using this data, admins can find and act on Assignments related events such as who removed a student from a video call, when assignment files were created or submitted, and more. 



Getting started 

  • Admins: Audit logs can be found in the Admin console under Reporting > Audit > Investigation > Admin log events. Visit the Help Center to learn more about Admin log events. 
  • End users: There is no end user impact 



Rollout pace 


Availability 


  • Available to Google Workspace Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Education Standard, and the Teaching and Learning upgrade. 
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers. 

Resources 

Compose for Wear OS is now 1.0: time to build wearable apps with Compose!

Posted by Kseniia Shumelchyk, Android Developer Relations Engineer

Today we’re launching version 1.0 of Compose for Wear OS, the first stable release of our modern declarative UI toolkit designed to help developers create beautiful, responsive apps for Google’s smartwatch platform.

Compose for Wear OS was built from the bottom up in Kotlin with assumptions of modern app architecture. It makes building apps for Wear OS easier, faster, and more intuitive by following the declarative approach and offering powerful Kotlin syntax.

The toolkit not only simplifies UI development, but also provides a rich set of UI components optimized for the watch experience with built-in support of Material design for Wear OS, and it’s accompanied by many powerful tools in Android Studio to streamline UI iteration.

What this means

The Compose for Wear OS 1.0 release means that the API is stable and has what you need to build production-ready apps. Moving forward, Compose for Wear OS is our recommended approach for building user interfaces for Wear OS apps.

Your feedback has helped shape the development of Compose for Wear OS; our developer community has been with us each step of the way, engaging with us on Slack and providing feedback on the APIs, components, and tooling. As we are working on bringing new features to future versions of Compose for Wear OS, we will continue to welcome developer feedback and suggestions.

We are also excited to share how developers have already adopted Compose in their Wear OS apps and what they like about it.

What developers are saying

Todoist helps people organize, plan and collaborate on projects. They are one of the first companies to completely rebuild their Wear OS app using Compose and redesign all screens and interactions:

“When the new Wear design language and Compose for Wear OS were announced, we were thrilled. It gave us new motivation and opportunity to invest into the platform.”

Todoist application
Relying on Compose for Wear OS has improved both developer and user experience for Todoist:

“Compose for Wear OS helped us tremendously both on the development side and the design side. The guides and documentation made it easy for our product designers to prepare mockups matching the new design language of the platform. And the libraries made it very easy for us to implement these, providing all the necessary widgets and customizations. Swipe to dismiss, TimeText, ScalingLazyList were all components that worked very well out-of-the-box for us, while still allowing us to make a recognizable and distinct app.”


Outdooractive helps people plan routes for hiking, cycling, running, and other outdoor adventures. As wearables are a key aspect of their product strategy, they have been quick to update their offering with an app for the user's wrist.
Outdooractive application
Outdooractive has already embraced Wear OS 3, and by migrating to Compose for Wear OS they aimed for developer-side benefits such as having a modern code base and increased development productivity:

“Huge improvement is how lists are created. Thanks to ScalingLazyColumn it is easier (compared to RecyclerView) to create scrolling screens without wasting resources. Availability of standard components like Chip helps saving time by being able to use pre-fabricated design-/view-components. What would have taken us days now takes us hours.”

The Outdooractive team also highlighted that Compose for Wear OS usage help them to strive for better app quality:

“Improved animations were a nice surprise, allowing smoothly hiding/revealing components by just wrapping components in “AnimatedVisibility” for example, which we used in places where we would normally not have invested any time in implementing animations.”


Another developer we’ve been working with, Period Tracker helps keep track of period cycles, ovulation, and the chance of conception.

     
Period Tracker application

They have taken advantage of our UI toolkit to significantly improve user interface and quickly develop new features available exclusively on Wear OS:

“Compose for Wear OS provided us with many kits to help us bring our designs to life. For example, we used Chips to design the main buttons for period recording, water drinking, and taking medication, and it also helped us create a unique look for the latest version of Kegel workout.”

Similarly to other developers, Period Tracker noted that Compose for Wear OS helped them to achieve better developer experience and improved collaboration with design and development teams:

“For example, before Chips components were available, we had to use a custom way to load images on buttons which caused a lot of adaptation work. Yes, Compose for Wear OS improved our productivity and made our designers more willing to design a better user experience on wearables.”

Check out the in-depth case studies to learn more about how other developers are using Jetpack Compose.

1.0 release

Let’s look into the key features available with 1.0 release:

  • Material: The Compose Material catalog for Wear OS already offers more components than are available with View-based layouts. The components follow material styling and also implement material theming, which allows you to customize the design for your brand.
  • Declarative: Compose for Wear OS leverages Modern Android Development and works seamlessly with other Jetpack libraries. Compose-based UIs in most cases result in less code and accelerate the development process as a whole, read more.
  • Interoperable: If you have an existing Wear OS app with a large View-based codebase, it's possible to gradually adopt Compose for Wear OS by using the Compose Interoperability APIs rather than having to rewrite the whole codebase.
  • Handles different watch shapes: Compose for Wear OS extends the foundation of Compose, adding a DSL for all curved elements to make it easy to develop for all Wear OS device shapes: round, square, or rectangular with minimal code.
  • Performance: Each Compose for Wear OS library ships with its own baseline profiles that are automatically merged and distributed with your app’s APK and are compiled ahead of time on device. In most cases, this achieves app performance for production builds that is on-par with View-based apps. However, it’s important to know how to configure, develop, and test your app’s performance for the best results. Learn more.

Note that using version 1.0 of Compose for Wear OS requires using the version 1.2 of androidx.compose libraries and therefore Kotlin 1.7.0. Read more about Jetpack Compose 1.2 release here.

Tools and libraries

Android Studio

The declarative paradigm shift also alters the development workflow. The Compose tooling available in Android Studio will help you build apps more productively.

Android Studio Dolphin includes a new project template with Compose for Wear OS to help you get started.

The Composable Preview annotation allows you to instantly verify how your app’s layout behaves on different watch shapes and sizes. You can configure the device preview to show different Wear OS device types (round, rectangle, etc):

import androidx.compose.ui.tooling.preview


@Preview(

    device = Devices.WEAR_OS_LARGE_ROUND,

    showSystemUi = true,

    backgroundColor = 0xff000000,

    showBackground = true

)

@Composable

fun PreviewCustomComposable() {

    CustomComposable(...)

}

Starting with Android Studio Electric Eel, Live Edit supports iterative code development for Wear OS, providing quick feedback as you make changes in the editor and immediately reflecting UI in the Preview or running app on the device.

Horologist

Horologist is a group of open-source libraries from Google that supplement Wear OS development, which we announced with the beta release of Compose for Wear OS. Horologist has graduated a number of experimental APIs to stable including TimeText fadeAway modifiers, WearNavScaffold, the Date and Time pickers.

      
Date and Time pickers from Horologist library     

Learning Compose

If you are unfamiliar with using Jetpack Compose, we recommend starting with the tutorial. Many of the development principles there also apply to Compose for Wear OS.

To learn more about Compose for Wear OS check out:

Now that Compose for Wear OS has reached its first stable release, it’s time to create beautiful apps built for the wrist with Compose!

Join the community

Join the discussion in the Kotlin Slack #compose-wear channel to connect with the team and other developers and share what you’re building.

Provide feedback

Please keep providing us feedback on the issue tracker and let us know your experience!

For more information about building apps for Wear OS, check out the developer site.

Jetpack Compose 1.2 is now stable!

Posted by Jolanda Verhoef, Android Developer Relations Engineer

Today, we’re releasing version 1.2 of Jetpack Compose, Android's modern, native UI toolkit, continuing to build out our roadmap. This release contains new features like downloadable fonts, lazy grids, and improvements for tablets and Chrome OS with better focus, mouse, and input handling.

Compose is our recommended way to build new Android apps for phone, tablets and foldables. Today we also released Compose for Wear OS 1.0 - making Compose the best way to build a Wear OS app as well.

We continue to see developers like the Twitter engineering team ship faster using Compose:

“Compose increased our productivity dramatically. It’s much easier and faster to write a Composable function than to create a custom view, and it’s also made it much easier to fulfill our designers’ requirements.”

Compose 1.2 includes a number of updates for Compose on Phones, Tablets and Foldables - it contains new stable APIs graduated from being experimental, and supports newer versions of Kotlin. We've already updated our samples, codelabs, Accompanist library and MDC-Android Compose Theme Adapter to work with Compose 1.2.

Note: Updating the Compose Compiler library to 1.2 requires using Kotlin 1.7.0. From this point forward the Compiler releases will be decoupled from the releases of other Compose libraries. Read more about the rationale for this in our blog post on independent versioning of Jetpack Compose libraries.

New stable features and APIs

Several features and APIs were added as stable. Highlights include:

New Experimental APIs

We’re continuing to bring new features to Compose. Here are a few highlights:

Try out the new APIs using @OptIn and give us feedback!

Fixed Bugs

We fixed a lot of issues raised by the community, most notably:

We’re grateful for all of the bug reports and feature requests submitted to our issue tracker - they help us to improve Compose and build the APIs you need. Do continue providing your feedback and help us make Compose better!

Wondering what’s next? Check out our updated roadmap to see the features we’re currently thinking about and working on, such as animations for lazy item additions and removals, flow layouts, text editing improvements and more!

Jetpack Compose continues to evolve with the features you’ve been asking for. We’ve been thrilled to see tens of thousands of apps using Jetpack Compose in production already, and many of you shared how it’s improved your app development. We can’t wait to see what you’ll build next!

Happy composing!

How to use App Engine Blobstore (Module 15)

Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, Google Cloud

Introduction and background

In our ongoing Serverless Migration Station mini-series aimed at helping developers modernize their serverless applications, one of the key objectives for Google App Engine developers is to upgrade to the latest language runtimes, such as from Python 2 to 3 or Java 8 to 17. Another goal is to demonstrate how to move away from App Engine legacy APIs (now referred to as "bundled services") to Cloud standalone replacement services. Once this has been accomplished, apps are much more portable, making them flexible enough to:

Developers building web apps that provide for user uploads or serve large files like videos or audio clips can benefit from convenient "blob" storage backing such functionality, and App Engine's Blobstore serves this specific purpose. As mentioned above, moving away from proprietary App Engine services like Blobstore makes user apps more portable. The original underlying Blobstore infrastructure eventually merged with the Cloud Storage service anyway, so it's logical to move completely to Cloud Storage when convenient, and this content is inform on this process.

Showing App Engine users how to use its Blobstore service
In today's Module 15 video, we begin this journey by showing users how to add Blobstore usage to a sample app, setting us up for our next move to Cloud Storage in Module 16. Similar videos in this series adding use of an App Engine bundled service start with a Python 2 sample app that has already migrated web frameworks from webapp2 to Flask, but not this time.

Blobstore for Python 2 has a dependency on webapp, the original App Engine micro framework replaced by webapp2 when the Python 2.5 runtime was deprecated in favor of 2.7. Because the Blobstore handlers were left "stuck" in webapp, it's better to start with a more generic webapp2 app prior to a Flask migration. This isn't an issue because we modernize this app completely in Module 16 by:

  • Migrating from webapp2 (and webapp) to Flask
  • Migrating from App Engine NDB to Cloud NDB
  • Migrating from App Engine Blobstore to Cloud Storage
  • Migrating from Python 2 to Python (2 and) 3

We'll go into more detail in Module 16, but it suffices to say that once those migrations are complete, the resulting app becomes portable enough for all the possibilities mentioned at the top.

Adding use of Blobstore

The original sample app registers individual web page "visits," storing visitor information such as the IP address and user agent, then displaying the most recent visits to the end-user. In today's video, we add one additional feature: allowing visitors to optionally augment their visits with a file artifact, like an image. Instead of registering a visit immediately, the visitor is first prompted to provide the artifact, as illustrated below.

The updated sample app's new artifact prompt page

The end-user can choose to do so or click a "Skip" button to opt-out. Once this process is complete, the same most recent visits page is then rendered, with one difference: an additional link to view a visit artifact if one's available.

The sample app's updated most recent visits page

Below is pseudocode representing the core part of the app that was altered to add Blobstore usage, namely new upload and download handlers as well as the changes required of the main handler. Upon the initial GET request, the artifact form is presented. When the user submits an artifact or skips, the upload handler POSTs back to home ("/") via an HTTP 307 to preserve the verb, and then the most recent visits page is rendered as expected. There, if the end-user wishes to view a visit artifact, they can click a "view" link where the download handler which fetches and returns the corresponding artifact from the Blobstore service, otherwise an HTTP 404 if the artifact wasn't found. The bolded lines represent the new or altered code.

Adding App Engine Blobstore usage to sample app

Wrap-up

In this "migration," we added Blobstore usage to support visit artifacts to the Module 0 baseline sample app and arrived at the finish line with the Module 15 sample app. To get hands-on experience doing it yourself, do the codelab by hand and follow along with the video. Then you'll be ready to upgrade to Cloud Storage should you choose to do so. 

In Fall 2021, the App Engine team extended support of many of the bundled services to 2nd generation runtimes (that have a 1st generation runtime), meaning you are no longer required to migrate to Cloud Storage when porting your app to Python 3. You can continue using Blobstore in your Python 3 app so long as you retrofit the code to access bundled services from next-generation runtimes. 

If you do want to move to Cloud Storage, Module 16 is next. You can also try its codelab to get a head start. All Serverless Migration Station content (codelabs, videos, source code [when available]) can be accessed at its open source repo. While our content initially focuses on Python users, the Cloud team is working on covering other language runtimes, so stay tuned. For additional video content, check out our broader Serverless Expeditions series.

Expanding testing for the Privacy Sandbox for the Web

Improving people's privacy, while giving businesses the tools they need to succeed online, is vital to the future of the open web. That's why we started the Privacy Sandbox initiative to collaborate with the ecosystem on developing privacy-preserving alternatives to third-party cookies and other forms of cross-site tracking. Over the past several months, we've released trial versions of a number of new Privacy Sandbox APIs in Chrome for developers to test.

Throughout this process, we’ve worked closely to refine our design proposals based on input from developers, publishers, marketers, and regulators via forums like the W3C, and earlier this year, we reached an agreement with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on how we develop and release the Privacy Sandbox in Chrome worldwide.

The most consistent feedback we’ve received is the need for more time to evaluate and test the new Privacy Sandbox technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome. This feedback aligns with our commitment to the CMA to ensure that the Privacy Sandbox provides effective, privacy-preserving technologies and the industry has sufficient time to adopt these new solutions. This deliberate approach to transitioning from third-party cookies ensures that the web can continue to thrive, without relying on cross-site tracking identifiers or covert techniques like fingerprinting.

For these reasons, we are expanding the testing windows for the Privacy Sandbox APIs before we disable third-party cookies in Chrome.

Developers can already test these APIs today, and beginning in early August, the Privacy Sandbox trials will expand to millions of users globally, and we’ll gradually increase the trial population throughout the rest of the year and into 2023. Before users are added into the trials, they will be shown a prompt giving them the option to manage their participation. As the web community tests these APIs, we’ll continue to listen and respond to feedback.

By Q3 2023, we expect the Privacy Sandbox APIs to be launched and generally available in Chrome. As developers adopt these APIs, we now intend to begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024.

Updated Privacy Sandbox for Web timeline

The updated timeline will soon be available on privacysandbox.com.

We're grateful to be working with companies across the industry who are invested in developing privacy-first experiences on the web, and will be testing Privacy Sandbox in the coming months.

  • quote from Masanaga Konishi
  • quote from Todd Parsons
  • quote from Townsend Feehan
  • quote from Sundeep Parsa

The Privacy Sandbox initiative is an ambitious undertaking for the entire industry, and we look forward to continuing to engage with the web community as testing expands.

Source: Google Chrome


Beta Channel Update for Desktop

The Beta channel has been updated to 104.0.5112.65 for Windows,Mac and Linux.

A full list of changes in this build is available in the log. Interested in switching release channels? Find out how here. If you find a new issues, please let us know by filing a bug. The community help forum is also a great place to reach out for help or learn about common issues.


Srinivas Sista Google Chrome

New video editing and productivity features coming to Chromebook

Today we’re announcing new features and apps for Chromebook to take your creativity and productivity to the next level. Whether you’re enjoying your favorite music or movies, creating a vacation highlight reel or powering through work, Chromebook lets you do it all with speed, security and ease — right out of the box.

Over the next few months we’ll roll out new Chromebook features, including video editing tools in the Google Photos app to help you showcase your summer adventures, enhanced app capabilities and features to help you get organized and get things done.

Get in the director’s chair with Google Photos

Share your favorite memories with friends and family and bring your creativity to life with Google Photos’ new movie editor and video editing features — available first on Chromebook this fall.

The upcoming Google Photos movie editor displays on the screen. In the center is a still from a video clip of two people bicycles, with an editing menu open to let the user adjust brightness, contrast, whitepoints and more.

A peek at Google Photos’ new movie editor coming to Chromebook (UI subject to change)

Creating an end-to-end movie made up of multiple video clips, photos, a title card and music can come with a learning curve and take a lot of time. But Google Photos’ revamped movie creation tools help you make high-quality movies with just a few taps. You’ll be able to create beautiful movies from suggested themes, or put yourself in the director’s seat and start from scratch, right on your Chromebook.

Start by selecting a theme and the people (or pets!) you’d like to feature, and Google Photos will make a movie with both video clips and photos. It even intelligently selects the most meaningful moments from your long videos.

For those who like more creative control, you can also build your own movie from scratch with the Google Photos movie editor. Google Photos’ search capabilities make it easy to select, then arrange photos and clips in the order you’d like.

Whether you start from a theme or a blank slate, you’ll be able to trim video clips, or edit them to adjust the brightness, contrast and more. Or you can apply one of the Real Tone filters we added earlier this year – these filters were made to work well across skin tones, so you can choose from a wide assortment of looks to find one that reflects your style. You can also add finishing touches, like music and a title card, to make your movie shine.

GIF walks through the steps of creating a movie from a suggested theme on Google Photos. “Friendship movie” is selected, then two people are chosen – from there, a movie is produced using clips of these people.

Select a theme, like “Friendship movie”, and choose who you want to include and Google Photos will create a movie with clips and photos (UI subject to change)

Google Photos integrates with Chromebook’s Gallery and Files apps, so if you open a video in the Gallery app, you can continue editing it in Google Photos with a tap. You can also use images and videos saved on your Chromebook in the movies you make on the Google Photos app.

And for professional-grade video editing, the LumaFusion app is also coming to Chromebooks. LumaFusion’s multitrack video editor lets you add graphics, visual effects, transitions and distortions, audio tracks and sound effects, narration, color grading and more.

No matter what kind of movie you want to create, from a summer highlight reel to a short film, Chromebook’s versatile and easy-to-use tools and apps have you covered.

Meet new apps, and get more out of your favorites

Whether you’re diving into forecasting at work or preparing and planning for back-to-school season, Chromebook’s preinstalled apps are ready to help. Here are a few new ones we recommend trying out:

  • Gallery app. We’re introducing new PDF editing features to Gallery, Chomebook’s default media app, so you can fill out forms, highlight text, sign documents and add text annotations. No more printing and scanning just to sign a form. You’ll start to see this roll out next week.
  • Screencast app. Anyone can now use Screencast to record, view and share transcribed videos and presentations, whether it’s a virtual lesson or a how-to video or demo.
  • Cursive app. Capture, edit and organize handwritten notes on stylus-enabled Chromebooks. When it's time to share, you can quickly copy and paste your notes into another app or send as a PDF.
A PDF of a lease agreement is on the screen. It’s been highlighted and signatures have been added.

Using the Gallery app you’ll be able to annotate, highlight, edit, and sign PDFs.

And of course, when it’s time to go back to school or catch up on work after a long summer vacation, Google Workspace apps — like Docs, Calendar, Meet and Chat — are already on Chromebook. Whether you’re catching up on emails or collaborating on a group project you paused weeks ago, all of your files will be waiting on Google Drive. And when you want to kick back and relax, entertainment apps are just a tap away. Check the latest trends on YouTube, update your “Summer 2022” playlist on YouTube Music or play a game on Stadia.

A GIF of logos of Chromebook’s preinstalled apps, including Docs, Sheets, Gallery, Camera, Meet, and more.

For creativity, easy-to-use design tools like Canva, Figma and Adobe Express are made to work easily on Chromebook so you can create everything from beautiful presentations to professional-looking social media posts. Apps like FL Studio help you arrange, record, mix and master quality music, and add instruments like synthesizers, drum kits and more.

For a little more support in and out of class, Evernote helps you keep your life organized with great note-taking, project planning and easy ways to find what you’re looking for. Plus, get expert advice to help you succeed from Outlier.org, which provides world-class online college education from the founders of MasterClass. And you have 1000+ powerful PC games on NVIDIA GeForce NOW and Luna to help you unwind.

Check out special offers on some of these apps and others — perfect for college students heading back to school in the U.S.

Manage your life and make Chromebook your own

Recently we’ve added new ways to help you get things done easily, like the newly redesigned Launcher that lets you find what you need with the press of a button, and additions to cross-device features like Phone Hub and Nearby Share. In the next few months, we’re also rolling out some new organization and productivity features to help you manage your schedule and stay focused, with some new ways to personalize your Chromebook.

  • Chromebook screen with a pink background. The new Wallpaper & style app is open, and in it users can select a wallpaper, screensaver, and theme.

    If you’re not the type to plaster your laptop with stickers on the outside, you can now personalize your Chromebook in new ways. Now you can set your wallpaper from one of your Google Photos albums – and even have it automatically change daily. Imagine waking up to see your photos rotate between your friends, parents, pets… you get the idea. You can also see your favorite pictures sway in the breeze or gently float across your screen using one of the new screensaver photo frames.

  • A GIF showing a Chromebook screen going from Light theme to Dark theme. The pink background shifts to a darker red, and the shelf also becomes darker.

    We’re introducing light and dark themes. The “light” theme keeps things bright and airy, while “dark” makes for easy reading at night or in low light, and can help conserve power. You can choose to keep your laptop on one theme all the time, or choose “auto” to have your Chromebook automatically transition from light to dark when day turns to night. Bonus: some new wallpapers are made for both themes, so your wallpaper will subtly shift from light to dark, too.

  • The GIF starts with several windows open in a desk titled “Research Project”. The user taps on “save for later” and the desk contents condense, and several saved desks show on the screen.

    You might already use virtual desks to keep all your related apps and windows grouped and organized when you’re focusing on a specific project, like one desk for a research project and another for planning a vacation (as you can see, I think a lot about vacations). Soon you’ll be able to save and close an entire desk, including all windows and apps — perfect for when it’s time to shift gears and focus on emailing friends or family. When you’re ready to get back to it, you can open your saved windows and tabs with a tap. And once your project is done (and who doesn’t love that feeling?), you can also close all open windows at once.

  • The new monthly calendar view is open on the right side of the screen.

    Last but not least, tap on the date on your Chromebook shelf and a monthly calendar will now pop up on the side of your screen. Select any date to see your Google Calendar events in more detail and check your availability at a glance – no need to open another app or browser tab. Notifications are also getting an upgrade. Notifications from the same sender will be grouped together, plus larger buttons make it easier to join a meeting or respond to a message, right from the notification.

We’re keeping busy through the rest of the summer making Chromebook even more useful and powerful. We’ll be back to share more updates soon.

New video editing and productivity features coming to Chromebook

Today we’re announcing new features and apps for Chromebook to take your creativity and productivity to the next level. Whether you’re enjoying your favorite music or movies, creating a vacation highlight reel or powering through work, Chromebook lets you do it all with speed, security and ease — right out of the box.

Over the next few months we’ll roll out new Chromebook features, including video editing tools in the Google Photos app to help you showcase your summer adventures, enhanced app capabilities and features to help you get organized and get things done.

Get in the director’s chair with Google Photos

Share your favorite memories with friends and family and bring your creativity to life with Google Photos’ new movie editor and video editing features — available first on Chromebook this fall.

The upcoming Google Photos movie editor displays on the screen. In the center is a still from a video clip of two people bicycles, with an editing menu open to let the user adjust brightness, contrast, whitepoints and more.

A peek at Google Photos’ new movie editor coming to Chromebook (UI subject to change)

Creating an end-to-end movie made up of multiple video clips, photos, a title card and music can come with a learning curve and take a lot of time. But Google Photos’ revamped movie creation tools help you make high-quality movies with just a few taps. You’ll be able to create beautiful movies from suggested themes, or put yourself in the director’s seat and start from scratch, right on your Chromebook.

Start by selecting a theme and the people (or pets!) you’d like to feature, and Google Photos will make a movie with both video clips and photos. It even intelligently selects the most meaningful moments from your long videos.

For those who like more creative control, you can also build your own movie from scratch with the Google Photos movie editor. Google Photos’ search capabilities make it easy to select, then arrange photos and clips in the order you’d like.

Whether you start from a theme or a blank slate, you’ll be able to trim video clips, or edit them to adjust the brightness, contrast and more. Or you can apply one of the Real Tone filters we added earlier this year – these filters were made to work well across skin tones, so you can choose from a wide assortment of looks to find one that reflects your style. You can also add finishing touches, like music and a title card, to make your movie shine.

GIF walks through the steps of creating a movie from a suggested theme on Google Photos. “Friendship movie” is selected, then two people are chosen – from there, a movie is produced using clips of these people.

Select a theme, like “Friendship movie”, and choose who you want to include and Google Photos will create a movie with clips and photos (UI subject to change)

Google Photos integrates with Chromebook’s Gallery and Files apps, so if you open a video in the Gallery app, you can continue editing it in Google Photos with a tap. You can also use images and videos saved on your Chromebook in the movies you make on the Google Photos app.

And for professional-grade video editing, the LumaFusion app is also coming to Chromebooks. LumaFusion’s multitrack video editor lets you add graphics, visual effects, transitions and distortions, audio tracks and sound effects, narration, color grading and more.

No matter what kind of movie you want to create, from a summer highlight reel to a short film, Chromebook’s versatile and easy-to-use tools and apps have you covered.

Meet new apps, and get more out of your favorites

Whether you’re diving into forecasting at work or preparing and planning for back-to-school season, Chromebook’s preinstalled apps are ready to help. Here are a few new ones we recommend trying out:

  • Gallery app. We’re introducing new PDF editing features to Gallery, Chomebook’s default media app, so you can fill out forms, highlight text, sign documents and add text annotations. No more printing and scanning just to sign a form. You’ll start to see this roll out next week.
  • Screencast app. Anyone can now use Screencast to record, view and share transcribed videos and presentations, whether it’s a virtual lesson or a how-to video or demo.
  • Cursive app. Capture, edit and organize handwritten notes on stylus-enabled Chromebooks. When it's time to share, you can quickly copy and paste your notes into another app or send as a PDF.
A PDF of a lease agreement is on the screen. It’s been highlighted and signatures have been added.

Using the Gallery app you’ll be able to annotate, highlight, edit, and sign PDFs.

And of course, when it’s time to go back to school or catch up on work after a long summer vacation, Google Workspace apps — like Docs, Calendar, Meet and Chat — are already on Chromebook. Whether you’re catching up on emails or collaborating on a group project you paused weeks ago, all of your files will be waiting on Google Drive. And when you want to kick back and relax, entertainment apps are just a tap away. Check the latest trends on YouTube, update your “Summer 2022” playlist on YouTube Music or play a game on Stadia.

A GIF of logos of Chromebook’s preinstalled apps, including Docs, Sheets, Gallery, Camera, Meet, and more.

For creativity, easy-to-use design tools like Canva, Figma and Adobe Express are made to work easily on Chromebook so you can create everything from beautiful presentations to professional-looking social media posts. Apps like FL Studio help you arrange, record, mix and master quality music, and add instruments like synthesizers, drum kits and more.

For a little more support in and out of class, Evernote helps you keep your life organized with great note-taking, project planning and easy ways to find what you’re looking for. Plus, get expert advice to help you succeed from Outlier.org, which provides world-class online college education from the founders of MasterClass. And you have 1000+ powerful PC games on NVIDIA GeForce NOW and Luna to help you unwind.

Check out special offers on some of these apps and others — perfect for college students heading back to school in the U.S.

Manage your life and make Chromebook your own

Recently we’ve added new ways to help you get things done easily, like the newly redesigned Launcher that lets you find what you need with the press of a button, and additions to cross-device features like Phone Hub and Nearby Share. In the next few months, we’re also rolling out some new organization and productivity features to help you manage your schedule and stay focused, with some new ways to personalize your Chromebook.

  • Chromebook screen with a pink background. The new Wallpaper & style app is open, and in it users can select a wallpaper, screensaver, and theme.

    If you’re not the type to plaster your laptop with stickers on the outside, you can now personalize your Chromebook in new ways. Now you can set your wallpaper from one of your Google Photos albums – and even have it automatically change daily. Imagine waking up to see your photos rotate between your friends, parents, pets… you get the idea. You can also see your favorite pictures sway in the breeze or gently float across your screen using one of the new screensaver photo frames.

  • A GIF showing a Chromebook screen going from Light theme to Dark theme. The pink background shifts to a darker red, and the shelf also becomes darker.

    We’re introducing light and dark themes. The “light” theme keeps things bright and airy, while “dark” makes for easy reading at night or in low light, and can help conserve power. You can choose to keep your laptop on one theme all the time, or choose “auto” to have your Chromebook automatically transition from light to dark when day turns to night. Bonus: some new wallpapers are made for both themes, so your wallpaper will subtly shift from light to dark, too.

  • The GIF starts with several windows open in a desk titled “Research Project”. The user taps on “save for later” and the desk contents condense, and several saved desks show on the screen.

    You might already use virtual desks to keep all your related apps and windows grouped and organized when you’re focusing on a specific project, like one desk for a research project and another for planning a vacation (as you can see, I think a lot about vacations). Soon you’ll be able to save and close an entire desk, including all windows and apps — perfect for when it’s time to shift gears and focus on emailing friends or family. When you’re ready to get back to it, you can open your saved windows and tabs with a tap. And once your project is done (and who doesn’t love that feeling?), you can also close all open windows at once.

  • The new monthly calendar view is open on the right side of the screen.

    Last but not least, tap on the date on your Chromebook shelf and a monthly calendar will now pop up on the side of your screen. Select any date to see your Google Calendar events in more detail and check your availability at a glance – no need to open another app or browser tab. Notifications are also getting an upgrade. Notifications from the same sender will be grouped together, plus larger buttons make it easier to join a meeting or respond to a message, right from the notification.

We’re keeping busy through the rest of the summer making Chromebook even more useful and powerful. We’ll be back to share more updates soon.

9 ways to make the most of your Chromecast

The year 2013: when we were all snacking on endless fro-yo, discussing season three of “Game of Thrones” with anyone who would listen and laughing out loud to the best clips on Vine. But did you know it was also the year we introduced Chromecast to the world?

Since then, Chromecast continues to be the one of the simplest options for you to see your photos on the big screen, gather round a virtual fireplace on YouTube over the holidays or catch up on your favorite show — all with one device.

So to celebrate nine years of our favorite streamer that's only getting better with age (we're a little biased), we're rounding up nine features to help you to make the most of your Chromecast:

  1. See who’s at your door. Today we’re announcing Chromecast with Google TV is rolling out support for live video streaming from Nest Cam (outdoor or indoor, battery), Nest Cam (indoor, wired), Nest Cam with floodlight and Nest Doorbell (battery) – which means all your Nest Cams and Nest doorbells are supported. Now you can quickly see a live view of your cameras from the comfort of your couch – so you can know for sure when your pizza delivery shows up at your front door on movie night.
  2. Mirror your Android screen or Chrome tab to the big screen. Looking at a menu with your family before heading out to dinner? Or planning your next vacation destination with your friends? No matter what information you’re sharing, you can easily cast to a TV or other screen.
  3. Show off your photos on a TV with Chromecast. When you’re back from that vacation, show off your photos with the Google Photos app. Just select the photo or album you want to cast and display it on your TV. Then you can swipe between photos to change what’s displayed.
  4. Cast your meetings to the big screen. With the Google Meet app, you can cast your meeting to the TV while continuing to use your computer's camera, microphone and audio. Perfect for virtual family reunions.
  5. The control is yours with Chromecast. Chromecast with Google TV comes with a physical remote, which has been one of our most requested features since Chromecast’s early days. But you can also use your phone, your TV remote or your voice - just say, “Hey Google, play ‘The Umbrella Academy’ on the living room TV” to your Assistant-enabled device.
  6. Continue casting even when you leave the room. You don’t need to worry about playback being interrupted if you need to leave the house for a bit, or if you walk outside of your Wi-Fi coverage area. So if you need to run to the store to grab more ice, the party inside can continue.
  7. Let your friends and family join in on the party with a shared queue. In the YouTube app, anyone connected to the same Wi-Fi as your Chromecast can tap the Cast icon on a YouTube video and add it to a shared playlist so everyone can contribute to what you’re watching or listening to.
  8. Move your media from room to room. Ready to move to another room but don’t want to stop listening to the latest episode of your favorite podcast? You can easily move music, podcasts or radio currently streaming from your Google Nest or Home speaker or display, or Chromecast device to another Nest speaker, speaker group, display, or Chromecast-connected device so you don’t have to worry about missing a thing. You can also move YouTube videos between Google Nest displays and Chromecast devices.
  9. Cast with Android, iOS or Chrome on PC and Mac. We wanted to make it easy to cast from as many devices as possible, whether you’re on Android, iOS or on your computer. It’s as simple as tapping Cast from a compatible app, selecting your Chromecast and tapping play.