From Oreo to Jelly Bean, here’s how to turn off notifications in Android

One of the main strengths of the Android platform has always been the notifications system. Sadly, some app developers seem to abuse it in order to spam you with promotional messages, enticements to fire up their app, and plain old pointless updates. The obvious answer is to uninstall the offending software, but what if it’s an app or a game that you enjoy using? There must be another way, right? Let’s find out.

Google continues to tweak the way notifications are handled with every new version of Android, and some manufacturers make their own changes, but these instructions should help you get a handle on those incoming alerts. We’re going to look at how to block notifications for individual apps in different Android versions, but there is a way to block everything and set exceptions that will still get through. In Android 6.0 Marshmallow we got a new mode to handle notifications and set times when they should be muted. Check out how to use Do Not Disturb mode to find out more about that.

How to turn off notifications in Android 8.0 Oreo

In Android 8.0 Oreo you get more fine-tuned control of your notifications than ever before. Tapping a notification in Android 8.0 Oreo will still open the app that sent it, but you can also swipe from right to left to close the notification.

If you swipe just part of the way from right to left you’ll reveal two icons. The gear icon gives you the option to block notifications from that app or game. You might see a simple toggle to turn notifications off for that app, with the option to tap More settings to jump to the app’s notifications page. Or you might get the option to tap All categories to see exactly what notifications that app or service sends and toggle them off individually. The clock icon allows you to snooze the notification and choose a time period to snooze it for.

To review and set notifications the way you want them for all apps go to Settings > Apps & notifications > Notifications > App notifications, then tap the individual apps and decide what notifications you want them to send.

You can also turn off all lock screen notifications via Settings > Apps & notifications > Notifications > On the lock screen and then Don’t show notifications at all.

Check out our Android 8.0 Oreo tips to find out more about this version of Google’s platform.

How to turn off notifications in Android 7.0 Nougat

In Android 7.0 Nougat tapping a notification will open the app or game that sent it, but you can also swipe right to left to close a notification. If you just swipe slightly from right to left, then you’ll reveal a gear icon on the right. Tap the gear icon and you’ll find the option to silence or block notifications from that app or game. You can also tap More settings at the bottom to jump to the app’s notification page and make further changes.

If you want to run through your apps and games and set notification rules all at once, then head into Settings > Notifications and choose All apps from the drop down menu. Tap on each individual app to access its notification settings.

You might want to delve into our Android 7.0 Nougat tips to find out what else it can do.

How to turn off notifications in Android 5.0 Lollipop and above

Google made some changes in Android 5.0 Lollipop to offer you a lot more control over the notifications you see. For the first time you had a dedicated notification section, and some real power to discern what you do and don’t get bothered by.

When a notification pops up in your notification shade you can simply long press on it to bring up a link to the notification page for that app via the “i” icon. It’s a shortcut to the app notification page, which you’ll also find listed at Settings > Sound & notification > App notifications. Every app is listed here and you can decide if you want to turn notifications off by toggling the Block option.

You can also use the Priority option to ensure that notifications gravitate to the top of your notification list and still come through when you’ve turned on Allow only priority interruptions via Settings > Sound & notification > Interruptions > When notifications arrive.

If you use a PIN, pattern, or password for screen lock then you can also set notifications as Sensitive, which will prevent the notification content showing up on your lock screen. For example, you’ll get a notification about a new email, but it won’t display any of the content in the email.

How to turn off notifications in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and above

If you’re rocking Jelly Bean or KitKat on your Android device, then feel free to dance round the room in celebration. Your task is easy. The fact that Google worked in a system for identifying the app responsible and turning notifications off forevermore is a pretty clear sign that notification spam is becoming a problem.

When an offending notification pops up, simply long press on it and App info will pop up. Tap on that and you’ll be taken straight to the app management screen where you can uncheck the Show notifications box and free yourself from spam. It does mean that all notifications from that app will be turned off. As the warning states “If you turn off notifications for this app, you may miss important alerts and updates.”

You can also go to Settings > Apps and slide over the All tab and run through each app, unchecking that Show notifications box for anything you don’t want bothering you.

How to turn off notifications in older versions of Android

The horrible truth with older versions of Android is that you are at the mercy of the app developer. Each individual app handles its own notification system. To see whether you can turn off or customize your notifications you need to fire up the app in question and hit the Menu button. You should find a notifications option in Settings. There is no standard, so it could be anywhere, or it might not be an option at all.

Big apps like Facebook have a whole range of notification options so you can decide on alerts, vibrations, and choose ringtones, as well as dictating exactly what should trigger an alert. Some apps don’t have any notification options at all.

Customizing notifications

If you have the option to set a ringtone for your notifications within an individual app’s settings, then you can get around the main annoyance they cause, which is making you think something important has popped up on your phone. Set the same ringtone for nonessential updates and you don’t need to turn notifications off, but you’ll instantly know it isn’t that text you’re waiting for.

It is also a good idea to set different ringtones and vibrations for different things so you have a good idea whether it’s something you need to check or not. Most people have ringtone and vibrate for calls, and maybe just vibrate for texts and emails. You might find additional options depending on the phone you have.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Google kicks off the Android Wear beta program with Android 8.0 Oreo
• Google to add Android-like in-line notification replies to Chrome OS
• Top 5 Android security apps: The best antivirus protection for Android
• How to install Android apps on a Chromebook
• Stop those unwanted phone calls and learn how to block a number in Android

Your Sonos or Bose speaker (probably) isn’t haunted, but it could be hacked

The idea of your internet-connected speakers and other smart devices talking to each other might sound crazy, but it’s more likely than you think. At least it is now that hackers have found a way to play any sound they want on certain speakers from Sonos and Bose, as Wired reports.

Cybersecurity company Trend Micro has found that models from Sonos, including the Sonos One and Sonos Play:1, as well as some Bose SoundTouch speakers, can be found relatively easily by remote attackers. Trend Micro found that between 2,000 and 5,000 Sonos devices could be found online, depending on the time of day, while 400 to 500 Bose systems could be found. Once the speaker is found, an attacker can play any audio of their choice through the speaker without much work.

While playing audio doesn’t sound like much of a threat — especially when compared to your smart home devices being made part of a botnet — it isn’t as innocuous as it sounds. Attackers could, for example, use a compromised speaker to play Alexa or Google Home commands. With our homes increasingly hosting these types of devices, and in the case of the Sonos One, having Alexa built in, this could give an attacker free reign over your smart devices.

Despite the potential consequences that this vulnerability could lead to, for the time being, there don’t seem to be reports of much beyond simple pranks. Earlier this year, a post by a Sonos owner on the company’s community forum complained of a series of spooky sounds emanating from their speaker — first the sound of a door opening, then glass breaking, then a baby crying. Eventually the customer pulled the plug to stop the sound.

Fortunately, this shouldn’t pose a problem for the average Sonos or Bose owner. Most home networks are secure enough to prevent the access needed for this type of attack. If, on the other hand, you’re running a game server or allowing other types of access to your home network from the internet, you might want to tighten up your security settings.

Sonos has issued a patch aimed at fixing this issue, and while Bose has yet to comment on the issue, it’s likely that a similar fix is on the way.

Editors’ Recommendations

• New Sonos One smart speaker supports Alexa and Google Assistant
• Amazon Echo Spot review
• Sonos One review
• You can now control Sonos smart speakers directly from the Pandora app
• Amazon Echo Plus review

What’s so great about stock Android?

Our forum users talk about whether or not stock Android is truly better than custom OEM skins.

If you’ve been in the Android space for any amount of time, you’ve likely heard people talk about how much better stock Android is when compared to custom skins created by OEMs. This is a debate that’s been going on for years now, and while the general consensus among a lot of folks has been that stock is king, some of our forum users recently got to talking about why exactly this is.

While Android skins have gotten a lot lighter and less cluttered recently, there’s still no denying that there are certain software advantages you get with a phone like Google Pixel 2 over the Galaxy S8. Stock Android really shines when it comes to things like smooth performance and reliability, but I’ll let our forum users do the talking now.

MooMooPrincess
12-24-2017 10:08 PM

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There’s really no stock Android anymore. Even the pixel comes with Google’s own launcher now.

But I get what you mean and for me it’s just way smoother and everything to me is just clean and minimalist like I try to live my life.

Reply

digitalbreak
12-24-2017 10:17 PM

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It’s the duplicate apps. If only all these OEMs stop investing in building their own dialers, messages and many more and just use Google apps. They could have those in the Play Store as an optional download but baking it into the firmware is where it gets problematic.

This is the biggest reason folks choose Pixel over other Android phones. However you can now see many companies actually use…

Reply

AustinTech
12-25-2017 09:05 AM

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I fell in love with stock Android with the Nexus 6P. Such a smooth and liberating experience! Other phones at the time had janky software and some pretty bad color accents plus updates (particularly security) were very slow. The 6P has a great camera, the first for a Nexus device.

Well, things have changed now. A lot of the jank has disappeared and at least with Samsung, security updates are…

Reply

donm527
12-25-2017 06:16 PM

“

In the past the difference between Stock Android and the rest was much clearer to see… Companies like Samsung and HTC and LG created crap like TouchWiz and WebSense that were just terrible and with TouchWiz for example you have the infamous lag in their OS after owning it for a short time.

I personally never cared for TouchWiz and wouldnt never buy a Samsung because of it. The Note 7 was the…

Reply

Aquila
12-26-2017 10:14 AM

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Less bloat, faster, smoother, visually better (IMO), apparently easier to update in a timely manner + this is Android, not iOS. The vast majority of a normal user experience comes from the Play Store, not from the OEM.

Also, giving Samsung (or LG, etc) access to user data means being subjected to their privacy policies, etc. – which, if data privacy and security are important to that user,…

Reply

What about you – Do you prefer stock Android over manufacturer skins?

Join the conversation in the forums!

10 quick things you can do to make your Android phone run faster

Give your phone a tune-up this holiday season.

So you bought a shiny new phone, and a few months later you realize it isn’t as fast as it used to be. We’ve all been there, and the issue isn’t limited to budget phones either — devices like the Galaxy S8 are also prone to the occasional slowdown after several months of usage.

Thankfully, you can try a few things to get your phone running back at full speed. We’ve also listed a few battery optimizations that should help you get the most out of your phone’s battery.

Use Files Go to clean up your storage

Google’s file management app is great. It not only analyzes your phone for unused files and apps, but also lets you easily transfer files.

The app has a minimalist design with two tabs: Storage and Files. From the Storage tab, you get an overview of the amount of storage you have left on your phone, as well as tips on how to free up space. You’ll also be able to easily clear apps’ cached data from within Files Go.

It does a great job when it comes to finding unnecessary files on your phone, which is very useful if you’re using a phone with 16GB or even 8GB of internal storage. The app is particularly useful if you’ve ever used Lenovo’s ShareIt to transfer content to another device.

Download: Files Go (Free)

Disable (or uninstall) bloatware and unused apps

Most phones aside from the Pixels and Android One devices come with some form of bloatware. Thankfully, you can disable — or in some cases uninstall — most of the apps that come pre-installed on your phone if you’re not going to use them.

Just go to Settings > Apps to see all the apps installed on your phone. When you find an app that you don’t recognize, uninstall or disable it. You can also use Files Go to identify unused apps on your phone, and delete them as needed.

Install lightweight versions of apps

If you’re using a phone with limited memory and storage, using a poorly-optimized app can cause a lot of frustrations. Facebook is the perfect example, as the app tends to feel sluggish even on a brand new Pixel 2 XL. On a budget phone like the Moto G5 Plus, the overall experience can be summed up as

Thankfully, Facebook has a lightweight version of its app that works just as well while utilizing a fraction of the resources of the full-fledged app. Facebook Lite was initially designed to run on entry-level devices in emerging markets, but the app soon became available globally.

You can easily find lightweight versions of your favorite apps.

Facebook Lite is optimized to work on 2G connections, and on devices with as low as 1GB of RAM. It has a tiny footprint — coming in at under 5MB — and offers a similar set of features as the regular app. You’ll still be able to scroll through your news feed, post status updates, comment on your friends’ posts, find local events, and more.

If you’re an avid Facebook user and are tired of the full-fledged app bringing your phone to a crawl, you should definitely give Facebook Lite a go. Facebook also has a lightweight version of Messenger called Messenger Lite.

Twitter has a lightweight client as well, and while it’s not an app, you can access your timeline, send tweets, and more by heading to the mobile Twitter site. If you use Skype to communicate with your friends and family, then there’s Skype Lite. This particular app is designed for India, and may not be available in all markets.

Google also has lightweight versions of YouTube and Search available.

See if you have the latest update installed

It’s good practice to make sure your phone is up to date, as manufacturers tend to roll out regular updates containing bug fixes and stability improvements. Google also issues monthly security updates, which are crucial as they offer fixes for security vulnerabilities. While you may not see a huge difference in the overall user experience when installing a security patch, major platform updates and maintenance releases tend to feature a laundry list of fixes that significantly improve the performance of your phone.

However, far too few companies deliver monthly updates consistently, and more often than not your phone is likely to get one security patch once every three months. A lot of this is down to the way these updates are structured, and without going into the weeds too much, the update situation is a problem that needs fixing. That said, even when an update is available, there’s a percentage of users just don’t take the effort to install it.

For instance, if your phone is still on Marshmallow (29.7% of all Android devices currently are on Android 6.0), there’s a high likelihood that the Nougat update is available for your device. Just head into Settings -> About phone -> System update to check. If there is an update waiting, install it.

Clean up your home screen

Using a live wallpaper tends to slow things to a crawl, particularly if you’re using a budget phone. If you’re seeing a lot of lag when switching between apps or when exiting an app to go back to the home screen, try switching to a static background and see if it helps.

If you’re looking for lightweight live wallpapers that don’t consume a lot of resources, you can try out Google’s Wallpapers app, as well as Minima.

Try another launcher

OnePlus and Motorola offer a user interface that’s close to “pure” Android, and in recent years HTC and Sony have also dialed back on the customizations. Samsung has also opted for a clean and modern interface with its latest version of Samsung Experience, but its South Korean compatriot LG has a long way to go in this area. The same goes for Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo, which see their custom skin as a differentiator.

EMUI and MIUI in particular are heavily skinned, and more often than not you’ll feel like the interface is cumbersome to navigate thanks to the overt customizations. Thankfully, you can get around this by switching to a third-party launcher. Apps like Nova Launcher and Action Launcher let you customize every facet of the user interface, giving you the ability to personalize your phone.

Nova Launcher is one of the best options available, and it’s on sale right now for just 99 cents, down from its usual price of $4.99. If your phone’s default interface is starting to get bloated, you should consider a third-party launcher.

Best Android launchers

See what’s running in the background

If you notice your phone’s battery draining faster than usual, it’s usually down to an errant app hogging up the CPU cycles. Apps running in the background also tend to use up the battery, so it’s a good bet to regularly monitor your phone’s battery usage from the settings.

Head into Settings > Battery to track down the misbehaving app, and hit Force stop to remove it from running in the background.

Disable ambient screen

An always-on display comes in handy if you want to take a quick look at the incoming notifications without having to unlock your phone, but the feature comes at the cost of battery life. If you’re seeing a drop-off in your device’s battery life, turning off the ambient display mode is one way to fix the issue.

Turn Bluetooth off when not needed

Turning off unused radios will allow you to extend your phone’s battery life. The difference may not amount to much, but for every little bit helps, and for things you’re not going to use all the time, like Bluetooth, it makes sense to switch it off when when not in use.

It isn’t advisable to turn off location services, as most apps need some sort of location information to run.

Don’t install a battery optimizer

This may seem counter-intuitive, but most “battery fixer” apps are pure garbage. These “utilities” do nothing more than remove the apps running in the background and clear your phone’s cache, but you often have to deal with intrusive ads and even malware.

If you’re seeing constant slowdowns and apps take a long time to load, it’s a better idea to remove apps running in the background by hitting the overview button and clearing them individually. And for clearing the cache, you can always rely on Google’s Files Go.

Your turn

What workarounds do you use to speed up your phone? Let us know in the comments below.

Pixel 2 leads smartphone activations in U.S., Samsung sees growth worldwide

Google dominated holiday activations in the U.S., but it’s nowhere to be seen on a global scale.

During this holiday season, there’s a good chance you either got a new phone or purchased one for someone else. Smartphones are excellent gifts to both give and receive, and now that the holiday rush is starting to die down, it’s time to take a look at activations of new phones to see which companies owned the market this year.

On the global front, Samsung saw a strong second place position in the week leading up to Christmas. The company accounted for 26% of all smartphone activations, creating a 5% year-over-year growth compared to this time in 2016. Huawei followed up in third place with 5% of all activations, with Xiaomi, Motorola, and LG making up the rest of the top five at 3% each. As for first place, Apple saw a big win at the number one spot with 44% of all activations.

Holiday smartphone activations around the world.

As you can see from the graph above, Google’s nowhere to be seen despite releasing the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL back in October. Google still has a lot of work to do when it comes to establishing a strong global presence, but when we look at smartphone activations during the Christmas weekend in the U.S. only, we end up with a different story.

In this scenario, Google took both first and second place with the Pixel 2 seeing a 38.61% increase in sales during the Christmas weekend compared to weeks prior. As for the Pixel 2 XL, it followed up with 31.41%. Localytics attributes this strong performance to the various promotions that were offered by Best Buy, Verizon, and the Google Store, and considering that you could get up to $300 off a Pixel 2 by simply activating it on Verizon with a monthly installment plan, that makes perfectly good sense.

Holiday smartphone activations in the U.S.

Apple snatched up third through eighth places with its myriad of phones and tablets, and Samsung took the ninth and tenth spots with its Note 8 and S8, respectively.

If you got a new smartphone or bought one for someone else, what did you buy and why?

The FCC just approved the first over the air charging system

Snapchat wants you to watch Stories outside of its app

Get ready to see Snapchat Stories everywhere you go.

Ever since Snapchat launched its Stories feature, we’ve seen endless clones from the likes of Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. Stories has become the bread and butter of Snapchat for a lot of users, and according to a new report, we could soon start seeing them outside of the Snapchat app for the first time ever.

Per sources that have spoken to Cheddar, “Stories Everywhere” is a new product Snapchat is developing that’ll allow Stories to be shared online and on other social networks. The idea is similar to how Twitter and YouTube allow you to embed tweets/videos on other sites, and it’d enable Snapchat’s content to be shared on a much broader scale than ever before.

Snapchat is said to be developing Stories Everywhere with Rahul Chopra (former Senior Vice President and Global Head of Video at News Corp), and while Stories Everywhere is still in its early stages, it’s already suspected that you’ll be able to view Stories with a web player that’ll ask you to also download the Snapchat app and sign up if you haven’t already at some point while watching them.

This news follows just about a month after Snapchat announced the redesigned UI for its app, and with competition in the social space never letting up, big moves like this just might be what Snapchat needs in order to stay alive and well.

Custom Snapchat Lenses can now be made on Windows and Mac with Lens Studio

Android Central’s Best of 2017 Awards

The Android world never stops moving. It starts with the crazy variety of phones and tablets from dozens of different companies, but gets even more interesting when you thrown in all of the phone accessories, Chromebooks, smart home devices, Google’s services and all of the apps we use every day.

These are the best of the best that we’ve seen come across our desks and be part of our lives over 2017. They’re our Android Central Best of 2017 winners!

Best Hardware of the Year

Best Android phone

Google Pixel 2

Google makes the quickest, smartest and most consistent software, and wraps it in strong hardware filled with great specs. And the camera absolutely leads the industry.

Runners up: Samsung Galaxy S8 LG V30

Best less-expensive Android phone

OnePlus 5T

The OnePlus 5T isn’t just the best phone deal of the year, but it’s the most impressive $500 phone we’ve seen. OnePlus redesigned the OnePlus 5 in all the right ways while improving its camera. Win-win!

Runners up: Moto X4 Moto G5 Plus

Most underappreciated Android phone

LG G6

LG had an interesting year. The G6 is one of the best flagships of 2017, but was instantly overshadowed by the flashier Galaxy S8. That’s too bad because its camera, and its style, won us over.

Runner up: HTC U11+

Best Android phone camera

Google Pixel 2

The best Android camera is the best smartphone camera, period. The Pixel 2 blew us away over and over again and we’re still trying to come to terms with our newfound power.

Runners up: Huawei Mate 10 Pro HTC U11+

Biggest flagship phone letdown

Moto Z2 Force

Motorola set high expectations, and a high price to match, but the terrible camera and screen that scratched the moment you took it out of the box completely killed the experience.

Runners up: Sony Xperia XZ Premium Essential Phone

Best phone design

Samsung Galaxy S8

The Galaxy S8 took everything we loved about the Galaxy S7 and stretched it —both figuratively and literally — into a new shape. The tall 5.8-inch screen is stunning in every way, but it’s the way the curved glass meets the shiny metal that … we’re going to need a minute.

Runners up: HTC U11+ Essential Phone

Best Android tablet

Samsung Galaxy Tab S3

It’s tough to recommend any Android tablet. But if you need one you probably want the Tab S3’s big screen, great specs and optional keyboard to make the most capable machine possible. It’s basically a Galaxy S7 blown up to a tablet size, and that’s a great starting point.

Best Chromebook

Google Pixelbook

The Pixelbook is an incredible engineering feat, and the single best showcase for Chrome OS as an alternative to Windows 10 and macOS. Half laptop, half tablet, but all class.

Runner up: Samsung Chromebook Plus

Best Accessories

Best smartwatch for Android users

Samsung Gear Sport

A smartwatch that’s reasonably sized, good looking, packed with features and completely capable as a full-on fitness tracker as well. It doesn’t run Android Wear, but that just isn’t a problem.

Runners up: Fitbit Ionic LG Watch Sport

Best fitness tracker

Samsung Gear Fit2 Pro

Samsung took all the basics of the Gear Fit2 and compressed them into a slightly more compact, significantly more water resistant, fitness tracker. For $199, this is a steal.

Best connected home accessory

Nest Thermostat E

In 2017, Nest rebounded in dramatic style. Its new $179 Thermostat E is purposefully unassuming, but its lack of flare belies an essential home tool.

Runners up: Google Home Mini Google Home Max

Best Android accessory

Google Chromecast Ultra

Anyone with a smartphone can benefit from having a Chromecast Ultra plugged into their TV. It’s a super-powerful streamer with 4K and HDR support, and just about any media app you can think of has Cast support to send content right to the big screen.

Best wireless headphones

Sony WH1000X2

Incredible noise cancelation is to be expected from a pair of Sony headphones, but the WH1000X2 go above and beyond, producing vivid sound and accurate, plentiful bass.

Runners up: Bose QC35 II Apple AirPods

Best VR headset

Samsung Gear VR 2017

It’s limited to just Samsung phones, but it’s hard to argue that Samsung’s VR content library is great. And after a few iterations, its headset has gotten even more lightweight, comfortable and perfect for longer VR sessions.

Runner up: Google Daydream View 2017

Best Software and Apps

Best new Android Oreo feature

Project Treble

Sometimes the most important features are the ones you can’t see. Project Treble will reveal itself going forward, when phones that ship on Oreo can receive future software updates much faster than ever before.

Runners up: Username/password autofill Notification dots and previews

Best new Google app/service

ARCore

Project Tango is going away, but ARCore is proving to be a worthy successor. It doesn’t have dedicated hardware requirements, and if the content partnerships keep growing we can see this be a strong foothold for Google in the AR/VR space.

Runner up: Files Go

Most improved Google app/service

Google Assistant

It’s hard to pinpoint a single important improvement in Assistant, but it’s quickly getting smarter about how it handles all sorts of questions. And best of all, Assistant is now far closer to parity across different devices and lets you type to it on phones.

Biggest Stories of 2017

Big story

Taller 18:9 aspect ratio displays are the new thing

The new form factor for smartphones now revolves around “tall” displays. The 2:1 aspect ratio gives you more screen without making the phone unwieldy in terms of width, and when combined with shrinking bezels just makes the experience of a modern phone more enjoyable.

Big story

The price gap between flagship and budget grows

2017 marked an inflection point where flagship phones got surprisingly expensive at the same time as the lowest-end budget phones got even cheaper. This year we got a Galaxy Note 8 near $1000, but also a super-capable Moto E4 for less than $100. What a world.

Big story

The Play Store exits beta on Chrome OS

It’s been a much longer road than anyone would’ve guessed, but Google is finally confident that Android apps from the Play Store are good enough for Chrome OS. There are still a few speedbumps to encounter, but Chromebook users have a new and growing bank of powerful apps available.

Big story

Google’s new TPUs rule the cloud

None of Google’s services would work as well as they do if it wasn’t for the company’s new Tensor Processing Units, aka TPUs. This server infrastructure lets Google manage massive data sets, give lightning-quick responses to online queries and make its apps more powerful than just about any other company can.

Big story

Android Go announced

As Android gets bigger, Google continues to have an eye on “the next billion” internet users. Android Go is the software for them, designed to run on phones with very low specs. Rather than creating a whole new version of the operating system, Android Go is smartly just a configuration of Oreo (and beyond) — that critically makes it easier for companies to implement.

Big story

Android One goes higher end

Corresponding with the announcement of Android Go, Google’s expanding Android One to new markets and pushing to nicer hardware at the same time. It’s bringing a “Google experience” to even more people, and that’s definitely a good thing.

OnePlus 3/3T get new Notes app and security patch in latest Open Beta

Open Beta 29 for OnePlus 3, Open Beta 20 for OnePlus 3T.

The OnePlus 5T might be OnePlus’s latest product, but that doesn’t mean the company’s stopped supporting its older hardware. After pushing out Android 8.0 Oreo to the OnePlus 3/3T and OnePlus 5, there’s now a new OxygenOS Open Beta for the 3/3T that has a pretty lengthy changelog.

Perhaps the most notable addition with this latest version of the Open Beta is the new OnePlus Notes app. Along with taking regular text-based notes, you can also share notes you take as pictures and add them to the Shelf with the Memo widget.

OnePlus also has a new widget for its Weather app, and there are enhancements when copying and editing for OxygenOS’s Quick Clipboard feature.

The File Manager now has a new category for large files and improvements in speed when deleting bigger files, and general System updates include:

• Added OTG toggle in Quick Settings
• Added notification when 3rd party apps delete contacts
• Updated Android security patch to December
• General bug fixes and improvements

This version of the OxygenOS Open Beta is v29 for the OnePlus 3 and v20 for the 3T, but OnePlus says that it’s temporarily stopped the rollout due to a “small issue.” The update will be resumed once this is fixed, and we’ll update the article accordingly when that happens.

OnePlus 3T and OnePlus 3

• OnePlus 3T review: Rekindling a love story
• OnePlus 3T vs. OnePlus 3: What’s the difference?
• OnePlus 3T specs
• Latest OnePlus 3 news
• Discuss OnePlus 3T and 3 in the forums

Twitter bans ‘Impostor Buster’ bot that ID’d Nazi trolls

It’s been a rocky road to Twitter’s newfound pledge to kick members of hate groups off its platform. For those on the end of racist abuse, reporting trolls to Twitter has been a frustrating process. But, earlier this year, one journalist decided to take matters into his own hands. After suffering a record amount of harassment, reporter Yair Rozenberg teamed up with dev Neal Chandra to build a bot that unmasked impersonator accounts manned by bigots. It got off to a great start, explains Rozenberg in a New York Times op-ed, before Twitter shut it down at the behest of Nazis.

The bot, dubbed “Impostor Buster,” went after trolls with fake profiles of real individuals from ethnic minorities. To fool unwitting users, they’d adorn these accounts with clear identifying markers “like a yarmulke-clad Hasid or a woman in hijab,” along with descriptors like “jewish,” “muslim” or “enemy of the alt-right” in their bio, writes Rozenberg. Armed with the fake identity, they’d interject their racist bile in Twitter conversations by high-profile users, in the hopes of defaming an entire community.

Tapping into a crowdsourced database of impersonator accounts, which were curated to avoid false positives, Impostor Buster leapt upon the hijacked conversations to publicly expose the fakers. In a matter of weeks, the bot accrued thousands of followers, while its creators received thank-yous from victims, making it a success story for our troubled times. Then the Nazis mounted a fightback.

Inundated with reports of harassment from bigots, Twitter briefly suspended the bot in April. Despite fine-tuning it to evade Twitter’s alarms, the bot was permanently banned this month. It seems Twitter gave into the reports of spam and unsolicited replies from the neo-Nazis the bot had been targeting.

The move is just another sad chapter in Twitter’s paradoxical fight against hate on its platform. The moral of the story, according to Rozenberg, is that the company’s top-down enforcements are unfeasible. Instead of censorship, he posits a bottom-up approach using bots like his own to nurture a “healthier culture below.”

Source: The New York Times

Google will continue to let sites opt out of showing in search results

Google swears it won’t start scraping websites that previously opted out of web crawling just because it can now legally go back to its old ways. Back in 2012, the tech titan promised to change its practices in several areas to settle an antitrust investigation by the FTC. Those changes include removing AdWords restrictions that made it difficult for advertisers to launch multi-platform campaigns, as well as providing websites a mechanism to opt out of having their content crawled and displayed on search results. Both commitments expired on December 27th, 2017, but in a letter to the FTC, the company says it intends to continue honoring them.

Part of the letter reads:

“We believe that these policies provide additional flexibility for developers and websites, and we will continue them as policies after the commitments expire.”

Despite that promise, the companies that opted out of web crawling will likely keep on monitoring Google’s search results anyway. In September, Yelp told the FTC that the big G still uses its images for local-business listings in search results even though it asked the tech giant to stop scraping its content. “This is a flagrant violation of Google’s promises to the FTC, and the FTC should reopen the Google case immediately,” Yelp’s Public Policy chief Luther Lowe wrote.

Earlier this year, the European Commission also slapped Google with a $2.72 billion antitrust fine for its anti-competitive practices. The commission came to a conclusion that the tech giant abused its market dominance as a search engine to promote its own products and demote its competitors’.

Via: Recode

Source: Google, FTC