Gsbt

Eric Ravenscraft Android: For most users, the Google Play Store is the best way to find apps and keep them updated. If you’re using a non-Google ROM or downloading apps from outside the store, APKUpdater can help keep you up to date. This app, created by XDA user  rumboalla , scans your list of apps and then finds updates for those apps on sites like APKMirror. It can also optionally scrape the Google Play Store itself to find app updates. It won’t automatically install the new versions, though. You’ll have to download and install them one-by-one. However, it’s still helpful to find out when an update is available. This might not be necessary for most situations, but if  your custom ROM  doesn’t have Google Play, or if you’re avoiding it for privacy reasons, this is a handy way to fill in the gaps

War. War never changes — but Google's mind does. There is some indication that Google is pulling the Google Now Launcher  from the Play Store sometime before the end of March 2017 (Q1). Besides trying to find out more details about this one, we're also left wondering why? Let's start at the beginning. The  Google Now Launcher  is a home screen manager that Google made using the Android launcher code as a base. Originally only for the Nexus 5, it later expanded to include all Nexus and Google Play edition phones. Eventually, every phone that has Android 4.1 or later could go to Google Play and install it like any other launcher. It is also the launcher that comes with recent Nexus phones, including the  Nexus 6P  and  Nexus 5X . The Google Now part of the Google Now Launcher is still here and can be used by the people who made your phone. It's not an open source Android thing — it's an app made by Google that might come with your phone but...

Do you want Andromeda? Because this is how you make Andromeda. I remember thinking last November (2016 if you're reading this from the future), while watching speakers at the  Chrome Dev Summit , that Google remembered how important the web was several times. Not the internet where data files back and forth, but the web, the part of that internet you see through a web browser. Whether you're using Chrome or another program that is built for seeing all the things on the web, or a component in another app that can show you a part of the web that's meaningful and relevant to what you're doing right this moment, the web is a powerful medium for all things. It's also one of the first user experiences we all had and our children may have. The web was was the first look at what we call User Experience for all things tech. OK, maybe  remember  isn't the right word here. Google has spent countless amounts of money and time building tools to both make the web and s...