Gadgetory

hello again ladies and gentlemen I'm Joe handy from Android Authority comm and in this video we're going to take a tour of Android 6.0 marshmallow let's start with the UI because not a lot has changed over lollipop but home screens are set up the same way with new screens being added at your request with Google now off to the left side the quick settings are still just a swipe away and even the settings menu is set up pretty much like it was before if you're coming from stock lollipop you should have no trouble finding your way around there are a few changes that are more notable than others the applications section in the settings menu has been changed to accommodate the new permission system which we'll talk about more here in a minute the priority notification settings that caused quite the stir in lollipop have been relegated to the quick settings other minor changes include a more colorful Google search bar a new app drawer which we'll talk about in a moment and dragging apps around on the home screen now provides a shortcut to uninstall them there are also a host of new animations that are too numerous to list here some of the more notable ones include the new Google search animations and a more streamlined set of animations for opening and closing the app drawer and applications text selection also got a slight revamp with a little box that pops open with the usual set of controls one of the bigger changes in lollipop is the new app drawer the horizontal app drawer which is ruled today since the good old days of jelly bean is now gone replaced with a vertical app drawer this allows for much faster browsing of your applications and puts an end to scrolling many pages horizontally to find the application that you want in addition you can now grab the scroll bar on the right side and scroll quickly through the applications with a letter popping up to denote where you are in the list we found this helpful if you're looking for something quickly and it matches the kind of mechanics found in the contacts application most music apps and any other application with a long list of items perhaps the most prominent change is the addition of an app search bar at the top using this you can quickly tap in a few letters and find the application that you're looking for this is the quickest way yet to find something buried in the app drawer and it's definitely a welcome addition Google now on tap is the latest big feature to hit Google now the premise of now on tap is to give you information far more quickly than if you were to search for it in a web browser for instance if someone mentions a place you don't have to leave the messaging app travel to the browser and then look it up instead you long press the home button and now on tap will pop up to tell you all about that place for now it's a hit miss service this is expected because it is brand-new and Google is still adding things to the already impressive list of recognizable keywords that now on tap can utilize we expect this to become better over time or at least much better by the time non Nexus devices start picking up marshmallow you'll have to browse through the Google now settings to enable it but otherwise it's very easy to use we did a quick look video on Google now on tap and if you want to check that out that link is in the video description below chrome custom tabs is something we've not heard a lot about since it was announced at Google i/o earlier this year the premise for chrome custom tabs as simple as it provides developers with a way to build an in-app browser without having to do it themselves it essentially opens a Chrome browser tab inside of the application that developers can control and customize to suit their applications needs and thus eliminate the half-baked usually slow built in browsers like you see in Pinterest Facebook Twitter and others unfortunately there aren't a lot of examples available Ars Technica had to build an application using an open source demo in order to preview it but we managed to find at least one application that uses it right now it's not altogether different from most in-app browsers except you'll have features from Chrome baked in such as autocomplete various web cookies and of course the login history so you don't have to do that over again it is definitely better than custom built in browsers and we hope it gets a higher adoption rate you can easily identify applications using the chrome custom tabs by looking in the overflow menu where you'll see a small banner that says powered by Chrome having more control over app permissions has been a longtime request of many power users in marshmallow those wishes have been granted and the new permission system has been released in marshmallow in full force you now have more control over application permissions than you've ever had before if you use the gear icon in the top right corner of the apps section in the settings you can see which applications use certain permissions on your device in the settings menu you can access application permissions and opt to turn certain ones on or off as needed to avoid any potential conflicts with turning off a permission google has a built-in system that feeds fake data to the application so it keeps chugging along as expected that means you shouldn't have to worry about legacy applications crashing when you disable permissions that said we still don't recommend you turn off the vital ones like the camera permission for the camera app another edition includes pop-up boxes that will show up whenever an application wants to access a permission for the first time the most frequent example is the location permission as applications all over Android seem to love asking for this one at various times you can confirm or deny missions when they pop up this is an amazing addition because it allows even the less tech-savvy to engage with application permissions regularly and they can prevent apps from having those permissions if needed likely for the first time those mode is a new addition to marshmallow that's supposed to help improve standby time the idea is that once the phone has been off for a little while it'll enter into doze mode in this mode it will ignore pretty much everything and just kind of exist in a state of stasis screenshots and reports have shown that this can keep the Nexus 5 alive for days sometimes weeks at a time unfortunately there are a few issues with this one the device has to be off long enough to engage in doze mode which really only happens if you're a sleeper if you're one of those few people who are honest about not checking their phones at work the other is that doze mode can be ignored by applications if the application is set to priority since developers choose whether or not their application qualifies as a priority in doze mode we expect most applications to simply bypass this battery saving function almost entirely still it's a nice addition overall and we hope to see it expanded and maybe improved in future iterations of Android one of the less important complaints about lollipop was this newfangled volume slider system instead of the customary way this used to work with a silent mode Google added a priority mode for only certain applications mostly alarms could send you notifications and it do not disturb mode which silenced everything including the alarms the problem was this was way too much information to deal with in a volume slider and some people miss their alarms in the Do Not Disturb mode in marshmallow however the volume slider returns to its old-school way is lowering the volume all the way puts you in vibrate mode with one more lowering bringing you to the modify do not disturb mode that only lets in alarms the affirmation priority mode has been sent to the quick settings where you can tweak it there this is in my opinion the perfect compromise between the way things used to be and the way things were in lollipop it's a subtle change but a welcome one for what it's worth tapping the icon on the right side of the volume slider bar still lets you change the system volume and media volume which was in addition an android 5.1 lollipop one of the more exciting api's that should make its way across the Android ecosystem sometime soon is the new fingerprint API there aren't a lot of uses for this one yet but that's going to change very soon the new Nexus devices both have fingerprint scanners they can be used to turn on the device and bypass the lock screen you can also use the fingerprint scanner and Android pay this one is going to take a while to shine because it's so very new the API itself gives developers the capacity to integrate fingerprint scanning into their application and a variety of ways you'll be able to unlock apps like Android pay pay for items and a whole lot more really the sky's the limit here and it'll be fun to see the creative ways this gets implemented in the future Apple Inc says another feature announced back at Google i/o and this one is pretty simple to explain remember all those times a box popped up asking which application you'd like to use for a link that you clicked on well Apple Inc's aims to remove that as much as possible by giving the applications the ability to take ownership of their own links for instance if you click on a Twitter link the Twitter application will just automatically open instead of asking you first this will save some time in the long run and help applications keep control over their own content the box will still pop up from time to time like if you have two browsers installed in most cases though the application that owns the link should automatically grab it up and open the application itself it's a small thing but it contributes to a more seamless experience between Android and it's applications there were plenty of other smaller changes in additions that are worth noting even if they are minor in terms of scope and day-to-day use there is a new API that lets other assistant applications do what Google now on tap does thus you could use something like hound and it could read the text on your screen just like now on tap this gives you the option to choose your personal assistant as long as you don't mind it reading what's on your screen Auto Backup is a new addition to marshmallow that improves over the previous backup and restore functions in Android with auto backup it will back up the majority of your app data along with the application that means when you restore it you'll be able to continue more or less where you left off before it's better than it was before and a welcome change adoptable storage allows you to insert an SD card into your device that make it work like your internal storage that means if you have 32 gigabytes of on-board storage within a 32 gigabyte SD card you can use adoptable storage to essentially give you 64 gigabytes of on-board storage there are some caveats and bad things will happen if the SD card dies or gets removed but it's definitely something to consider if you have a device with an SD card slot app standby is a feature that hasn't gotten a whole lot of press this feature essentially takes applications you don't use and puts them in a sort of standby mode rendering them unable to stay open while sucking down processor power data and memory do note that this feature only occurs on battery power and when you're plugged in these applications can more or less roam free again direct share is a new sharing feature enabled in marshmallow what it does is remembers who you share things with and with what applications you do your barring overtime it will begin recommending people you can directly share to over the application you generally use to communicate with them it's a small thing but it can save a lot of time if you always share to the same people some devices now have native Android supports including many devices and the Bluetooth stylus we imagine the Galaxy Note series will take advantage of the latter sometime next year lastly there is now a system UI tuner you can access this by long pressing the gear icon in the quick settings this allows you to organize your quick settings remove buttons from the quick settings and enable a battery percentage readout on your status bar it's not overly useful but it is there and it's fun to play with just be warned that it can break stuff of course there were tons upon tons of other smaller improvements including bug fixes security patches and a whole lot more overall marshmallow is a big step forward over lollipop there isn't much of a change in the UI but we can't expect a design overhaul every year because that's unreasonable under the hood Google has shored up a lot of the weaknesses and complaints of lollipop while adding some truly unique useful and functional new features is it perfect of course not but it's a lot closer than lollipop was if you agree or disagree you can go and tell us why in the comments and that about does it for this video folks if you like this video give us a thumbs up and if not let me know why in the comments while you're here you might as well subscribe to the Android Authority YouTube channel because we are your source for all things Android as always thanks for watching everybody and have a wonderful day you