Google is rolling out updates to Live Caption, Quick Share, Google Drive, and more that make it easier for you to understand and share content with others.
Google is rolling out a couple of new features for Android users to make content more accessible and easier to share. These features include a new version of Live Caption that captures emotions, an improved version of Image Q&A in Lookout, new Emoji Kitchen combinations, QR codes in Quick Share, auto-enhancements in Google Drive, and new extensions for Gemini.
Expressive Captions is a new setting in Android's Live Caption feature that recognizes the tone of how someone is speaking in a video. It also picks up things like sighs, grunts, shouts, and applause. This feature is available for Android 14+ devices that support Live Caption, but it only works on devices in the U.S. and with English language content. You can read more about Expressive Captions in this blog post, which also includes an exclusive interview with Angana Ghosh, the Director of Product Management on Android Input and Accessibility.
Image Q&A in Lookout, a feature that helps people with vision loss understand what's happening in an image, is now powered by Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro large language model. Lookout uses Gemini 1.5 Pro to generate helpful descriptions of images that you capture or upload to the app. You can then hear the caption read aloud in a natural-sounding voice and ask follow-up questions about the image.
New pizza-themed sticker combos are now available through Emoji Kitchen in Gboard. In addition, Gboard has a new keyboard layout called Clearflow that the company says is optimized for speed and accuracy when glide typing.
Quick Share now lets you initiate file transfers by scanning a QR code. On the sending device, tap the QR code button to show a QR code that other devices can scan. This lets senders transfer files without adding receivers as contacts, verifying them, or changing their sharing settings.
When you scan a document in the Google Drive app, you'll now see an "enhance" button that you can tap to automatically improve contrast and white balance as well as remove shadows and blurring.
The Gemini app is rolling out a new Spotify extension that lets you ask the AI assistant to play your favorite songs and podcasts. It's also getting new extensions that let you call contacts, send text messages, set alarms, control device settings, and capture a photo. An extension to control your Google Home smart devices is also slowly rolling out, as is an update that gets you more information about places on Google Maps.
That's every feature rolling out today for all Android devices. Google is rolling out many more features to Pixel devices as part of its latest Pixel Drop update. The company is also rolling out the first quarterly release of Android 15 today, though most Android devices won't receive this platform release until it's rolled over into next year's Android 16 update.
