Google has had a rather busy day so far with releasing new features and testing others before they’re ready for prime time, including updates to Google Calendar, the company’s Voice Search API, and the YouTube app.
Material Design UI being test with Google Calendar on Desktop
The Google Calendar app on iOS is the best way to access all of your meetings and events tied to your Google account while on the go, but if you want to view or edit events from your Mac, the experience is currently less than enjoyable.
Google Calendar’s desktop site in its current form is rather clunky and confusing to use at times, but this will thankfully be changing soon as Google is testing a brand new design overhaul with a few select users. This new design updates Calendar on desktop to Google’s Material Design user interface, and along with making the site easier to navigate, it also looks ten times better than what we currently have.
It was previously mentioned that Google had plans on releasing a new design for Calendar’s website in Q4 of this year, so assuming that the company is still on track for that, we could see the new UI hit as soon as October.
Google adds support for 30 more languages for voice dictation in Gboard, Voice Search, and more
Google’s Cloud Speech API is the software that allows you to use your voice to send texts with Gboard, complete voice searches in the Google app, and speak in Google Translate to have your words converted to another language.
The Cloud Speech API recently got updated to support 30 additional languages, bringing the total count up to 119. Some of the most notable additions here include Swahili and Amharic – two of Africa’s most popular languages, and Georgian and its alphabet that dates back to the tenth century.
YouTube is testing the ability to see live watch counts on any video
Lastly, another feature that’s being tested with certain user groups is a live view counter in the YouTube app. This counter shows how many people are watching the video you’re currently viewing in real-time, and it replaces the traditional number of total views a video has received.
There doesn’t appear to be any way to swap out this live counter for the regular total view marker, and while some may find this annoying, there’s currently no word as to whether or not Google will release this to the public or ditch it altogether.
