Android can now ‘remix’ emojis and help with reading practice

Google has listed a bunch of features rolling out to the Android ecosystem starting today, June 1st, and one of them can help new readers improve their diction and vocabulary. The new reading practice tool for phones and tablets is available with thousands of compatible children’s books on Play Books. It challenges kids or people who’ve only started to learn English to read sentences with the mic on. The buttons that show up when they tap help allow them to quickly look up the definition of words or to hear the sentence be read out loud for guidance. It’s now available in the English language for users in the US, as long as they have a device running Android 8 and above. 

The tech giant is also rolling out new widgets that show entertainment suggestions for Google TV, stock trading information from Google Finance and curated stories from Google News. These widgets will be available for everyone with devices running Android 6 and later in all supported languages. Meanwhile, for those tired of the usual emoji options, there’s a new tool called “Emoji Kitchen.” It lets users fuse and remix emoji available on Gboard — so long as they have a compatible combination — and then turn them into stickers they can send. 

Users with devices running WearOS 2 now have new Spotify tiles and watchface complications to choose from. Spotify DJ, available in US, Canada, UK and Ireland for premium subscribers, can play a personalized selection of tracks or stream episodes from the user’s favorite podcasts the moment they press play on the new smartwatch tile. WearOS 3.0 users can now also add a tile for a single to-do list from Google Notes. Those living in Washington, DC and the San Francisco Bay Area are getting something extra: They now have the option to load their SmartTrip and Clipper cards to their Google Wallet, so they can tap and pay to ride local transportation using their smartwatches. 

Aside from all these features, which have only started rolling out, Google has also announced that its One subscription service’s dark web report is fully available in the US. Subscribers will be able to run scans to check if their Gmail addresses have been exposed in the dark web. They can also check if any sensitive information, such as their social security numbers, have been compromised. Plus, they can choose to start automatically monitoring the dark web for their personal information, so they’d get notified as soon as any of their details get posted. Dark web monitoring is only available to Google One customers in the US at the moment, but Google plans to expand its availability to more than 20 countries in the coming months.