Greetings testers!
We have a special guest today! Do you remember DuckDuckGo Email Protection feature? Zan from Zheano Blog did hands-on testing this time and had a chance to share his experience on TestingCatalog 🔥
Don't forget to check out Zheano Blog itself to download your next wallpaper!
On the apps side, after Twitter decided to ditch out its Fleets feature, LinkedIn also announced that it will abandon its Stories feature soon. Who is next? Pinterest? 🤔
In the meantime, web 3.0 keeps preparing to sneak into our reality. Twitter is already working on integrating crypto donations into its app. At this point, Twitter feels much more progressive even compared to Telegram after they failed to deliver their TON project.
And this seems to be just the beginning. I feel that web 3.0 is the best place to put my testing efforts into. If you haven't tried to install a crypto wallet yet and get some tokens on it, that's the time. Think about it as the most important Early Access experience that you can get right now. Check our DAPPS posts and DAPPS Telegram channel to stay tuned!
What's new?
- 📲 How can beta testing help develop new privacy features?
- 📲 Signal is getting broadcast mode for groups on Android
- 📲 Samsung Internet beta now can block tracking pixels and shows enhanced search suggestions
See more details below 👇
Top features to test this week
Zan From Zheano Blog
So I’ve been testing out DuckDuckGo’s new email protection feature for almost a month now. To be completely honest, I didn’t expect it to work so well as it did. I had a full-on experience using DuckDuckGo’s default app on my smartphone and the DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials extension on my browser. Here is why!
Alexey Shabanov
In fact, it is just a group setting that restricts everyone from posting to the group apart from the administrator. But even being just a group, it allows you to run it similarly to the Telegram channel.
Unfortunately, you will have to create a separate discussion group and advertise it by yourself.
Alexey Shabanov
Smart anti-tracking protection got an additional feature that can block tracking pixels. This technology is widely used by Facebook to let advertisers collect your data after you visit a certain resource. There is no extra toggle for this feature but your Smart anti-tracking has to be enabled.
📲 Samsung Internet Beta on Google Play
C - Chrome
- Chrome Canary is getting a refreshed Android 12 style bookmarks and a new downloading progress overlay
- What's new in Chrome 94 Beta (APK Download)
- Chrome for Android’s dark theme is now ever so slightly darker
- Chrome for Android may gain a permanent Desktop View switch
C - Clubhouse
- ICYMI: Clubs got Leaders, Chats got Archives and a new option to choose languages to listen for arrived on Clubhouse
- Clubhouse Adds Spatial Audio, Now Averaging 700k Rooms Per Day
E - Evernote
F - Facebook
- Facebook is working on the ‘For You’ and ‘Explore’ Tab for News section on its platform
- Facebook’s new fantasy sports-like prediction games let you blast your boldest picks to everyone you know
G - Gboard
G - GitHub
G - Google Assistant
- Google Assistant pushed the delayed start option for home routines to more users
- Automate your whole day with the Assistant's new Daylong Routines
- Google Assistant rolling out a new trigger that starts routines when dismissing an alarm
- Google Assistant’s quick phrases will let you ditch the “Hey Google” hotword
G - Google Lens
- Google Lens gets a touch of Material You, Search widget & Pixel Launcher shortcut
- Google Lens is invading the Pixel Launcher's search bar
G - Google Messages
G - Google Photos
G - Google Podcasts
G - Google Search
I - Instagram
- You’ll have to tell Instagram your birthday to keep using the app
- Instagram Is Adding Tutorials For Influencers, While Facebook Updates The Watch Menu Tab
L - Linkedin
M - Microsoft Edge
N - Nova Launcher
S - Samsung Internet
S - Signal
S - Snapchat
S - Strava
S - SwiftKey Keyboard
T - Telegram
T - Twitter
- Twitter Opens Up Ticketed Spaces to Selected Users, Another Step in its Creator Monetization Push
- Twitter’s new Safety Mode autoblocks abusive accounts
- Twitter Launches 'Super Follows' Creator Monetization Option
- Twitter's Testing a Range of New Control Options, Including Auto-Archiving Old Tweets and Hiding Likes
- Twitter to allow users to add BTC and ETH addresses to profiles, per leaked screenshots
W - WhatsApp
- WhatsApp is pushing its redesigned Archive to more Android users
- WhatsApp Will Probably Allow Users To Entirely Sidestep Its Updated Terms And Conditions
- WhatsApp is making account restoration a lot easier by introducing the Ban Review feature for Android users
- WhatsApp's Beta Version Reveals That Disappearing Mode Will Be Coming To Groups On Its Messaging Platform
- WhatsApp beta for Android 2.21.18.9: what’s new?
- WhatsApp beta for Android 2.21.18.10: what’s new?
Y - YouTube
- New Changes Coming to YouTube Channels
- YouTube stops sending you to a desktop to activate experiments
Other apps
Alexey Shabanov
Philips Hue Bluetooth app allows you to control Hue lamps via Bluetooth. The recent update came with a bunch of new UI elements and features. Light presets are now called Scenes and they can be also set to be dynamic.
- ICYMI: KuCoin now has feature preference settings on its futures tab
- Metamask now allows wrapping tokens with 0 fees and shows your ENS domain as the account name
- Crypto.com DEFI Wallet now can connect to Cronos Testnet
- Philips Hue's new Spotify integration turns your home into the best nightclub in town
Games
- Square Enix is bringing more classic Final Fantasy titles to Android
- Final Fantasy VIII Remastered now has controller and cloud save support on Android and iOS
- PUBG New State pre-order for Android and iOS in India begins
TestingCatalog project
This section is meant for updates on the TestingCatalog project and it will remain like this. In most cases, it takes time to write the newsletter itself and I don't have time to write all the details over this section. For this purpose, I created another Telegram channel called TestingCatalog Media 📩
You can think of it as a microblog about me building tech news media in my spare time.
The link to this channel appears here for the first time and it is meant for our core followers who are interested in the TestingCatalog project itself. In the future, I also want to involve followers of this channel in decision making about certain topics. Currently, I am also investigating DAOs and thinking about creating one. More details will be published over the TestingCatalog Media channel.
