TestingCatalog - Issue #173

· 2 min read
TestingCatalog - Issue #173

Greetings testers!

I think that Android users are the most patient out there. Not just because we always waiting for these Android version upgrades forever or because lots of apps are coming as iOS first. But also because we are all always waiting for these gradual rollouts to get new features available. One can say that on iOS it is also the case, but on Android, lots of us are much more dependent on the Google ecosystem and they are a big funs of gradual rollouts.

So, what did we get this week?

  • 🌑 Google Maps finally got a dark mode support
  • 🏢 Instagram presented Rooms
  • 🏕 A new guide for accessing Twitter Alpha
  • 📺 Movee beta by Sixhands team

* This newsletter was crafted for you to try top new features and apps from the past week yourself. Search for the link with 📲 Emoji to get redirected to the right place.


Google Maps finally got a dark mode support

The gradual rollout is still in progress so some of you may still not have it available but it is expanding quickly. Google Maps dark mode can also follow the system setting and it is quite good looking.

In general, Google apps are scoring an update streak at this moment by rolling out lot's of updates and changes no many of their apps.

For example, Google Play settings page redesign also got available to more users recently.

📲 Google Maps on Google Play

Instagram presented Rooms

This new feature was spotted a while ago and this week it was finally officially announced. If you had a chance to follow the news, you could have experienced this feature as a viewer in real-time. For now, I only have a link to the record of this session that can give you an idea of how it looks like. The possibility to create Rooms on Instagram is not yet available to many so it will take for them to roll it out fully.

📲 Instagram on Google Play

📲 Rooms DEMO video

A new guide for accessing Twitter Alpha

With all the recent hype around the release of Twitter Spaces for Android, I updated one of our best guides about how to join Twitter Alpha. It turns out that the beta program is not available for new testers while alpha is still working.

In addition to this, the Twitter Spaces team confirmed that the feedback form that they've shared a while ago, allows users to get access to Spaces feature after Twitter's team approval. However, it looks like switching to the alpha release track gives this access immediately.

📲 Twitter on Google Play

Movee beta by Sixhands team

The beta app that I want to highlight this week is called Movee and it can apply different animation filters to your photos so you can save them as gifs or videos. It provides a variety of "Glitch" effects that became popular after the TikTok appearance. The team behind this app is focusing on building photo editing apps for creators and they have a bunch of others on their page.

📲 Movee Beta on Google Play

Happy Testing!