Nova Launcher gets some Material Design love in latest beta

One of the most popular 3rd-party launchers is getting some Material Design love today. Alpha testers have been using the Material Design version of Nova Launcher for a little while now, and it’s ready to graduate to public beta. There are plenty of new Material goodies for Nova fans to enjoy.

First and foremost is the brand new look and feel of Material Design. You might not notice it immediately on your home screen (depending on your set up), but diving into the menus and settings will show a brand new look. A long-press on empty home screen space will bring up a more modern dialog instead of the old 2.x style pop-up. You’ll also notice a new red and white theme in the settings with smooth Material animations.

A new feature that I really like can be found in the app drawer. When the app drawer is opened you can swipe down from the top to bring up a search bar and list of recently installed or updated apps. This is super handy for trying to find apps quickly. Another new feature is the awesome app icon layout editor (seen above). You can also now adjust icon size and font size independently for desktop, drawer, dock, and folders.

All of these new #materinova features will eventually come to the stable version of Nova Launcher. If you don’t want to wait for that you can opt-in for Nova Launcher Betas from Google Play by following these steps. Check out the full changelog for below.

1. Join the Nova Launcher Beta G+ Community (This is not optional)


2. After joining, Opt-in for Nova Launcher


3. When a new beta update is available you will get it through the Play Store

#materinova.14 public beta 1

• Full Material Design


• Google Search from the search bar shows as an overlay


• Edit Shortcut dialog, and quick menu, tinted based on colors of the icon


• New icon


• New Nova Action icons


• Rebased on top of Launcher3


• Individual icon layout settings (size, font, etc) in Desktop, Drawer, Dock, Folder


• Max icon size boosted to 150%


• Widget Search


• Pull to search (pull down in the drawer to open app or widget search)


• Widgets given their own drawer, removed from App Drawer


• Ability to change Page Indicator color


• Drawer Tab Bar completely optional


• Support for Android for Work managed profiles (Lollipop)


• Workaround Expand Notifications Nova Action not working on Samsung Lollipop


• Requires Android 4.1 or higher (Dropped support for Android 4.0 ICS)


• Unlimited desktop pages (previously limited to 9)


• Add/remove of desktop pages by dropping icons on the blank page, or removing all icons from a page


• Add blank desktop pages (for gestures or live wallpapers) from overview


• Improved bulk edit of folders (Folder > Menu > Select Apps)


• Added shadows to unread badges


• Unread Badge size scales with icon size


• Allow reordering drawer folders by drag/drop within window


• Added Roboto-Medium font option


• Improve handling of apps installed to sdcard

If you hate passwords as much as we do, you’ll love Google ATAP’s latest projects

It’s another wonderful day of Google I/O and the developer conference is proving that there’s still more interesting developments outside of Android M. During a Google ATAP session, Regina Duggan took the stage to talk about what the special projects unit as been working on.

Project Abacus

One of the more interesting projects is something called Project Abacus. They’ve actually been conducting user trials and gathering data since last year. Everyone knows passwords suck (Duggan actually said this on stage) and Project Abacus looks to eliminate the hassle of typing out or remembering long passwords because simply put: humans aren’t good at this.

Because your smartphone knows more about you than you think, Project Abacus combines a variety of sensor data — how you walk, location patterns, how you talk, how you type — to verify that you are you. In other words, your device is the key to your authentication and it doesn’t even need fingerprint scanning hardware to pull it off.

Project Abacus works passively in the background to continually authenticate you before a website or app or anything else asks you for your password. Based on a trust score, it can verify your identity and you’ll be logged in without having to type a single thing. Higher trust scores could be required from something like a banking app, while low ones for something like logging into a game. Should your device fall into the wrong hands, the trust score will drop and the user will be asked to input a password like the olden days.

Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is how secure Abacus is when compared to other methods of authentication. ATAP says that by combining all this sensor data, Abacus is more than 10 times more secure than traditional methods. We’ve seen enough movies to know that anyone can pop out your eyeball or cut off your fingers — wouldn’t it be great if you phone knew you were you?

Project Vault

Another interesting project to come out of Google ATAP’s session is something they’re calling Project Vault. ATAP says Vault is tiny, security dedicated computer squeezed into a micro SD card. It uses a suite of encryption primitives to act as a digital mobile safe for your most sensitive data, anything from chat conversations to files and everything in between.

Using a driver-free interface, Project Vault partitions a portion of an SD card to store data and works out of the box on a variety of platforms outside of Android (like full fledged Windows PCs). ATAP says that Vault more or less aimed at the enterprise market for now and like most things to come out of Google I/O, still in its early stages but will soon have an open source SDK for developers.

Teachers: your kids will love VR field trips with Google Cardboard [VIDEO]

During today’s Google IO keynote, Google unveiled a new refresh of Google Cardboard. If you’re unfamiliar with Google Cardboard, it’s a super cheap way to get on the virtual reality train, by providing you with a virtual reality headset made out of cardboard. You simply fold the view finder together in a few simple steps, plop in your smartphone and strap it to your head for a quick way to check out a virtual world through many supported apps.

While the new Cardboard will feature a larger design to support larger phones like the Nexus 6, the biggest new feature is its application in the classroom. Google showcased how Cardboard could be used in the classroom by debuting its new service called Expeditions, which are like virtual reality tours that the teacher controls. Expeditions works by synchronizing all the devices in the classroom to the tablet used by the teacher, so whatever presentation is selected can be viewed individually by each student using their own Cardboard headset.

By using a tablet, teachers can interact with the student’s devices and control what they’re seeing, switching from 360 degree photos of numerous locations across the globe or some taken right in the back yard. Google confirmed that they’re working with The Planetary Society, The American Museum of Expeditions, and The Palace of Versailles to bring new content to the system.

If this seems interesting to you and you’d like to experience Expeditions in your classroom, be sure to sign up to show your interest. More information about Expeditions and the Google Cardboard platform is available as well.

A Motorola DROID phone could be getting Moto Maker love in the future [RUMOR]

To now, Motorola has only used Moto Maker to allow folks to customize devices from the Moto X, as well as the Moto 360. That exclusive list could be getting some new company, though.

A source familiar with the matter has revealed to Phandroid that Motorola is considering adding a DROID phone to the Moto Maker ranks. Unfortunately we weren’t treated to concrete details about which phone it might be.

The first guess might be the Motorola DROID Turbo, and that would make sense with it being Verizon’s most recent flagship DROID. Considering we’ve seen Verizon release a whopping 3 new color variants for the DROID Turbo in recent weeks it sounds like they’ve at least been considering it. Perhaps they even used that as an excuse to test the logistics that would go behind providing multiple color options for a DROID phone.

Of course, the DROID Turbo will soon be a year old and the next new kid on the block will be set to arrive later this summer, so it’s also possible they’ll look to provide Moto Maker customization with that particular device. What device might that be? We’re still not sure, but we know one is coming and Motorola probably won’t want to disappoint.