Software & Apps - Page 56

Dark mode has now arrived on Instagram, and while users might be used to that slick white look that they have been ever so accustomed to, here's how to enable the black version.

Firstly, for you to get dark mode on Instagram users must have iOS 13 for Apple devices or Android 10 for Android devices. The first step will be making sure the Instagram app has updated to its latest version, so head on over to your respective store (App Store or Play Store) and update the app.

Once that has been completed, iPhone users can open their 'settings' app on their phone and head over to the Display and Brightness sub-tab, in here you will see 'Dark'. Android users can do something very similar, open settings, press Display, tap the Advanced tab and then select Dark. Adam Mosseri, the Head of Instagram via his Twitter account, his tweet can be found above. What do you think about Dark Mode? Personally, I love it!

This week Instagram users will say goodbye to the 'following' tab feature that allows you to keep tabs on your followers activity.

According to a new report out of Buzzfeed News, Instagram is removing their "Following" tab that is found behind the heart icon at the bottom right of the user-interface. If you are unaware of what the "Following" tab is, don't be alarmed as its definitely one of Instagram's lesser-known features. The "Following" tab allows for users to see the activity of the users they are following; e.g what photos they are liking and what other Instagram accounts they have decided to follow.

Instagram's Vishal Shah spoke out about the decision and said "People didn't always know that their activity is surfacing. So you have a case where it's not serving the use case you built if for, but it's also causing people to be surprised when their activity is showing up." In conclusion, Shah said that "Simplicity was the driving factor."

Users of Windows 10 are no stranger to updates causing issues. But, a recent update has really shown just how bad it can go.

That's right, a recent update labeled KB4524147, which is supposed to fix some Internet explorer and printing bugs. Has instead gone YOLO on users start menu causing an error prompt reading as the user describes "Critical error start menu not working, sign out ... or something like that ." rendering PC's far harder to navigate.

This story cropped up on the Microsoft forums, where it has been advised by some to 'reinstall the start menu'. Unfortunately from reports spanning several outlets, this solution is to no avail. The only sure-fire solution to this bug should you experience it would be to remove the update entirely. If you have this issue the advised solution was to try reinstalling the start menu which instructions we have copied below.

Remember when Facebook attempted at adding a 'Group Stories' feature before they removed it? Well, it seems that Instagram might be a better place for it as the source code indicates as such.

According to app detective, Jane Manchun Wong, Instagram are currently testing out 'Group Story'. How did Wong come across this new feature? She was digging around in the source code for the app and ran into the 'Group Story' test code.

Originally Facebook had this feature but they later decided to remove it, perhaps they decided to remove it to bring it over to Instagram where 'stories' are much more used. Since this feature is still in testing, Instagram could easily not release it to the public, but if they did I believe that it would a massive hit. I believe this because groups would be able to publicly represent themselves via an individual story.

While it might not be the same feeling as playing on an actual table-top, its still extremely convenient to be able to play table-top games online with friends whenever you want. Dual Masters Play's is about to make very same transition.

Above we have the new announcement by companies Takara Tomy and DeNA for Dual Masters Play's arriving on both iOS and Android devices. The app will feature everything that the normal table-top game does plus some more features; deck building, custom character creation, single-player mode and appearances from legendary dualists such as hobu Kirifuda, Kyoshiro Kokujo, and Hakuoh.

For fans interested in jumping into the action via mobile, pre-registration is currently available to sign-up to here. It should be noted that there is a closed beta test that is planned from early October until October 24. Players should also note that there will only be 10,000 players selected from iOS and Android respectively, so if you really want to get into the beta sign-up ASAP.

Advertising is an ever changing industry, especially considering not only how fast technology is moving but also how fast people's attention spans are changing.

For the reasons listed above, Snapchat has opted in a new advertising service for companies looking to advertise on their platform. Originally, Snapchat allowed marketers to have a 10 second video for their commercials, but according to a new announcement during the Advertising Week in New York City, "We're now expanding the maximum duration of Snap ads."

This extension is going to come in the form of a new update that allows advertisers to show longer videos. At first, advertisers had the ability to show longer videos, but those videos were only shown if the viewer swiped up on the ad. A great example of this is a short trailer for a movie containing the full trailer behind the 'swipe required ad.' Snapchat will now be removing the 10 second cap on ads, and allowing for advertisers to display a full 3 minute long ad instead.

Windows 10 is now on over 900 million devices, with a tweet directly from Corporate Vice President, Modern Life, Search & Devices Group at Microsoft, Yusuf Mehdi.

Microsoft's latest operating system is on a bunch of devices that go beyond just the PC, with Windows 10 inside of HoloLens, Xbox, Surface Hub, the entire Surface family of devices, and more.

We should expect to see Windows 10 reach over 1 billion users at this rate in the coming months, with early 2020 seeming the most likely. Microsoft had 800 million users on Windows 10 in March which was 6 months ago now, so we should expect February-March 2020 for the huge 1B milestone.

Microsoft has been making some great changes for gamers in Windows 10, and it looks like one of the best ones is now here -- an FPS counter built into the game bar.

The news broke with Mike Ybarra, the Corporate Vice President of Xbox Program Management, who tweeted the updated game bar with its FPS counter. The updated game bar will display real-time frames per second for your games, as well as an Achievements overlay.

Achievements in the overlay is a nice touch, a nice quality of life feature that will make keeping a tab on your achievements easier than going into a separate sub menu. I think the inclusion of an FPS counter is a much bigger deal, as more and more people like to keep a track of their in-game performance.

I don't even know what to say... so I'm just going to say it how it is: KFC is working on a dating simulator. The chicken giant has teamed with developer Psyop for the deliciously-named "I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Licking Good Dating Simulator".

KFC is in full control when it comes to the concept and the actual content of the Colonel Sanders dating simulator, something that is now on Steam and will be released in the coming weeks. What do you even do in I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Licking Good Dating Simulator, you ask?

Well, you will play a culinary student that is trying to win over the heart of a finger-licking good-looking younger version of the Colonel. I don't even know what to think about this right now, whether to run away from this or want to download it and play it when it comes out just to say that I did.

Google is pushing out Android Q onto all Pixel smartphones, something that includes the newer Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL and should come out-of-the-box on the upcoming Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL smartphones.

Android 10 is now available for Pixel smartphone owners and as a Pixel 3 XL owner, I've upgraded to Android 10 -- up from the latest Android Q beta. Google has said that it is getting Android 10 into more smartphones and other brands, with the company saying it is "working with a number of partners to launch or upgrade devices to Android 10 this year".

Android 10 provides system-wide Dark Mode which is one my favorite things, improved battery life, and a slew of new features that include a new Focus Mode that will keep you, yes, more focused. Android 10 also features full support for foldable smartphones like the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X.

Primate Labs has just announced its latest Geekbench software, with Geekbench 5 now released including a boat load of new features and tweaks.

Geekbench 5 kicks things off with a brand new CPU benchmarking suite that tests your system based on what its respective workload would be, with these including augmented reality and machine learning. Geekbench 5 also boosts the "memory footprint of existing workloads to more accurately account for the effect memory performance has on CPU performance".

The new Geekbench 5 CPU Benchmark also packs new modes of multi-threaded benchmarks, with the new software also better capturing the performance of different multi-threaded applications on personal computing devices.

Spotify seems to be encouraging its user base to jump into creating their very own podcasts with a new button that has been leaked online.

The news comes from leaker Jane Wong who spotted the new button its Spotify's podcasts library. From the screenshot we can see if you press on Podcasts, then click on shows you will see the 'Create Podcast' button. Looking at the button description, we see that Spotify will allow for users to create their own podcast using Anchor, which is a podcast creation technology company that Spotify acquired earlier this year.

Spotify seems to be testing this button in select countries as I went to my own Spotify to check it out and it wasn't available. According to Spotify who spoke to The Verge, "We are always testing new products and experiences to improve the overall Spotify experience. Some tests will eventually make way for upgrades to our product, others are only tests. We have no further news to share at this time."

Microsoft has officially confirmed that they will be debuting a 'dark mode' feature for iOS and Android devices who use Outlook and Office.

The news was confirmed through an extremely cinematic trailer which has been released onto the official Microsoft Office 365 YouTube Channel. The trailer gives us some quick looks what the the 'dark mode' will look like on both desktop, iOS and Android devices.

According to Microsoft Office's head of design, Jon Friedman "A cross-company design collaboration propels us to seamlessly bring Dark Mode to the broader M365 product suite, and today marks the initial rollout of Dark Mode on Outlook for iOS and Android, as well as Office.com! The upcoming launch of iOS 13 will then extend this rollout to Word, Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, SharePoint, OneDrive, Planner, and To-Do on mobile."

Facebook is at it again with another app attempt at trying to kill off Snapchat, this time round reports have said that Facebook and Instagram are internally testing a new app called "Threads" which is designed for close friends.

According to The Verge, Instagram has been testing this "Threads" app which is "designed to promote constant, automatic sharing between users." On The Verge article they have posted mock-up screenshots which indicate that the app will be focused around a singular feed where friends can view each others 'stories' or 'statuses'.

The Verge also states that the app will work as a companion to your Instagram account, and will invite users to "share their location, speed, and battery life with friends, along with more typical text, photo, and video messages using Instagram's creative tools". This app will ultimately be designed at communication between your close friends on Instagram, which means it falls a direct competitor to Snapchat who says they are the app for "real friends".

Services that have voice assistant software have been under fire as of late, as it was discovered that many of these services have manual, or human reviewing.

Microsoft is one of the companies that many users of Skype and Cortana have concerns with as it wasn't clearly indicated in their privacy policy that humans would be reviewing some conversations. Since these concerns arose, Microsoft has gone over their privacy policy and updated it, but still human workers will be listening in on some conversations and voice commands to improve the service quality.

A Microsoft spokesperson told Motherboard that "We realized, based on questions raised recently, that we could do a better job specifying that humans sometimes review this content." Microsoft's new privacy policy states "Our processing of personal data for these purposes includes both automated and manual (human) methods of processing."

Windows 10 always seems to have a new bug lurking around, and today is no different. Many users whose systems come out of the box in Windows 10 in S mode (formally named Windows 10 S) usually can switch out of S mode within the Microsoft Store.

Unfortunately, many users are found in a loop of sorts as the store option to switch it is a blank page.

You may not be familiar with Windows 10 in S mode or formerly "Windows 10 S". Windows 10 S is and was a Windows 10 version based strictly around the locked-down control of only installing Windows 10 store apps. It enables some pretty strict security as there is no capability to run EXE on a Windows 10 in S mode device. This allows for a much more secure OS environment, but is not conducive to getting work done for most users as they are locked to only store apps.

Most PC users that use Windows enjoy the well-defined visual look of the start menu, imagine if that all changed and in the next Windows update it was massively big and bulky.

The above video is sourced from Windows Central who has got his hands-on Windows 10 internal build 118947. From the video, we are introduced to the new start menu appearance and what the user-interface (UI) will look like for Windows Insider users. Judging from the UI layout, Microsoft seem to be taking a more tile-like look to the start menu, creating bigger and more accessible app icons.

It should be noted that this is a very early design of the start-menu and is subject to change as Microsoft tweaks it here and there after they get insider feedback from users. For me personally, this menu is a step in the wrong direction as it reminds me too much of the sham Windows 8 was. The bulkiness adds a fatter look to the aesthetic design of Windows and doesn't improve the visual appearance at all. As for utility measures, how much does bigger app tiles really improve the users experience? And is it enough for Microsoft to roll out this to base Windows 10 OS's?

For quite some time now Apple has led the way in the ease transferring files from one user to another. Now Google is about to enter the game with their own app Fast Share.

According to a report by 9to5Google, the company is currently in the works of preparing their own file sharing app. This app is designed to make the transferring of files between Android phones and Chromebooks easy for the user. The feature has been titled Fast Share and it is planned to replace the NFC-based Android Beam. Fast Share is set to release widespread across Android and Google devices in the final version of Android Q which is planned for later this year.

Fast Share will use Bluetooth to discover and connect with the desired device and then establish a direct Wi-Fi connection between the users. The direct connection will allow for files to transferred extremely quickly and will act much like Apple's AirDrop feature. At the moment there is no word on how Google plans to achieve smooth cross-platform compatibility with their large range of devices or if this feature will require the most updated version of Android.

Sensor Tower Store Intelligence has reported that Mixi's Monster Strike has surpassed the worldwide gross revenue of $7.2 billion. Making it the highest grossing app of all time.

Sensor Tower has reported that Monster Strike has become the most earning mobile app on both the App Store and the Google Play Store, beating once leader Puzzles & Dragons from GungHo Online Entertainment. Puzzles and Dragons amassed around $7 billion since its release back in 2012, while Monster Strike has already surpassed that figure with $7.2 billion since its release in 2013.

The report also touches on Monster Strikes year-over-year percentage in Q3, the increase was up 6 percent. The apps audience is primarily focused in Japan, and total downloads have reached over 45 million to date.

If you are on the new dark mode craze and you have realized that now dark mode is an essential feature for any app, you will be glad to know that the Gmail app is about to get support for it.

Recently, the Google app, Files by Google, Google Drive and Google Keep recently got support for the dark mode theme. Looking at the most recent Gmail APK, we have the first signs of the dark mode coming to fruition. The above images showcase the extent of the dark mode in Gmail v2019.06.09. At the moment the dark mode theme flickers on at off at its own will, and there is no toggle button support yet.

Dark mode is also not supported in the main window of Gmail, and is only available in the settings. While this might seem quite pointless, it is still the first steps we are seeing of dark mode coming to Gmail. I'd expect that dark mode will roll out to Gmail within the next coming updates.