Category: News

Android

Android: Google plans to remove substandard apps from Google Play

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Google is updating the Android spam and minimum functionality policy to weed out low-quality apps in the Google Play store.

Here are the details:

  • Starting September 1, 2024, existing substandard apps will be removed from the Google Play Store.
  • New apps that Google determines as low-quality will not be allowed in the Google Play Store from that day forward.

Google lists several examples of app types that it considers substandard:

  • Static apps, for example apps that display text only. (new)
  • Apps with “very little” content, for instance “single wallpaper apps”. (new)
  • Apps that have no function or do nothing.
  • Apps that do not install.
  • Apps that do install, but do not load.
  • Apps that load, but are not responsive.

In other words: Google is expanding the classification of substandard Android apps to include static apps and apps that do little or nothing.

The company reasons that these types of apps are “not consistent with a functional and engaging user experience” and therefore “are not allowed on Google Play”.

Expect these apps to be removed from Google Play in the coming months.

Closing Words

It is understandable that apps that do not load or crash offer a bad user experience. Clearly, the developers of such apps need to get back to the drawing board to sort out these major issues before offering them in the Play Store.

While apps that do very little are not harmful, they may be used to swarm the Store with similar types of apps.

Imagine a single wallpaper app that is copied thousands of times to show a different wallpaper in each of the apps. The developer could target different keywords with each of the apps, thus flooding the Store.

Still, this could have been dealt with in other ways probably.

What is your take on this? Do you download and install Android apps frequently? Have you encountered substandard apps in the past? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

Chrome

Report: Google sneaked in code in Chrome that is favoring Google

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

A report suggests that Google has sneaked code into Chromium-based browsers that is favoring Google-owned properties. Browsers like Chrome, Brave, and Microsoft Edge appear affected.

If true, it would give critics of Google’s dominance in web browsing a mighty powerful argument.

Here are the details: Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers give *.google.com sites full access to system / tab CPU usage, GPU usage, memory usage, detailed processor information, and a logging backchannel.

Luca Casonato published information about this on X and Simon Willison published code that anyone may run to verify the claim.

Chrome returning information on google-owned properties
The information that Chrome reveals to Google when the code is run

Here is how that is done:

  1. Open Google Chrome on your system.
  2. Load https://www.google.com/ or any other *.google.com property.
  3. Select Menu > More Tools > Developer Console.
  4. Switch to the Console tab, if it is not active already.
  5. Type allow pasting.
  6. Paste the following code: chrome.runtime.sendMessage(‘nkeimhogjdpnpccoofpliimaahmaaome’, {method: ‘cpu.getInfo’}, response => {console.log(JSON.stringify(response, null, 2));});
  7. Press the Enter-key.

Chrome returns information when the code is run on a Google property. It returns an error message when you run it on any other site.

The code is accessible on the Chromium Code Search website. You can load it here and check it out yourself.

Casonato suggests that the exclusive feature is a violation of the Digital Markets Act as browser vendors “must give the same capabilities to everyone”.

Closing Words

It is unclear if and how Google is using the information. Casonato says that he does not believe that the company uses it for something malicious or invasive, such as fingerprinting.

Still, Google favoring Google in Chrome and Chromium-based browsers is giving critics of Google’s dominance in web browsing another reason why a browser monopoly or duopoly (if you consider Safari), is bad for users.

It is also interesting to note that other Chromium-based browsers have kept the code in their browsers. It is unclear why.

Which browser do you use mainly and why?

Brave

Brave Browser may support some Manifest V2 extensions even after Google’s shutdown

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

There has been a lot of talk about Google replacing the extensions system of the Chromium web browser with an updated version. Chromium is the source for many browsers, including Google Chrome, Brave Browser, Opera, Microsoft Edge, and many more.

While open source, it is Google that controls Chromium to a large degree.

Brave Software, maker of the Brave Browser, has now announced its stance on existing extensions support and the upcoming changes.

Here are the highlights:

  • Classic extensions continue to work until at least June 2025. Brave activated an Enterprise-feature to extend support.
  • Brave Software plans to support a small number of extensions beyond June 2025: AdGuard, NoScript, uBlock Origin, and uMatrix
  • Brave Shields is unaffected.

Brave Software’s plan

Brave Software Manifest V2 Extensions page

All classic extensions will continue to work in Brave Browser until at least June 2025. Brave Software uses an official setting in Chromium to extend support.

Google plans to end support this year, but allows Enterprise customers to extend support by a year.

Come June 2025, Brave Software hopes that it can continue to offer support for four major content blocking extensions.

  • AdGuard
  • NoScript
  • uBlock Origin
  • uMatrix

This requires modification of Chromium code and the developers of the extensions according to Brave Software.

The company notes:

While Brave has no extension store, we have a robust process for customizing (or “patching”) atop the open-source Chromium engine. This will allow us to offer limited MV2 support even after it’s fully removed from the upstream Chromium codebase.

Extensions that become “stale or obsolete” may be removed. One example is the creation of a Manifest V3 extension that offers the same or similar functionality.

Brave users may control the four mentioned extensions, and any that may be added along the way, on the new Extensions page in the Settings.

Just load brave://settings/extensions/v2 to access it. Here users may enable or disable support for the Manifest V2 extensions. Note that this happens automatically, if one of the extensions gets installed in the web browser.

Closing Words

Manifest V2 extensions will eventually go away. While it is commendable that Brave Software plans to extend support for some beyond June 2025, it is clear that this is only a temporary measure.

Content blocking remains possible, even in Chromium-based browsers. The adblockers may not be as effective or feature-rich anymore, but it is likely that most blocking operations continue as before for the majority of users.

Those who want full control may switch to Firefox, as the Mozilla browser will continue to support Manifest V2 next to Manifest V3.

What about you? Do you use a Chromium-based browser and Manifest V2 extensions currently? What will you do when support ends?

Opera

Opera launches preview of Opera One R2 with improved functionality

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Opera Software has released a preview version of its upcoming updated Opera One browser. Called Opera One R2, it comes with new and improved functionality.

Where to download: you can download Opera One R2 Preview from this page on Opera’s website.

Note: if you install the browser on Windows, you may get a SmartScreen security warning. This is because the browser is new, not because it is malicious.

Opera One R2

Opera One R2 interface

Opera highlights three new and improved features in the preview.

  • Improved control over multimedia.
  • More AI.
  • Split screen tabs.

Improved multimedia controls

Opera Media Player

Opera Browser displays music and media playing options in its sidebar. You can access the likes of YouTube Music, Spotify, or Apple Music directly from the sidebar.

Each service is in reach and it is easy to switch between the options. The music player mutes itself automatically when audio is played on a webpage and it resumes playback afterwards.

Tip: you can change the option by loading opera://settings/playerService in the browser’s address bar. Here you can turn auto-mute off or change the resume interval.

Most Opera users who use the player keep it running in the background while they do other tasks. Hovering over the media player icon displays controls now to interact with playback without leaving the site you are on.

Video popout allows Opera users to display videos on top of other webpages. Useful to keep watching something while doing other things in the browser. The popout can now be dragged anywhere and it can be resized.

I could not drag & drop the media player around in the interface as Opera showcased it on its website. Maybe that is coming, but it looked like the coolest feature of the bunch.

More AI

Like it or not, but AI is going to play a much bigger role in most web browsers in the coming months and years.

The new version introduces additional features:

  • Answers, Images and Page Context Mode (Ctrl+/ on Windows, then Tab to access Page Context Mode).
  • AI Image recognition to get information about images you upload.
  • AI Image generation.
  • Aria, Opera’s built-in AI, offers “more and deeper information”, including source links, search suggestions, and more.
  • Text-to-Speech support.

Split Screen

Opera Split Tabs

Not a unique feature, but still useful. Just drag an open tab to the right side of the screen to get the option to split the screen between the two active tabs.

Closing Words

The new Opera is available as a preview. In other words, it should be considered Beta at this stage. If that does not bother you, you may give it a try by following the link I posted near the top.

It seems unlikely that the new update is going to convince lots of users to give Opera a try. Split Tabs is not a unique feature and media playback controls seem limited at this point.

Still, if you happen to listen to music or videos while doing “things” in your browser, or want to give the new AI capabilities a try, it may be worth checking out.

What about you? Do you use Opera at all? What is your take on these features?

Firefox

Firefox 127 point updates incoming – here is what we know

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Mozilla plans to release the first Firefox 127 point update later today. Firefox 127.0.1 will be released for all supported platforms. It is a non-security update that fixes four different issues in the browser.

The release won’t include the fix for YouTube playback issues mentioned earlier this week. It will be in Firefox 127.0.2, so expect this release shortly thereafter.

Concerning Firefox 127.0.1, here is what is fixed in this release:

  • Fixed an issue that could cause Firefox users to lose access to sessions of tabs during upgrades. This was caused by a bug that happened only when users would dismiss the primary password prompt.
  • Fixed a slow audio speed issue on Linux that started with Firefox 127.0. It only happened if the preference accessibility.monoaudio.enable was set to TRUE.
  • The loading of the full Windows installer failed “in some circumstances” when executing the stub installer.
  • Firefox has been incorrectly rejecting cookies for “certain websites” since Firefox 127. One affected website is Solarwinds Papertrail.

Mozilla plans to release the new version of Firefox to all supported channels later today.

Firefox 127.0 was released last week to the public. It introduced a number of important changes, including:

  • It is now possible to add another layer of protection to the passwords functionality. This is available on Windows and macOS, and adds the operating system’s authentication as the barrier.
  • Firefox will upgrade HTTP media on HTTPS pages automatically, or block the media from loading.
  • Improved screenshots tool, which now supports taking screenshots from certain file types.

What about you? Have you tried Firefox recently? Did you encounter any of these bugs? Feel free to leave a comment down below.

YouTube Firefox Playback issue

Try these fixes if you have problems playing 1080p+ videos on YouTube in Firefox

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

For approximately four months, some Firefox users have experienced video playback issues while playing videos on YouTube.

Affected users noted that certain videos would stop playing on the site all of a sudden. YouTube would show a loading animation and it appeared that buffering was the culprit in many cases.

When Mozilla started to analyze the issue, it quickly discovered that 1080p or higher quality videos were affected only.

In particular, Mozilla discovered that 1080p, 2k and 4k videos on YouTube were affected when played in Firefox. The issues did not occur on every video playback and not for every user.

The issue is linked to the VP9 protocol that Google uses on YouTube.

Mozilla is keeping track of the issue here, but there is no fix available yet. This has not stopped some of the affected users from trying different things to get the issue fixed on their end.

Here are three solutions that worked for some affected users, but not for all of them:

  • Reduce the video quality with a click on the settings icon in the video player and the selection of quality from the menu that opens.
  • Install the enhanced-h264ify extension for Firefox. The extension switches playback to H.264 by default, but you can experiment with different codecs to see if any work.
  • Try setting the value of network.http.http3.enable to False on about:config.

These workarounds worked for some of the affected users, but not for everyone. Some lower the video quality, but they at least let affected users watch the videos that do not work otherwise.

Another option is to switch to a different browser for the time being, all Chromium-based browsers work, which should not surprise anyone, or third-party services such as Invidious or Freetube.

Did you experience issues on YouTube lately? Google has been cracking down on adblock users heavily in recent time.

Bitwarden Extension causes websites to hang

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Just a quick note. Bitwarden’s latest client release seems to cause issues for some users. The update to version 2024.6.0 may cause issues in browsers.

According to reports. websites may hang or stall when loaded while the Bitwarden extension is active.

The issue is causing high CPU usage when some websites are opened. This causes the loading of the website to hang and the browser to freeze entirely in some cases. Crashes may also happen.

Several browsers, including Safari, Chrome, and Edge, and operating systems appear affected by the issue.

Deactivation of the extension restores the status quo. Users who downgraded the client version to the previous one reported that this fixed the issue as well. Desktop users may download previous releases from the official Bitwarden GitHub repository.

A third workaround is to change when Bitwarden’s extension becomes active in the browser. This may not be possible in all browsers. To check it out, right-click on the Bitwarden extension icon in the browser and hover over “This can read and change site data”.

There you switch from “on all sites” to “when you click the extension”.

Bitwarden confirmed that it is investigating the issue at the time. The issue is affecting other projects, including Home Assistant as well.

Closing Words

It is probably only a matter of time before a fixed version is released by Bitwarden. Try one of the workarounds in the meantime.

Google Chrome 126

Google Chrome 126 fixes 21 security issues

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Google released a new stable version of its Chrome web browser for all supported platforms. Chrome 126 is a security update first and foremost, but it makes non-security changes to the browser as well.

The security update is available already. Google rolls out these updates over the course of days and weeks. Most Chrome installations are updated automatically, thanks to the built-in updating system.

Desktop users may install the update quicker by opening Menu > Help > About Google Chrome. Chrome displays the installed version on the page that opens and runs a check for updates. The browser will download any new version it finds.

Chrome 126: the security fixes

Google mentions that it has fixed 21 unique security issues in Chrome 126. It lists only externally reported issues on the page. All of these are rated high or lower, and there does not seem to be a(nother) 0-day issue that is affecting the browser at this time.

The security issues rated high type confusion, use after free, heap buffer overflow, and inappropriate implementation issues.

The non-security changes of Chrome 126

Here is an overview of important non-security changes in the new Chrome release:

  • OCR-AI Reader for inaccessible PDF documents that creates a “built-in PDF screen reader”.
  • Beginning to switch to an out-of-process iframe architecture for the PDF viewer. This makes it simpler to add new features to it according to Google.
  • Reactive prefetch on desktop. The feature speeds up navigations and the loading of pages by using a Google-owned service to predict resources that should be prefetched.
  • Tab Group support on iPad.
  • Starting in Chrome 126, Chrome starts to directly support accessibility client software that uses Microsoft Windows’s UI Automation accessibility framework.
  • Search any text or image using Google Lens.

Developers may want to check out the Chrome Status website for development related changes.

Have you tried Google Chrome recently?

DuckDuckGo AI Chat

DuckDuckGo AI Chat: promises anonymous access to AI models

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

DuckDuckGo has launched AI Chat officially. The feature promises anonymous interactions with several AIs, including GPT 3.5 , Claude 3, or Llama 3.

DuckDuckGo claims that access is free and that all chats are private. The company says that it is anonymizing interactions with the AI models. Furthermore, interactions are not used “for any AI model training”.

Users may communicate with all AIs free of charge. Interactions are, however, limited at this point. DuckDuckGo considers introducing paid plans in the future that increase limits and may give paying customers access to advanced models.

Using DuckDuckGo AI Chat is simple. Visit the startpage of the service and pick one of the available chat models to communicate with. Accept the privacy policy and terms of use on the next page.

The essential points are these:

  • DuckDuckGo is not saving or storing user prompts or outputs.
  • The company says it has agreements with model providers “to further protect” user privacy.

DuckDuckGo says that chats are anonymous and cannot be traced back to individuals. It achieves this by acting as a proxy. The AI communicates with DuckDuckGo, and thus also a DuckDuckGo IP address, and not the user directly.

Using DuckDuckGo AI Chat

AI Chat works as expected. You type and send the typed text to the AI. It will respond to it and DuckDuckGo shows the output from the AI in the interface.

Options to start the chat over and switch to another of the supported AI models are provided on the chat page.

The current limit is not highlighted on the AI Chat page. This means that you never know when you reach such a limit. You could switch to another AI model then to continue your interaction.

Closing Words

DuckDuckGo AI Chat gives you access to four different AI models at the time. If you trust the company’s claims, you get to interact with all of them anonymously. It is an interesting option to test the different AIs.

What about you? Do you use AI models already? If so, which is your favorite and why?

Firefox

Firefox is getting Tab Previews soon

Posted on by Martin Brinkmann

Mozilla has launched support for Tab Previews in Firefox Nightly officially. Firefox displays a thumbnail image of the open webpage on hover once the feature is enabled.

Current versions of Firefox display just the title of the website on hover. Firefox shows just the first few characters of a title on the tab itself by default.

While the title is sufficient for some users, others may prefer to see a preview of the actual web content. This may help identify the right webpage and thus tab when switching tabs in Firefox.

Once enabled, Firefox shows a preview of the webpage on hover.

Firefox users who run the Nightly version may enable Tab Previews in the following way:

  1. Load about:config in the Firefox address bar.
  2. Click on Accept the Risk and Continue.
  3. Search for browser.tabs.cardPreview
  4. Double-click on browser.tabs.cardPreview.enabled to set the value to True, , if it is not true already.
  5. Double-click on browser.tabs.cardPreview.showThumbnails to set the value to True, if it is not true already.
  6. Restart Firefox.

You should get previews now when you hover over a loaded tab in the browser.

Disable tab previews: if you do not like tab previews, you can disable them by setting browser.tabs.cardPreview.enabled to False.

A third preference determines how fast or slow previews are shown. This is browser.tabs.cardPreview.delayMs, which you may also change on about:config. The value is in milliseconds. Reduce the number and previews are shown quicker, or increase it, to get more hover time before tab previews are shown.

Bonus tip: set browser.taskbar.previews.enable to True to show up to 20 thumbnail images of open webpages in Firefox when hovering over the Firefox icon on the taskbar of the operating system. You can change that number by modifying browser.taskbar.previews.max on about:config.

Closing Words

Mozilla will enable Tab Previews in Firefox by default in the future. Good news is that users can disable the feature, if they have no use for it. Will take months before the feature lands in Firefox Stable.

Will you keep tab previews enabled or are you using them already in another browser?