Author: Monique Irish Casingal

{ "de-DE": "Monique Irish Casingal ist eine philippinische Senior-Content-Writerin mit Schwerpunkt Videospiele und digitale Software. Als Absolventin der Literaturwissenschaft und selbst begeisterte Gamerin war sie kurzzeitig im Software-News-Bereich tätig – und inzwischen deutlich länger damit, die neuesten Trendspiele, neue Programme und auch ältere Titel zu testen, denen man definitiv eine Chance geben sollte.", "en-US": "Monique Irish Casingal is a Filipina senior content writer specializing in video games and digital software. As a graduate of AB Literature and an avid gamer herself, she's had a previously short stint in delivering software-related industry news, and a currently even longer one in reviewing the latest trending games, new programs, and those old titles that people should give a shot.", "es-ES": "Monique Irish Casingal es una senior content writer filipina especializada en videojuegos y software digital. Licenciada en Literatura y gamer empedernida, tuvo una breve etapa cubriendo noticias del sector del software y, desde entonces (durante mucho más tiempo), se dedica a analizar los últimos juegos en tendencia, programas nuevos y también esos clásicos que merecen una segunda oportunidad.", "fr-FR": "Monique Irish Casingal est une rédactrice senior philippine spécialisée dans le jeu vidéo et les logiciels numériques. Diplômée en lettres et joueuse passionnée, elle a d’abord brièvement couvert l’actualité de l’industrie logicielle, avant de passer plus durablement à la critique des jeux tendance du moment, des nouveaux programmes et de ces titres plus anciens qui méritent qu’on leur donne une chance.", "it-IT": "Monique Irish Casingal è una senior content writer filippina specializzata in videogiochi e software digitale. Laureata in Letteratura e gamer appassionata, ha avuto una breve esperienza nel raccontare notizie dell’industria software e, da allora (per molto più tempo), si dedica a recensire i giochi del momento, i nuovi programmi e anche quei titoli più datati che vale la pena riscoprire.", "ja-JP": "", "nl-NL": "Monique Irish Casingal is een Filipijnse senior content writer die zich richt op videogames en digitale software. Als afgestudeerde in Literatuurwetenschap en zelf een fanatieke gamer had ze eerder een korte periode waarin ze nieuws over de software-industrie bracht, en inmiddels een veel langere waarin ze de nieuwste trending games, nieuwe programma’s en ook oudere titels recenseert die mensen echt eens een kans moeten geven.", "pl-PL": "Monique Irish Casingal to filipińska starsza autorka treści specjalizująca się w grach wideo i oprogramowaniu cyfrowym. Jest absolwentką filologii/literatury i zapaloną gamer-ką. Ma za sobą krótki epizod w tworzeniu newsów z branży software, a obecnie znacznie dłuższy – w recenzowaniu najnowszych, popularnych gier, nowych programów oraz starszych tytułów, którym warto dać szansę.", "pt-BR": "Monique Irish Casingal é uma senior content writer filipina especializada em videogames e software digital. Formada em Literatura e gamer de carteirinha, ela teve uma breve passagem cobrindo notícias da indústria de software e, desde então (por muito mais tempo), vem se dedicando a analisar os jogos em alta, novos programas e também aqueles títulos antigos que merecem uma chance.", "social": { "email": "", "facebook": "", "twitter": "", "linkedin": "" } }

YouTube fixes some sudden issues with its services

Popular video-sharing app YouTube has had to quickly apply fixes to its features and services after several of them stopped working last Tuesday, April 12. These issues include being unable to sign in, the menu sidebar not displaying anything, and the TV screencasting function failing, among others.

YouTube is one of the biggest social media platforms around so it’s no surprise that it can become vulnerable to serious problems from time to time. From YouTube being criticized for trending toxic content to the YouTube algorithm making things difficult for content creators, there’s no shortage of storms its developers have to weather. Technical issues like this, however, are pretty easy to resolve.

On Tuesday, several reports all over the world came in saying that certain features across YouTube services are being wonky. The services—YouTube, YouTube TV, YouTube Music, and YouTube Studio—are mainly having trouble with user login, account-switching, account menus, and navigation bars. 

Other issues include being unable to cast to TVs, use the app on a gaming console, access account drop-down menus, and getting the “no internet connection” error message when watching. Fortunately, users could still watch videos from their homepage or search results. However, they couldn’t access any curated content for their accounts.

YouTube eventually rolled out fixes for all known issues a few hours after its Twitter post acknowledged the problem. You should now be able to do all of the above without much trouble on any device. This is great since the most recent YouTube integration with Snapchat is something worth trying out if you like sharing content.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is a smash hit for video game movie history

After its world premiere, Paramount Pictures’ Sonic The Hedgehog 2 movie had the biggest opening weekend for any video game movie so far—smashing past $72 million at the US box office alone. This sequel to the 2020 film Sonic The Hedgehog also grossed a further $37 million internationally. 

The Sonic The Hedgehog film series is a live-action close adaptation of the popular Sega video game franchise of the same name, featuring the adventures of the speedy anthropomorphic blue hedgehog Sonic as he arrives on Earth. The games alone have been ported and remastered for various platforms—one of which is Sonic The Hedgehog 2 for Android. 

The success of the game franchise had long since inspired attempts to recreate it on the big screen and finally, 2020 saw the beginning of a planned Sonic cinematic universe. The first film had already been quite notable due to its disastrous first trailer getting revamped and garnering internet fame, but the second one just completely blows the competition out of the water.

Sonic The Hedgehog had clocked at $58 million for its own three-day weekend debut, but the sequel just topped that and more. Currently, it has made $141 million worldwide—making it Paramount Pictures’ biggest opening weekend since 2014. It’s at the top of the box office right now and has even beaten the record of another video game movie, Detective Pikachu (2019), for the second time.

Many viewers have attributed the movie’s instant success to how it catered to both fans of the games and general audiences and mostly stayed true to the characters’ portrayals. With the announcement of a third film and a spin-off series in the works, things are looking bright for the games’ continued popularity among the next generation of budding fans.

Image credit: Paramount Pictures

Photos in WhatsApp’s disappearing chats no longer auto-save in your gallery

To keep media-sharing more secure, WhatsApp is rolling out a new update that automatically disables the option to view and auto-save media files from disappearing messages in a phone’s image gallery. This update is available on WhatsApp for Android and WhatsApp for iOS on both beta and public builds.

Disappearing messages is a cool WhatsApp feature that lets users send messages that will delete themselves after a set duration. Not only is it handy in clearing out storage space, but it also ensures that anything you’ve sent there won’t be saved by other people so easily.

The new update takes this even further by turning off media visibility by default for disappearing chats. Previously, it was enabled so Android users could view media like photos and videos that were set to vanish via their phone gallery, while iOS users will have the media auto-saved to their gallery. Now, you must manually enable it if you want to save them.

This new feature is the same concept for both operating systems but differs in what they cover. For Android, the option “Media Visibility” for disappearing messages is disabled so you can’t view the media via your gallery. For iOS, it’s the option “Save to Camera Roll” that’s turned off so images, videos, and GIFs from disappearing chats are no longer automatically saved in your camera roll. 

You can still save these files manually, though—or simply turn off disappearing messages. Either way, this is a pretty handy update since it provides extra privacy for the sender of the disappearing message. With the latest update of WhatsApp archived chats coming to the Windows platform, the popular instant chat app’s security is all the better.

Image credit: WABetaInfo

Google Meet now auto-kicks you out of meetings when you’re alone

In its latest update, Google Meet rolls out two new features. One is the “leave empty call” reminders, which prompts users to exit or stay in meetings when they’ve been alone for five minutes. The other is a new centralized location for host management controls on the desktop version.

As a popular video-conferencing web app, Google Meet aims to provide user-friendly features that not only make online meetings easier—like Google Meet’s “Companion Mode”—but also more secure. These new features aim to achieve both.

The “leave empty call” reminder feature is for privacy. When you’re the only user in a meeting for five minutes, a pop-up will ask if you’d like to stay or leave. If you don’t respond, it will automatically kick you out. This is to prevent situations wherein your audio or video is unintentionally shared, so this is enabled by default. The feature will be available on PC, Google Meet for Android, and Google Meet for iOS—and is only for Workspace, legacy G Suite, and personal Google accounts.

Meanwhile, the centralized host management controls feature simply gathers all host controls into one place on the screen for better accessibility. If you click on the shield-and-lock icon at the bottom-right corner, all host and co-host features will be displayed together. This feature is only for Google Meet for Desktop but is available for all users.

The new update will be rolling out over the coming weeks. It’s not as bulky as the previous ones but the improvement in how Google Meet operates is no less a welcome change for everyone who frequently uses the app. If you want to know more, here’s a handy guide on how Google Meet works.

Image credit: Google Workspace Updates / Google Blog

Archived chats are coming to WhatsApp Beta

To keep all platforms updated with the same features, WhatsApp is finally rolling out the archived chats feature to WhatsApp Beta UWP (Universal Windows Platform)—better known as WhatsApp Beta for Windows. Beta testers can expect some bugs and a lack of certain functions for this particular update, though.

WhatsApp always endeavors to have all of its platforms share the same features as much as possible. While there may be some exceptions due to their nature—like WhatsApp Web getting a security browser extension—the PC and mobile versions are always up-to-date, so features like WhatsApp’s multi-device capabilities don’t get in the way of users enjoying them.

With the new update, users can now test viewing, archiving, and unarchiving chats on the Windows beta client. To archive a chat specifically, you need to right-click on the chat window you want to hide. This will display the “Archive” option, and clicking on it does just that. Now, typically, archived chats will stop being hidden once someone replies with a new message. However, for the latest version, they will stay in the archive even when new messages arrive. 

One of the bugs found for this feature is that unarchiving a chat won’t refresh the chats list. The fixes and other new features will be rolled out in future updates. Aside from this new functionality, WhatsApp has also added all-new icons for the chat options. They are for Media, Files, Links, Encryption, and Groups—and you can see them under the Options button. 

While the archived chats function isn’t new to WhatsApp in general, it’s still great that WhatsApp Beta for Windows now gets to have it. It is only one of the many upcoming features WhatsApp has teased and released for beta testers, so you can expect it to be rolled out for public use soon.

Image credit: WABetaInfo

You can now check toll prices on Google Maps

Google Maps will be rolling out new handy updates this month, which include the long-awaited toll price checking feature, new improvements on the map’s details, and new capabilities on Google Maps for iOS. The first two will be launched for selected countries and more will be supported later. 

Some of Google Maps’ competitors already had the option to view toll prices so it’s lagging behind in terms of functionality. However, this update proves to be a good one since it expands the popular web mapping app’s list of features on various different versions and platforms.

The new toll price feature on Google Maps allows users to check the estimated toll price on roads—with its data coming from local tolling authorities. The feature also lets you exclude toll roads by choosing the “Avoid tolls” option. The toll prices will be available on both Android and iOS this month, supporting almost 2,000 toll roads in the US, India, Japan, and Indonesia. Support for more countries will come soon. 

Aside from this new function, Google Maps also gets more detailed and enhanced maps. These will display things like traffic lights, stop signs, building outlines, areas of interest, and even the shape and width of roads—including their islands and medians. These updates will be available in selected countries in the coming weeks for Android, iOS, Android Auto, and CarPlay. 

Lastly, there are new iOS functionalities. Users can now access Google Maps from their home screen with new widgets. Apple Watch now also supports Google Maps and lets you auto-start its navigation. There’s an integration with Spotlight, Siri, and the Shortcuts app, too—letting users use voice commands to access it instantly. You can expect these additions to be rolled out in the coming weeks and months. 

This update is definitely jam-packed with improvements, which are most beneficial to travelers in other countries. If you want more cool travel features you can use in the app, then there are also Google Maps’ speed trap alerts and Google Maps’ “Popular Dishes” function for restaurants you can visit.

Image credit: The Keyword | Google

YouTube integrates with Snapchat and now allows direct sharing

To make video link-sharing much easier for Snapchat users, Snapchat has recently launched an integration feature with the YouTube mobile app that lets you directly share YouTube videos to Snapchat Camera. This not only makes the process of creating Snaps and Snapchat Stories more streamlined, but it also creates cool-looking custom stickers for the links.

The addition of this unique feature shows that link-sharing doesn’t have to be bothersome and that it can become a visual treat, too. YouTube already has many integrations with other apps for content-sharing but this improvement in its capabilities makes it an even worthwhile app to have.

The previous method of sharing YouTube links on Snapchat was by manually copy-pasting them from the Share button. With the new feature, however, you can now simply tap a button to immediately be redirected to your Snapchat app. It will automatically open up the Snapchat Camera tool so you can quickly start creating a Snap or a Snapchat Story.

The great thing about this update is that the copied link will be converted into a custom-generated sticker that shows the video’s thumbnail and title. With this, you can paste it into your work and even have full access to the Snapchat Creative Tools. This feature is available on both YouTube Android and YouTube iOS—but you definitely need both YouTube and Snapchat apps for it to work.

To use it, open the YouTube video you want, tap the “Share” button, and tap the Snapchat icon. Then, create an original Snap with its automated sticker. Once posted, your followers can tap on the sticker and it’ll redirect them to the video. This is a great way to not only recommend content but also promote videos—and potentially influence their YouTube algorithm, too.

Image credit: Snap Newsroom

WhatsApp limits forwarding messages to deter fake news

Previously testing this feature only in Brazil, WhatsApp is now rolling out a new update on forwarding message restrictions. Now, users can only send forwarded messages to one group chat. This is to further combat the spread of misinformation and spam via the app. 

As a popular instant messaging app, WhatsApp can be vulnerable in many ways and be used for the wrong purposes all the time. While it has features like WhatsApp Web’s “Code Verify” that secure user privacy, they’re also pretty easy to exploit. Thus, the addition of this new feature will at least deter malicious intent.

The new limit on forwarded messages is mainly applied to users who received them and to already-forwarded messages. Whether it came from a private chat or a group chat, the user can only send them to one group chat. If you happen to be the origin of the message, though, there’s no limit imposed.

This update will be available on both WhatsApp Beta for Android and WhatsApp Beta for iOS in the coming weeks. It’s a great addition to WhatsApp since being able to easily share messages isn’t always a good thing. There’s no news yet on when this will be implemented for WhatsApp for Web and WhatsApp for Desktop.

Aside from that, other great new beta updates include a new chat bubble that notifies you if the phone number you’ve tapped on is owned by someone with a WhatsApp account and the file size limit on sharing media on WhatsApp is expanding to 2GB. Additionally, there are new WhatsApp voice message features being rolled out too.

Image credit: WABetaInfo

You can now share YouTube videos directly on Snapchat

Snapchat has recently launched a unique integration feature with YouTube, which allows users to share YouTube videos directly from the app to Snapchat Camera. Not only does it completely remove the tedious copy-pasting of links, but this feature also displays the links as custom stickers usable for Snaps and Snapchat Stories.

Despite having numerous competitors, Snapchat remains one of the most popular social media apps around. Sharing content to followers is a favorite pastime on the app—which is why Snapchat now also lets you share your real-time location—so this integration with YouTube makes it a more seamless and creative experience.

Previously, sharing YouTube links on Snapchat required manually copying and pasting links from the app via its Share button. Now, however, you can tap that button and a Snapchat icon will appear to redirect you to Snapchat Camera. This then allows you to use the link as a custom YouTube sticker you can paste on your Snap or Snapchat Story.

This is the first time that YouTube links are visually represented for sharing, with thumbnails and titles appearing as little boxes instead of plain old text. Thus, you can get creative with how you share it as you still get full access to Snapchat Creative Tools when in Camera Mode. When you post your Snap, followers can simply tap on the sticker to redirect them to the video.

To enjoy this feature, you need the YouTube mobile app installed. Open a video, tap “Share,” and tap the Snapchat icon to open Snapchat itself. Then, create an original Snap with the automated sticker and use the creative tools however you want. This feature is available on both Snapchat for Android and Snapchat for iOS. 

Image credit: Snap Newsroom

WhatsApp is soon getting new voice message features

After seeing a great need for improvement, WhatsApp will finally be rolling out new voice messaging features that were in development. These include the previously-reported global voice note player feature for WhatsApp that lets users play voice messages in the background while navigating the app.

WhatsApp’s drive to constantly introduce handy features and improve existing ones is what makes it one of the most popular instant chat apps around. From allowing users to blur images on WhatsApp for Android to expanding WhatsApp’s file size limit when sharing media, there’s definitely much to look forward to in these new voice note features.

The upcoming voice message update will arrive in the coming weeks, after rigorous beta testing. There are primarily six features to expect. The first is the global voice note player or the “Out of Chat Playback” feature, which is great for multitasking. There is also the Pause/Resume Recording feature, which allows you to pause during recording and create a uniform and uninterrupted voice note.

The third new function is the Waveform Visualization, which displays a visual representation of the voice message so you know where you are. This feature will also be added to voice calls soon. Next is the Draft Preview, which lets you review your recording before sending it. There’s also the Remember Playback feature, which will let you pick up where you left off after pausing the voice message.

Lastly, there’s the Fast Playback on Forwarded Messages, which adds speed controls for the recordings and offers 1.5x and 2x speeds to choose from. This update will soon be available for WhatsApp for Android, WhatsApp for iOS, WhatsApp Desktop, and WhatsApp Web so be sure to check if you have the latest version. 

Image credit: Newsroom | Meta – WhatsApp