Google rebrands its security features and calls it Play Protect

Some of you might notice something new in your Play Store app. Google announced back at I/O 2017 a new rebrand of its security features, which they’ve called Play Protect. Now, we’re seeing an instance of this show up on Google Play Store. Play Protect will be scanning apps before you download them to make sure you download apps that adhere to Google’s rules. At the same time, it watches the apps that run on your devices to see if they’re doing anything dodgy. If they are, you’ll get a notification and the app will be booted from the Play Store. You can see this in action or at least know you have it working on your phone under the “Updates” section of “My apps & games.” There you can manually scan apps and see if any of them have any issues. Some Play Store listings have also started to get “Verified by Play Protect.”

If you select the Play Protect button that has started to show up in the Play Store’s hamburger menu, it’ll then take you to the Play Protect settings page. From there you can opt to disable device scanning as well as the sending of unknown apps to Google. Now, if you disable this feature, the card under Updates will vanish but the menu items stay.

Source: 9to5Google

Google Play Store wants to bring to your attention apps that don’t crash

In a “why haven’t they been doing more of this before” moment, Google just announced that it’s making changes to the Play Store to make it easier for you to find apps that work properly. A new post on Google’s Android Developers Blog, states that half of the one-star reviews some Play Store apps get are over app stability (or lack thereof). Keeping that in mind, Google plans to improve its search and discovery algorithm on the app store to show app quality. “This results in higher quality apps being surfaced in the Play Store more than similar apps of lower quality (e.g. apps that exhibit more frequent crashes,” the post says. And for developers who find themselves suddenly at the bottom of the search list, Google encourages you to take a look at feedback and use that to help improve the app.

It’s now easier for Google to find out if an app is asking too much info from you

There are apps on the Play Store that ask way too much information from you. And while Android apps have mostly been developed to entertain and help us with our daily lives, it makes sense they need certain access to certain features—like a camera app needing access to your camera sensor. But sometimes there are other apps that ask too much from its users. For example, what would a coloring book app need with your location and microphone? These can potentially lead to leaking your personal information that you didn’t want others to know. But it’s hard to spot which apps ask too much from its users. However, Google seems to be working on that.

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Google Play Store now has Android Excellence collections

After Apple revamps the App Store, Google is kind of following in their footsteps with its new Android Excellence collections. This new program is going to highlight collections of apps that deliver “incredible user experiences on Android,” take advantage of Google’s best practices, or have “great design, technical performance, localization, or device optimization.” Google launched the collection today and split it into two groups: apps and games. You’ll be able to see these collections in the Editors’ Choice section, where the other featured apps and games are curated by Google’s editorial team.

The section seems to benefit developers more than users, though, as the apps will only be refreshed quarterly. So, if you go through all the apps and the quarter isn’t done yet, you’d have to wait. Developers are given extra exposure, though, for that length of time.

Source: Tech Crunch