Android 11 - Top 6 Features

Android 11 - Top 6 Features

Google dropped Android 11 about a week ago now and i've been playing around with it but i've also been familiar with Android 11 with the previous betas that were release dearlier in 2020. Now Android 11 represents quite a few fund a mental changes to the operating syste mand i'm going to take you through what i think are the top six features of Android 11. First let's talk about notification sorting notifications have always been a bright spot with the Android operating system especially when you compare it to iOS. InAndroid 11 Google has improved the notification sorting by making sure your conversations are at the top of your notifications, followed by your main notifications and then silent notifications. It's a really great change because it'll keep all of your current conversations all in one place and you don't have togo digging through your list of notifications for them. Now do note some apps still haven't been updated to support this just yet like Instagram's messages. Another important part of the notifications updateis setting priority for a conversation.

Android 11 - Top 6 Features

Doing that will move new messagesin that thread to the top of your conversations list in notifications, turn on bubbles, more on that in a bit, it'll also use the contact's avatar asthe alert icon in the notification tray which is pretty neat.One last thing on notifications Google made it much easier to see a recenthistory of notifications, so if you accidentally swipe one away you can just scroll down to the bottom of the notifications listand click history. Now this isn't always enabled by default so to enable notifications history go into your Android phone settings,click notifications, notifications history, and then toggle onuse notification history. Next up, let's talk about media controls.

Media controls were in the past shown as a notification that would stick aroundwhile you were playing media from an app like Spotify,Google podcasts, etc. Now in Android 11, media controls have moved to a new spacein Android's quick settings area. If something is currently playing you'llsee the new media control as soon as you swipe down. If your mediasession isn't currently active, you can still get to the media playerview by swiping down again to expand the quick settings area. If you click thegear icon you can set the media player to staythere by default and if you have more than one media app youcan swipe through the different players in a card navigationto get to the one you need. Now one downside at launch is that way you canswitch the media plane on your phone to something like a bluetooth speakerheadphones etc, you can't switch it to a Google cast speaker orspeaker group from this view. However Google has confirmed that Android 11'saudio output switcher will work with cast devices once appsare updated in the coming months. Coming in at numberthree is chat bubbles.

Now if you are to use facebook messenger on Android andyou use the chat heads feature, congratulations you already kind of knowwhat chat bubbles are. It's basically a circular icon overlaythat you can drag up and down the sides of your phone'sscreen. When you tap the chat bubbles they fan out in this fun animation thatshows you all of the current conversations that you have bubbled.To get a conversation in bubble mode you can do this by hitting the iconon a message that supports it. If you get a message from a person while a bubbleis on the screen, you'll see the message pop up out fromthe bubble. Any contact that you mark as a priority within a chat appwill automatically become a bubble chat.

Bubbles are really handy when you'retrying to get something done on your phone while also continuing to conversewith friends over chat. The only downside right now is notall apps support priority and bubbles like facebook messenger, andinstagram messages don't even show up in the conversation view yetin notifications. Next up number four on our list is home control in the powermenu. Now if you already have a pixel deviceyou're already somewhat familiar with the new power menu controls.You long press the power button and you'll see the normal controls foremergency powering down the phone or lockdown then,earlier this year Google added a space to see the passes and your defaultcredit card for Google pay. Now below that you can see there arecontrols for your home that you'd normally seein the Google home app, you can control things like your smart lights bydragging the bar for each group of lightsto adjust their percentage or tapping the group to turn them on and off.You can also adjust things like thermostats smart switches and you'lleven be able to see a video feed from devices like the nest hello doorbell,pretty cool stuff. Number five, screen recording.Google has finally implemented a proper screen recording featuredirectly into the OS. 

Swipe down to see quicksettings and click the gear icon to add screen recording to your quick settingsmenu. That's the only way i've been able toactivate it so far when you start a screen recording you'll see a countdownup at the top until it starts recording. To stop a recording swipe down from thetop and you'll see a red notification, tap that notification to stop therecording. Then a notification with your screen recording will be generated,making it easy to delete or share it. Alright the last featurecoming in at number six on our list is screenshots.To screenshot something on Android now you swipe up from the bottom of thephone, to get into the multitasking view andthen hit screenshot. A little preview of your screenshot willappear at the bottom left corner and you can delete your screenshot byhitting that little x. You can also share your screenshot fromthis view as well as edit it. Editing allows you to do things likecrop and mark it up, and if you're familiar with iOS thisexperience should be pretty familiar to you.Now before we go one thing on another new feature that didn't make our list,predictive apps. This feature tries to predict the apps that you useon the bottom row of your home screen. Now my experience for whatever reasonthey're just not as good as the predictive apps at the top of the appdrawer. So they didn't make the list because ijust haven't found them all that useful and i ended up just replacing themwithin my home screen. If you liked this video and found ithelpful make sure you hit that thumbs up button belowand subscribe to the channel to see more videos on Android and Google productslike this one. For 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.