App Updates

Instagram gains Events channel highlighting media posted during specific events

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 18, 2016

Instagram yesterday announced a new Events channel in the Explore section of its free of charge iPhone app. Currently limited to users within the United States and resembling Snapchat's Discover channel with Live Stories, it brings in one place all of the photos and videos posted on the service during specific events, such as concerts, sports games and more. Like the rest of Explore, the new Events channel is personalized for you and highlights events you might like.

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Instagram update brings camera improvements to Stories feature

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 16, 2016

Instagram's new Stories feature caused quite a stir as some users took issue with the fact that the Facebook-owned photo sharing service basically ripped off Snapchat Stories. Be that as it may, Instagram's iPhone application, which is available at no charge on the App Store, has just received a nice update which packs in a few useful camera-related improvements to the Stories feature.

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Microsoft’s mobile Office apps pick up support for drawing with a finger/stylus on iPhone

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 15, 2016

Microsoft today issued updates to its mobile Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps on the App Store, adding support for drawing with your finger on the iPhone. Back in January 2016, the Windows maker brought its inking tools to the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil support. With the latest update, iPhone owners can take advantage of the Draw tab to draw, highlight and annotate documents with their finger or a stylus.

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At long last, Instagram is adding much-needed Drafts to save unfinished posts for later

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 5, 2016

You cannot find it mentioned in release notes accompanying the most recent Instagram update which brought out a new Snapchat-like Stories feature, but either that or an earlier update has quietly added a much-needed Drafts feature to the popular mobile photography app.

Called by some fans the best feature that has happened to Instagram in quite a while, Drafts lets you save the photo you're currently editing as a draft.

This is quite useful, if not essential, in case you just spent your time making detailed edits to a photo, but ultimately decided not to post it until later.

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Google Photos gains 3D Touch shortcuts and storage optimization feature

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 16, 2024

Google today issued a minor refresh to its native Photos app on the App Store, introducing 3D Touch shortcuts for the Home screen and a much-needed new feature designed to optimize storage space on your device. Bumped to version 1.13, Google Photos for iPhone and iPad produces a 3D Touch menu upon pressing its Home screen icon, giving you access to the following shortcuts: I'm Feeling Lucky, Free Up Space and Make Shared Album.

In addition to these 3D Touch shortcuts and the new storage-optimization feature, this edition of the app packs in unspecified performance improvements.

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Google’s iOS keyboard gains dark theme, GIF suggestions & expanded language support

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 4, 2016

Following its debut on the App Store nearly three months ago, Google's gesture-driven predictive keyboard for the iPhone and iPad—called Gboard—today received its first feature-focused update. Gboard 1.1 for iOS, a free download, includes a darker keyboard theme, smart GIF suggestions and increased global availability with language support for English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal) and Spanish (Spain).

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Telegram for iOS gains personal storage, group previews and trending/archived stickers

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 3, 2016

Telegram, a secure instant messaging service that supports rich media attachments and optional end-to-end encryption, today refreshed its mobile app on the App Store with a few new features. Telegram for iOS, now bumped to version 3.11, offers some interesting new sticker packs and lets you archive those you no longer use.

You can now preview groups before joining them and store your messages and media in the new storage chat.

Telegram is available free on the App Store and Mac App Store.

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Snapseed update adds Text filter, image resizing when exporting and sharing & more

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 3, 2016

Since buying Snapseed from Nik Software in September 2012, Google has been somewhat neglecting this once popular mobile image editor, issuing maintenance updates that were light on new features. Today, the search firm announced that Snapseed, at long last, is getting some interesting new capabilities via an update on iOS and Android. The Text filter is now available and you can configure the app to resize photos when sharing/exporting.

UI adjustments and bug fixes are included in Snapseed 2.8 as well.

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Snapchat rolls out city-specific stickers that mock local trends and highlight landmarks

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 3, 2016

Snapchat for iPhone, an ephemeral image messaging app, yesterday announced a new feature called Geostickers. Basically special stickers available in some of the biggest cities around the world, they can be applied to images and moved around before sending them. You can also stick these city-specific stickers on your Snaps.

Geostickers are available now in Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Washington DC, Honolulu, London, Sydney, São Paulo, Paris and Riyadh.

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