The Discord mobile app has 4 new upgrades we’ve all been waiting for

Today Discord is rolling out some much-needed updates to its mobile app which might finally make it feel like a proper alternative to the desktop version.

While I’ve had Discord installed on my phone for years I only ever turn to it as a last resort. It has been sluggish, more than a bit clunky, and was overall a less reliable experience than the version on my PC. Nine times out of ten a different app would be a better option. That might be about to change though, thanks to some improvements the Discord team has been working on with help from the community.

Speaking of which, if you’ve been trying out the experimental build of Discord, you might find some of the updates are familiar – that’s because today’s update is finally rolling the fine-tuned upgrades out to everyone. So now all mobile Discord users can take advantage of the app's new features which should improve load times, extend your phone's battery life, and use your data package more efficiently. 

More to come 

Alongside the updates highlighted below, Discord has a few more mobile app improvements up its sleeve that are set to arrive in the (hopefully near) future. This includes better search filters for finding the exact message or post you’re after, giving you more control over how compact lists and messages appear so that they suit your preferences, and adding a quick access option to see a server’s member list.

But let's get into the features you can take advantage of right now.

Discord icon on phone screen with logo on blurry background, Illustrative Editorial

Update your discord app today to see the improvements (Image credit: Shutterstock / Postmodern Studio)

Faster, more efficient chatting

The best upgrade to the Discord app is that it now opens much more quickly – with the new version reducing app opening times by 43% on iOS and 55% on Android. What’s more, when you hop between servers the mobile app now uses four times less data so you can hop between conversations without eating into as much of your monthly limit.

Android users should also notice the software is more reliable. Over the past year, the team says they’ve cut the crash rate by half for people using Android phones and tablets.

Midnight dark mode is here 

A screenshot of the new black Midnight Mode on Discord Mobile

A proper dark mode is finally here (Image credit: Discord)

Second on my list of Discord upgrades is that the app finally has a proper dark mode. Discord’s old Dark mode just wasn’t dark enough, but thankfully it now has Midnight mode that hits the mark by making menus black – with it not only adding some subjective style but also offering reduced battery drain on phones with an OLED display. 

By tapping on your profile picture, then the Settings cog wheel, you can scroll down to see your app’s Appearance settings. From here, tap Theme and you can now select Midnight (or the other free Dark and Light themes), or perhaps one of the funky color options if you pay for Nitro.

Media sharing simplified 

If you’re looking to share snaps via a DM or in your server’s picture chat, everything should feel a lot more organized.

With this new update, Discord mobile gained the ability to send images and videos as a neatly packed gallery that you could swipe through without having to scroll through a huge trail of images in the main chat. 

This should help to keep your conversations clearer, without losing the ability to share fun snaps or clips.

Cleaner call UI

A screenshot of the new leaner call UI on Discord Mobile

The call UI isn’t massively different, but feels better (Image credit: Discord)

Last but not least, the voice and video call user interface has been redesigned to offer a more intuitive and “cozy” space when you’re on a call while out on the go. It's also now a little more seamless to jump into one of Discord's inbuilt games with other members of the call, based on our experience with the experimental build. 

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Your Alexa mobile app finally makes more sense thanks to a recent update

Amazon has redesigned its Alexa mobile app with a focus on improving the software’s layout and reorganizing key sections.

The tech giant has been incrementally making changes to Alexa throughout 2023 like the time it added a new Home Shortcuts Bar. But instead of drip-feeding users, Amazon seemingly saw fit to roll out the rest of the update in one big push. 

The first thing you’ll notice is the Home tab is more structured than before. As TheVerge points out, the old app had a random assortment of “Most Relevant” and “Recently Used” items on the Home tab. The layout is more compartmentalized with a Shortcuts carousel at the top, an Activity section in the middle, and Favorites at the bottom taking up a large amount of space.

According to Amazon, Shortcuts “organizes devices by category and” displays commonly-used features like Routines. If you don’t use certain features, users can customize the carousel to better suit their needs. That area will even show you the current status of your smart home gadgets. The availability of the status readouts is a bit strange, however. The announcement states it will first come to users who have “20 or fewer devices” before expanding to others in the coming months.

Easily-accessible information

Activity cards will display “time-sensitive information” like reminders or upcoming alarms. Looking at the preview image, upcoming events are placed at the front. The rest will be hidden although you can tap See All to expand the menu.

Favorites offer quick access to frequently used devices, so you can control them with a single tap. At the time of this writing, eight device types are supported including smart lights, locks, and cameras just to name a few. Amazon says it has plans to expand this list later down the line.

The Devices page has been revamped too, effectively becoming the app’s new settings menu. Groups, located at the top of this page, pool all the connected hardware in a house’s room together for easier configuration. But if you prefer to tweak them individually, each gadget will appear in the list below. Amazon also took the time to upgrade the software’s search function. Now you can sort devices by alphabetical order, the date they were added, their name, or using certain keywords.

Availability

The updated Alexa app is making its way to Android and iOS, however, we should mention the latter will have an exclusive feature called Map View

This tool creates a digital floor plan of your house and then pins all your connected smart home gadgets so you can see where everything is located. It will only be available to a select group as a preview in the United States. No word on when it’ll see a widespread release or if it’ll roll out to Android although we did ask Amazon for more details. This story will be updated at a later time.

Until we hear back, check out TechRadar's list of the best smart speakers for 2023.

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Microsoft’s Bing Chat is coming to a mobile device near you

Earlier in 2023, it was revealed that Microsoft was testing out Bing Chat on third-party browsers like Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Mozilla Firefox. Now the tech giant announced that it would not only be bringing Bing Chat to these browsers but to mobile devices as well.

With this move, Microsoft intends to compete with other AI services and built-in browser tools like Google’s generative AI search features found in both the browser and mobile app, according to TechCrunch

In Microsoft’s official Bing blog post, it stated that “This next step in the journey allows Bing to showcase the incredible value of summarized answers, image creation, and more, to a broader array of people. You’ll get most of the great benefits of Bing and we’ll continue to optimize along the way to meet your needs across different browsers.”

The tech giant also warned that though you’ll be able to use your preferred platform for Bing Chat, the best service would be provided on Bing. For instance, users and Windows Latest noticed that Chrome’s Bing supports five messages per conversation versus the 30 in Microsoft Edge. Bing in Chrome has a character limit of 2,000, while Edge supports 4,000.

Microsoft’s blog post somewhat mentioned said limitations. “With Edge, you'll unlock longer conversations, chat history, and more Bing features built right into the browser. To experience the best browser for Bing, and get the full breadth of features, simply open the Microsoft Edge browser…”

Can Microsoft pull this off? 

It’s an interesting strategy for Microsoft to put its own service on mobile devices and other browsers. Mobile especially, as it’s one of the most popular ways to access websites, services, and applications, and not having a dedicated mobile version of Bing Chat is missing out on a crucial audience.

And it’s an understandable direction too, since the end goal is to increase Bing’s market share. Getting users, who would otherwise never use Bing, to try out Bing Chat on their preferred browser and then slowly convincing them to use it on Edge is pretty crafty. But limiting the access of Bing Chat in the hopes of pulling users to Bing is a risky move as well.

Instead of getting more Bing users, there’s the very real threat of turning off these users and having them switch back to whatever other AI chat they had been using before. Switching browsers is a huge deal and it’s difficult to get a dedicated Chrome or Firefox user to go to a completely new browser just for a service they can get elsewhere. And losing mobile users would be an especially hard blow, as they make up such a huge market.

Maybe Bing can gain more users if Microsoft continues to upgrade the experience on mobile and other browsers, like getting dark mode, voice input, and other interface improvements such as what iPhone users received. Not to mention equalizing the experience between other platforms and Bing browser.

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Google Chrome gets new 4 mobile features to boost your search game

A Google Chrome update is revamping the way you search on mobile so you can find the information you’re looking for quicker than before. In total, four new features are being introduced.

Starting from the top, Chrome will now show relevant search suggestions whenever you tap the address bar on certain websites. The example given by Google is to imagine yourself “reading an article about Japan as you plan for an upcoming trip.” Upon tapping the URL of said article, a section called Related To This Page will appear below giving “suggestions for other searches” from local tourist attractions to restaurants. This feature will be available on both iOS and Android.

System exclusive

What won’t be coming to iOS (at least initially) is a list displaying all of the trending Google searches for a day. You’ll be able to see the list by tapping the address bar on a freshly opened tab. The company says this will hit Android phones first. Later on in this year, Chrome on iOS will get the same thing although an exact date wasn’t given.

Third in the Chrome update is the seemingly exclusive upgrade to Touch to Search on Android. Moving forward, whenever you highlight text on a website, a carousel of related topics will appear at the bottom of the page so you can quickly learn about the topic at hand. There is a chance you won’t be able to see the carousel as Touch to Search may be deactivated. Detailed instructions on how to activate the tool can be found on the Chrome Help website

And finally, “typing in the Chrome address bar” on the iOS app will now display 10 suggestions instead of six. The Android app has had this feature for a while now. This is just Google updating the iPhone version so it’s on par.

Potential desktop changes

The company says all four updates are currently making their way to all users so keep an eye out for the patch when it arrives. 

As for Chrome on desktop, officially there’s nothing officially new. However, a report from TheVerge reveals the download tray on the web browser is in fact seeing some changes. There is a ring animation that will now appear displaying the progress of a download. Plus the tray will list every file “you downloaded within the previous 24 hours” alongside options to pause, resume, retry, or cancel the download. 

It’s unknown when the desktop changes will be released. As we said, Google hasn’t said a word about it. We asked the company for more information regarding the download tray upgrade as well as clarification on some of the mobile features. We wanted to know if it plans on extending the Touch to Search carousel to iOS among other things. This story will be updated at a later time.

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Get ready to take your Bing AI chat from the desktop to mobile, without starting over

Microsoft is working on yet another sizable update to Bing AI with this round going to mobile. The latest batch comes just weeks after a previous announcement of various desktop improvements and we have a lot to cover.

Starting off with the Bing app itself, users will be able to add a Bing Chat widget to their “iOS or Android home screen”. This gives you direct access to the AI with the option to either type in your query into the text window or select the microphone icon to ask the question verbally. You can start fresh with a new chat or continue with an old one as Microsoft is enabling the frequently requested “continuous conversations across platforms”. So now a conversation held with Bing on the desktop can continue on mobile devices and vice versa.

The last Bing app update sees the AI gaining new support for multiple countries and languages, which opens it up to more people around the world. Unfortunately, a list of all the newfound support was not included in the post (although we did ask). Microsoft also claims it “improved the quality for non-English chats.” However, the company didn’t provide any details on the level of improvement. 

Expanding support

Moving on to the second app, SwiftKey will have a Compose feature to help you write texts “according to the parameters you suggest”. These parameters include the subject matter, tone, length, and format with the final one being useful for drafting emails. Of course, you can edit those drafts. Two new tones are being added to SwiftKey as well – Witty and Funny – bringing the total to six. So, if you want to have Bing create some eye-rolling dad jokes, you can (just be sure you use this power wisely). To top it all off, the AI-powered Translator on Android will be migrating over to iOS “within the next week” or so.

The Edge browser app is getting Contextual Chat allowing users to ask Bing a question based on the content they’re viewing. The example given is you can ask the AI what the best wine would be to pair with a recipe you're looking at or have it write up a summary of an article you're looking at. Learning will also be made a bit easier thanks to Selected Text Actions. Highlighting a piece of text will open a conversation with Bing where it will then explain that topic in detail complete with “cited sources”.

And last but not least, every single group chat in Skype will have access to the generative AI. All you have to do is tag it by entering “@Bing” into a discussion. 

Bing AI update on mobile apps

(Image credit: Windows)

Availability

The release dates of all these features are all over the place which is why it wasn’t mentioned earlier. The Skype update, SwiftKey Compose tool, and the Bing widget are releasing this week (week of May 14, 2023). Next week, we’ll see continuous conversations alongside the Translator tool. Everything else is unknown other than a vague “soon”. 

We asked Microsoft if it could provide us with dates for the unmentioned features plus a list of the newly supported countries and languages. This story will be updated at a later time.

While we have you check out TechRadar’s list of the best AI tools for 2023 to see what the technology is capable of. It’s not just assistants or content generators.

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Google Docs update makes formatting on mobile easier at last

Google is working on a new update for its office software that will make formatting documents in Google Docs even easier on mobile.

Last year the search giant added the ability to add a page break before paragraphs in Google Docs on the web and according to a new post in the Google Workspace blog, this same functionality is now rolling out to smartphones.

This feature is particularly useful for journalists and other writers that want certain paragraph styles to always create a new page such as titles, subtitles or headings.

Page breaks before paragraphs on mobile

Just like in Google Docs on the web, users will now be able to mark paragraphs to always begin on a new page with the new “Add page break before” option.

In addition to helping keep your formatting the same throughout a document, this feature will also allow users to import and export Microsoft Word and other third-party documents that have “Page break before” applied to paragraphs and Google Docs will retain that formatting.

While the ability to add page breaks before paragraphs is now rolling out to Google Docs users, it could take up to 7 days on Android and up to 15 days on iOS before it becomes available. Once it does though, a new formatting menu will appear at the bottom of your screen that will make it much easier to configure the style of your documents on the go.

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Twitter just sold its mobile ad business for more than a billion dollars

Twitter has officially completed the sale of its mobile ads platform MoPub to AppLovin, netting the company a cool $ 1.05 billion.

MoPub helped Twitter generate around $ 190 million in revenue during 2020, but the company felt that having the platform was impacting its ability to execute in other areas, such as catering to SMBs and e-commerce, both of which are areas of strength for Meta (formerly Facebook). 

The deal was originally announced in October 2021.

Out with the old

“With the sale of MoPub completed, we continue to concentrate our efforts on enhancing ads across our platform,” Twitter GM of Revenue Products Bruce Falck said. “Our goal is to deliver faster growth in key areas and accelerate our product development.” 

At the time of the deal, AppLovin said that MoPub was being used by 45,000 apps to monetize, reaching 1.5 billion addressable users around the world. 

“Developers benefit from more features to help drive higher monetization opportunities and streamline workflows, leading to increased revenue for their businesses. We believe the power of this unified platform will be unparalleled in today’s market,” said AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi. 

“We are excited to execute on this strategic acquisition with our sights set on operating the largest and most robust in-app advertising platform that enhances the growth of the broader mobile app ecosystem.”

According to Twitter, many MoPub features will sunset on March 31, 2022, although the MoPub Dashboard and Reporting will remain live until April 8, 2022. 

While Twitter has outsized influence, its finances are generally much weaker than its rivals, leading to an ambitious plan to double revenues to $ 7.5 billion per year (or more) by 2023. 

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