Google Updates Hangouts, Translate and YouTube for Android With New Features

Google on Wednesday updated three of its Android apps - YouTube, Hangouts and Translate - with new features and improvements.

Video streaming app YouTube is now updated to version 5.7 with some much needed improvement. As noted by Android Police, the app finally lets you manually select the quality level when a video is playing. This means Android users can finally select video stream quality like auto, 144p, 240p, 360p, and 720p from the new gear icon, instead of just a choice of HD/HQ (depending on the video) on or off.

The updated YouTube app listed on the Google Play India store on Wednesday did not include this feature, but the listing notes that the video quality is improved for all devices running Android 4.2 or higher. It also includes a new YouTube Mix automatic playlists for music videos. The personal playlists and liked videos will appear in the left-hand guide drawer. Users can share playlists as well. Other than that, users can now see if the comment was shared privately or publicly and can reply or delete it.

The version 2.1.223 update for Hangouts now allows users to block SMS messages from specific person. Users can also set an individual notification sound for a hangout. It seems like all other updates this too is slowly rolling out to users. For those who hasn't received it yet will still see the version 2.1.100 of Hangouts app, which is currently listed on the Google Play store in India, lasted updated on Wednesday. This version fixes bugs and performance improvements for SMS, MMS, and video calls. Conversations through SMS and Hangouts from same person are now combined into a single conversation. Users can also add a widget on the home screen for easy access to it.

Finally, the Google Translate 3.0.7 update fixes more bugs in the app. It includes improved offline language pack experience and phonetic input support for Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu. The updated Google Translate app is currently listed on the Google Play store in India.