MWC 2023: Google Introduces New Features for Android and Wear OS, Brings Google Keep Widget, New Shortcuts

Google has announced nine new features for Android and Wear OS at this week's Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. The new features have brought improvements to connectivity as well as accessibility for supported devices. The features include a Google Keep single note widget on home screen, Wear OS' new shortcuts to create notes and to-do lists from the watch face, audio enhancements, and new emoji packs. The new note widget will let users manage notes and to-do lists from the home screen. Additionally, Google Meet has received a new noise-cancellation feature.

Google in its blog post has shared that the new Google Keep note widget on Home Screen will display reminders, background colors as well as images added to notes. It will also be synced via a smartwatch. Additionally, the tech giant has also introduced two new shortcuts for Wear OS, which will let users create notes or to-do lists with just one tap on their watch face. Users will also be able to annotate PDFs in the Google Drive app for Android by using a Stylus or tapping on the screen.

The second major upgrade is audio enhancements to Google Meet on mobile. The app has received a noise-cancellation feature during calls. Further, Google's Fast Pair will let users connect new Bluetooth headphones to Chromebooks with just one tap.

Apart from these, new emoji packs and customisation features are also rolling out for Android. Users can mash up, remix, and share emoji combinations as stickers via Gboard. There are also new tap-to-pay animations coming next week on Google Wallet.

The new customisation features will let users increase the size of text, images, video, and interactive controls on Chrome by up to 300 percent. Users can also set the preferred content size as a default. The feature is currently available in Chrome Beta. Users can go to Settings > Accessibility and turn on the feature. It will be officially rolled out in March.