Google is rolling out several new features and changes to the Play Store. The company will show more information on app listings to help users make better install decisions. It didn’t go into detail about what changes app pages will see or what new information will be added. We couldn’t find any notable updates either. But they may start appearing in the coming days.
You can also now check the status of app installs on other connected devices through your smartphone. So if you have multiple devices running on the same Google account, you can not only remotely install apps on those devices through your phone but also check the download progress. This feature also has yet to show up for us but it should soon.
Additionally, Google says it will soon start showing device security information from Google Play Protect within your phone’s Settings app (via Android Police). You will find this information on the Security and Privacy settings page on Android 13 devices.
September Google System updates bring the new Play Store features
These Play Store changes are part of Google System updates for September 2022. For the uninitiated, Google System updates are updates to various underlying systems that form the basis of the Android operating system. The company regularly pushes these updates and they mostly install automatically behind the scenes. But it also publicly shares the changelog on its official website for everyone to see.
The changes are grouped monthly, though all the updates for a month don’t roll out at the same time. For instance, this month’s Google System updates begin more than three weeks back. We initially got improvements to the Google Kids Space. Google then added new Play Store features for Wear OS devices. If you install an app on your watch that requires a companion app on your connected smartphone, the latter is automatically installed.
We also recently got alerts for passwords compromised in data leaks. These alerts will check information stored in Autofill to check if your password was compromised in a recent public data breach. Continuing these Google System updates, the company is now rolling out some changes for the Play Store. The latest batch of Google System updates for September 2022 began rolling out earlier this week with Play Store v32.4. Some changes will not reflect until the end of this month. You can refer to Google’s official support page for more details.
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