Michael Brown

Engineer
Helping you master the Google ecosystem
Android & Pixel tips & tech workflows.
📧 [email protected]

[M. Brandon Lee | THIS IS TECH TODAY @thisistechtoday]

🚨 The Google Pixel Drop for November is here!

✅ Gemini Intelligence on Pixel 10
✅ Rambler cleans up voice typing
✅ Make your own widgets
✅ Pixel search on Pixel 6a and up
✅ Pixel Tag is out at $29.99

Find out what else is new and for which devices 👇

[Mishaal Rahman @MishaalRahman]

📍Tag, you're it: the Google Pixel Tag is now available!

Just stopped by the Google Store in Mountain View to check it out😁

Glad to see more Find Hub-compatible trackers with UWB support!

You can order yours here: https://t.co/yy6j1jWGIG

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

AppFunctions hitting beta has me itching to expose a few actions from my app to agents.

The part I'm still waiting on is Gemini actually calling third-party apps outside the Connected Apps preview.

@keyboardsurfer any rough timeline on when that opens up more broadly? @AndroidDev

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

@MishaalRahman Love this! Will be telling my parents about this who both have Pixel 10a's

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

HiLight on the Pixel 11 Pro finally does what it should've done on day one.

The November Pixel Drop makes it glow for Google Messages texts from your favorites. Phone face down, and only the people you actually want to hear from can pull you back in.

Settings > System > HiLight

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

@turkelitopcusu @framesforpixel Great idea! Thanks for the recommendation. I'll test this today

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

New onboarding experience for @framesforpixel!

Meet Framey 👋🏾! 😁

Now currently in beta!

Thank you all for your feedback! 🙏🏾

Only available on the Google Play Store: https://t.co/IVDiQLE8ep

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

I think Create My Widget is the most underrated part of Gemini Intelligence.

You just describe a widget and it lands on your homescreen.

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

@MishaalRahman Create My Widget pulling from Gmail and Calendar is a big upgrade. I think it's the first time Android widgets have felt genuinely new in years. A launch countdown is such a good use case

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

@markgurman Touch on laptops is one of those things that sounds gimmicky until it just becomes part of how you get around. Curious if Apple ever goes all in on a touch-first macOS

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

@mweinbach @meetKORA Same. I think agentic stuff works best layered into an OS people already know, like Gemini on Android, instead of replacing the whole thing. Curious to see what Kora actually ships

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

@_mohansolo Yea the jump to Carbon is real. I've been using it in Antigravity to build my 16-bit game and it's been a lot of fun. Excited to see where the CLI goes from here

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

@csinco @figma @AndroidStudio Makes sense. It's one of the reason why I made my app 😁

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

@csinco @figma @AndroidStudio Nice! Thanks for this!

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

@backlon @Moto Device Assistance might be the sleeper of the bunch. Most "how do I change this" questions are really "where is this buried in Settings" questions, and having Gemini just find the toggle saves everyone time, not just power users.

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

@_mohansolo Hundreds of agents from a single prompt is wild. I'm trying /swarm on a 16-bit 2D game right now, and having agents plan, build, and verify in parallel fits game dev scarily well. How big can a swarm get before the coordination starts eating the gains?

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

@backlon A package tracker from one prompt plus one follow-up is the part that gets me. Widgets used to mean finding an app that happened to ship the exact one you wanted. Now the widget is basically a sentence. Curious whether it refreshes on its own when a new shipping email lands?

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

@MishaalRahman Platform-level light/dark adaptive wallpapers is the sleeper feature here. I'm building a wallpaper app (Frames for Pixel), and having Android handle that switch natively instead of faking it app-side changes how I'd design whole collections. Paired light/dark packs incoming 👀

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

@deemyers26 I do my best with my own app, @framesforpixel

https://t.co/IVDiQLE8ep

[Michael Brown @michaelbtech_]

Unpopular opinion: Material 3 Expressive beats Liquid Glass.

Glass looks amazing in screenshots. Expressive is what I actually want to use all day. Bolder shapes, bigger touch targets, easy to read.