Google’s Now on Tap Finally Arrives for Marshmallow Testers

One of the features that Google extensively demoed on stage during the official sneak peek at Android Marshmallow back in June was no other than Google Now on Tap. However, the most recent test build for developers does not have the dark theme, which indicates that the planned release on September 29 will not include it as well. After you update to version 5.3 you should be able to notice that the interface of the Google Now Launcher has changed to Marshmallow-style, bringing a vertical app drawer and a widget list. To prepare for its launch, Android, which is owned by Google, recently released three sample apps and made them available for download via GitHub and Android Studio. The apps include Android Direct Share, Android MidiSynth, and Android MidiScope. This is pretty much updating the launcher UI with the Android Marshmallow design language, which we have seen plenty of applications start adopting. These three apps are now live to provide developers ideas on how they can take advantage of the new features. Currently, Android has sharing intents for sending content to other apps. The other 2 apps might be of interest to the musicians amongst us as they demonstrate new MIDI functionality coming in 6.0.

Take hangouts as an example, if you want to share something via hangouts you hit the share button, select hangouts, hangouts loads, you select the contact, the contact opens and I click send.

As of now, there’s a chance that the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update will arrive at different times for manufacturers and their phones. The MIDI API can do a lot of things like enumeration of current devices, important information, MIDI notifications, and MIDI signals. Users will have greater control over applications, there will be more improved support for fingerprint scanners, a Visual Voicemail, Android Pay, and lastly a better status bar in which you can now remove icons such as flashlight and airplane mode that you never use. Don’t expect any MIDI sound to be played though because this sample app only shows the received MIDI signals to a display screen.