New Android feature drop will scan the dark web for your Gmail address

Google has announced the latest of its regular Android ‘Feature Drop’ releases, bringing seven new features to Google-powered smartphones, tablets and smartwatches.

Perhaps headlining the new feature set, although Google places at the bottom of its blog post, is the ability to search the dark web for a Gmail address.

With dark web report, now available for Google account holders in the US, users can “run scans to see if your Gmail address has been exposed on the dark web, and receive guidance on the actions you can take to protect yourself online.”

Google plans to expand this feature to include 20 more countries in the coming months, so we can assume the UK will be among those.

There’s also a helpful-sounding reading practice feature for Google Books. For books marked with the Practice badge, younger readers will be able to hear the correct pronunciation of unusual words and also practice that pronunciation. Pretty cool.

Google has also launched three new Android home screen widgets for phones and tablets. They’ll give you personalised recommendations from Google TV, as well as Google Finance and Google News.

The Spotify Wear OS app is also getting an update to include the recently-released Spotify DJ feature. The AI-powered feature is designed to deliver a personalised array of streaming content, complete with a DJ explaining exactly why it serving up the tunes or podcasts. The app also features new tiles and watch face shortcuts for Spotify on Wear OS.

Speaking of Wear OS, there’s fast access to a Google Keep note via pinned lists, while there are new aquatic themed emoji mashups available within the Gboard keyboard app.