Gear News of the Week: Google Drops Another Android Update, and the Sony A7 V Is Here

It was only back in June that Android 16 delivered a raft of new features for Google's operating system, but the company just announced another bumper package of updates, including more customization options, better parental controls, and smart notifications.

You can now create custom icon shapes, cohesive themes, and extend dark mode to apps that don’t have their own dark theme. The overhauled parental controls let you manage screen time, downtime, app usage, and rewards directly on your kid’s devices, while AI-powered notification summaries give you a TL;DR of long messages or group chats. Related notifications are also now grouped, and lower-priority notifications, like promotions, are silenced.

There are nifty new accessibility features too. Expressive Captions now have the relevant emotion tags, and they’re rolling out in English-speaking YouTube videos as well as across Android. Configurable AutoClick for mouse users reduces strain, Guided Frame is ...