Phone applications have been stepping up their game. Popular apps like Snapchat, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook have been changing their features to enhance user experience. Take a look at what they’ve been up to.
Snapchat’s new look is even sleeker than before. Its icons have been reduced to simple linear forms and the colors in the app are flatter. As an added bonus, swiping all the way down on certain screens reveals a cute parallaxing animation. Snapchat’s update comes with some new features. Users can now instant message and video call each other in the app. Swiping right on a person’s name in the Snapchat inbox brings you to a messaging screen. When you receive a message, the notification in the inbox is bright blue instead of the normal red and purple.
Tumblr now allows users to customize their appearance on the mobile app. Tumblr’s update description reads: “Colors, fonts, pictures, whatever — however you want it to look, you can look that way. Download this thing and make your blog look amazing already.” Navigating to your blog and choosing “edit appearance” shows the different options to creating the perfect in-app look. Keep in mind that you have to tap on elements to reveal all the options.
According to The Verge, Twitter is in the process of testing out a “mute” button. Muting the people you follow removes their presence from your feed. Its almost like unfollowing someone except the muted person will never know that they’ve been muted. Since Facebook and third-party Twitter clients already have this feature, it’s smart for the company to finally offer this feature to their users.
Speaking of Facebook, its app will be one of many to support AppLinks. Instead of exiting an app and opening another one, Facebook will be able to open them automatically. Linking apps has been a challenge to developers. AppLinks, however, hopes to be the solution to this problem for everyone. It’s open source and supports multiple platforms. Other apps that will utilize this are Pinterest, Hulu and Dropbox.
