Not too long ago, Google+ announced their new redesign. Which is a pretty big redesign from their former version, which we’ve had for a few years. This is a more material design update, and it is in beta. Hence the reason that there are a lot of things broken. However, Google has been updating the web version and the Android version pretty frequently – sometimes multiple times a week – fixing things, adding features and much more.
As of today, the Google+ desktop version now allows you to Autoplay GIFs in your stream by default. Instead of having to wait for them. Google has added an option that allows you to choose whether you want to autoplay GIFs all the time, or just on the desktop, or not at all. If you’re a frequent user of Google+, it might be a good idea to only allow the GIFs to autoplay on the desktop, as they can use a good amount of data on your smartphone or tablet.
The other update for Google+ is a pretty small one and it’s likely that most people wouldn’t notice. Notifications on Google+ have always been red. But with the action bar across the top being red, they blend in. Making it tough to see, sometimes, if you have a notification or not. This was a pretty easy fix. The team made the circle white with a black number inside when you have notifications. Making it much, much easier to see when you have notifications. Not a huge update, but definitely a useful one for the service.
If you are using the new Google+, these changes should already be live for you. If not, give it a refresh and you should see them, as this is not a staged rollout (thank goodness). Google+ is still a pretty popular service, even though many still call it a “Ghost town”, now it is possible that it could be on Google’s spring cleaning soon, but with these recent updates it likely won’t be this year. Let’s face it, why spend all this time redesigning Google+ if you’re going to close it down.