Hasta La Gadget!

Apple isn’t the only tracking tag company making it harder for stalkers and thieves to track you. Tile is rolling out a “Scan and Secure” feature in its Android and iOS apps to help you detect unwanted tags. Use it and the app will check if any suspicious Tile tags (or Tile-equipped devices) are traveling with you. The process can take up to 10 minutes, but you won’t need a Tile account or hardware.

If there are unwanted trackers, you’ll receive safety advice. Tile stressed that it will only identify the owners of misused tags through a “properly issued court order.” The company also made clear this was just a “first step” for improved safety, and that it would team up with advocacy groups and experts to refine its efforts.

Tag-based stalking has been possible for a while, but Apple’s AirTags underscored the problem — it’s all too easy for someone to slip a tracker into your coat or car and follow your movements without your knowledge or consent. Apple already has alerts for unwanted trackers, but it’s promising both earlier, more prominent alerts as well as a precision finding feature to help people remove unwanted tags. In that regard, Tile is simply following suit by upgrading its privacy measures.

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The second developer preview of Android 13 is now available for download. It’s not as feature-packed as the first preview that hit last month, but it still offers a glimpse of some of the new abilities coming to Google’s next-gen OS.

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Google has released the second Developer Preview for Android 13, and it includes a big change in how the platform delivers alerts. Apps built for Android 13 will need to ask for permission before they can send notifications. Apps made for Android 12 or lower won’t face this obligation, but this could still be very helpful if you’re tired of having to disable notifications for apps that enable them by default.

Developers, meanwhile, can establish “downgradeable” permissions that scale back once they’re no longer required. An app that needed access to your location before might switch it off if a relevant feature was disabled, or if the permission is no longer necessary in Android 13.

After that, Developer Preview 2’s biggest upgrades mostly apply to audio. You’ll find Bluetooth LE Audio support that promises “high fidelity” sound without a big hit to battery life. Musicians will find MIDI 2.0 compatibility that lets you use higher-resolution and more expressive USB instruments. The newer Android 13 build is also better at handling non-Latin languages like Japanese and Tamil.

You’ll need a Pixel 4, Pixel 4a or newer Google phone to load the Android 13 DP2 system image outside of an emulator. As with past previews, you won’t want to install this on your main phone — there are likely to be plenty of remaining glitches and compatibility headaches. Google is still targeting platform stability between June and July, and the polished release isn’t due until sometime after that. If you can afford to experiment, though, it should be clear the new OS is quickly taking shape.