The excitement around augmented reality apps may have calmed down a bit, but Google’s Measure app is still getting some of the attention it deserves. The latest update adds some nice quality of life enhancements while taking measurements, including a new animation to help with spotting surfaces and an upgrade to the automatic unit conversions. The changes might be simple and subtle, but they could really help out in a pinch.
What’s New
Official Changelog:
- Enhanced surface visualizations to make it easier to take accurate measurements
- New features to increase usability, including unit conversion
- Bug fixes and performance improvements
Surface visualizations
Left: 2.4. Right: 2.5.
One of the necessities of a good augmented reality app is giving lots of visual hints for the user. While the Measure app has always been pretty good at this, there were instances where the guide lines didn’t give the clearest markers for surfaces and positions. The latest update adds a bit more to that by adding animated dots to points that have been locked to a surface. The same animation is already used in a few other places, so this is a bit more consistent.
Smarter unit conversions
Left: 2.4. Right: 2.5.
Automatic unit conversions can make life much easier, just ask any engineering student in a physics class. If you have used the Measure app before, you may have seen automatic conversions between imperial and metric units. However, the latest update takes this a little further by adding more conversions between different combinations of imperial units so you don’t have to risk errors by making calculations in your head.
Download
The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to push this download to your devices, which can take days, download and install it just like any other APK.
