7 Android Marshmallow features Google ‘borrowed’ from iOS

For years, Android fanatics have been accusing Apple of stealing “borrowing” its best iOS features from Google’s mobile operating system. With the upcoming release of iOS 9 and Android 6.0 Marshmallow, however, the tables finally turn.

Here are all the “new” Android features that might look very, very familiar to iOS users.

Goodbye Google Wallet, hello Android Pay. Google’s new mobile payment system has a lot more in common with Apple Pay than just a name. Android Pay lets you upload your credit card information and uses NFC technology to conduct transactions at a pay terminal. Simply choose the card you want to use and authenticate the mobile transaction via fingerprint.

Wait, fingerprint authentifications? Sounds a lot like Touch ID…

Since 2013, Touch ID has given us a secure way to unlock our iPhones and authenticate purchases. With Marshmallow (and a smartphone with the proper hardware), Android users will finally get to experience the power of their fingerprint.

While some Android phone makers like Motorola and Samsung have incorporated fingerprint sensors in some of their devices, the feature has “ never been centralized around a standard API”… until now. Android 6.0 brings fingerprint authentification as a vital part of Android Pay.

In previous versions of Android, when you’d select a string of text, the toolbar with the options to cut, copy, paste, and more surfaced at the top of the screen. In Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the editing toolbar now hovers directly above the selected text—a more intituive interface first seen in iOS devices.

Marshmallow gives users more ways to manage their app permissions. Before, Android users were only able to grant or deny all permissions at once before installing the app. With Android 6.0, users get a notification every time an app wants to access a certain part of their device—like the camera, microphone, or location services.

Android users will also be able to see and change the level of access they’ve granted for each app, under Settings > Apps > Gear icon > App permissions. 

Forcing apps to ask for specific permission and allowing users to control these permissions anytime has been incorporated in iOS for quite some time.

Android Marshmallow will let users activate Google Now’s voice search directly via a lock screen shortcut. Simply swipe from the lower left corner to start and tah-dah! You can immediately start asking Google Now anything.

By comparison, iOS users can activate Siri from the lock screen by holding down the Home button.

Marshmallow also introduces “Doze” mode, letting Android users turn on or off the battery optimizations for any given app. Doze basically will limit certain background tasks to save battery life.

Similarly, iPhone users have been able to enable or disable Background App Refresh on a per-app basis in Settings since iOS 7.

Do Not Disturb has been a godsend for smartphone users looking to get a good night’s sleep. However, sometimes emergencies do occur overnight. Android 6.0 has added the option to allow for Repeat Callers to come through under its Do Not Disturb section—a feature that iPhone users have been taking advantage of for a while. 

Take that, Marshmallow.