Google Dashboard gets a makeover to improve privacy controls

Launched in 2009, Google Dashboard was a new effort by the company to give users of its various services an easy way to review their data and account use. You could see just how many emails you have in Gmail, how many images you have uploaded to Photos, and much more. Today, Google announced it is rolling out a revamped user interface for Dashboard that should make it even easier to keep tabs on your account activity.

The new UI has been redesigned mainly so that users with smartphones and tablets, which were only beginning to pop up when Dashboard first got started, will now be able to navigate the interface on a touchscreen. Downloading user data from Dashboard should be easier as well with this update.

In addition, the company is integrating some of its privacy controls, including My Account and My Activity, into the Dashboard interface. My Account lets users update their personal info that they might want to share with others with its Privacy Checkup tool. Google says that “hundreds of millions of visitors every year” have used My Account since it launched in 2015. My Activity, which began in 2016, lets users quickly find which YouTube video they watched a few months ago, or which search string led them to a specific story online. Google says that over 150 million people have used My Activity since it launched.

Adding these two features into Google Dashboard, combined with its more graphical and touch-friendly UI, should make it much easier, and safer for users to keep track of their account use. The revamped Dasboard should become available for all users of Google’s services over the next several weeks.