Tag Archives: Android 13

Android developers: a big thank you for a great 2022!

Posted by Maru Ahues Bouza, Director, Android Developer Relations

This past year was a special one for the Android community, from the release of Android 13, a big investment in tablets and large screens, the latest in wearable technology to all of the investments in Modern Android Development! It was terrific to see many of you for the first time again in-person at Android Dev Summit and other events around the world.From the experiences you build for users to feedback you provide us to make your tools better, we wanted to say a very special holiday thank you!

We put together a highlights recap, and a commemorative poster celebrating 2022 - download it to bring some holiday cheer to your workspace, wherever you may be this season.

Have a festive holiday season and we look forward to continuing our work with you in the new year.

Android 13 is in AOSP!

Posted by Seang Chau, VP of Engineering
Today we’re pushing the Android 13 source to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and officially releasing the newest version of Android. For developers, Android 13 is focused on our core themes of privacy and security as well as developer productivity, making it easier for you to build great experiences for users. We’ve also continued to make Android an even better OS for tablets and large screens, giving you better tools to take advantage of the 270+ million of these devices in use across the world. 

Android 13 is rolling out to Pixel devices starting today. Later this year, Android 13 will also roll out to more of your favorite devices from Samsung Galaxy, Asus, HMD (Nokia phones), iQOO, Motorola, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, Sony, Tecno, vivo, Xiaomi and more.

As always, we thank you for the feedback you’ve shared, and we appreciate the work you’ve done to make your apps compatible with today’s release. Your support and contributions are what make Android a great platform for everyone!


What’s in Android 13 for developers?

Here’s a look at some of what’s new in Android 13 - make sure to check out the Android 13 developer site for details on all of the new features.


Developer productivity and tools

Themed app icons - Android 13 extends Material You dynamic color to all app icons, letting users opt-in to icons that inherit the tint of their wallpaper and other theme preferences. All your app needs to supply is a monochromatic app icon and a tweak to the adaptive icon XML. More here.

Themed app icons adapting to wallpapers colors and dark theme (left).

Per-app language preferences - Android 13 makes it easier to support multilingual users who want to use your apps in a language that’s different from the system language. Android now provides a standard “App language” Settings panel for apps that have opted-in, and you can call a new platform API to get or set the user’s preferred locale at runtime, helping to reduce boilerplate code and improve compatibility. More here.

Per-app languages in Settings

Improved text support - Android 13 includes text and language improvements that help you deliver a more polished experience. Faster hyphenation optimizes hyphenation performance by as much as 200% so you can now enable it in your TextViews with almost no impact on rendering performance. Text conversion APIs make searching and autocompletion faster when using phonetic lettering input for languages like Japanese, Chinese, and others. Android 13 also improves line heights for non-latin scripts (such as Tamil, Burmese, Telugu, and Tibetan), eliminating clipping and making them easier to read. More here.

Improved line height for non-Latin scripts in apps targeting Android 13 (bottom).

Color vector fonts - Android 13 adds rendering support for COLR version 1 (spec, intro video) fonts and updates the system emoji to the COLRv1 format. COLRv1 is a new, highly compact, font format that renders quickly and crisply at any size. For most apps this will just work, and the system handles everything. More here.

COLRv1 vector emoji (left) and bitmap emoji.

Quick Settings Placement API - For apps that provide custom Quick Settings tiles, Android 13 makes it easier for users to discover and add your tiles. Using a new tile placement API, your app can now prompt the user to directly add your custom Quick Settings tile in a single step, without leaving your app. More here.

Programmable shaders - Android 13 introduces programmable RuntimeShader objects, with behavior defined using the Android Graphics Shading Language (AGSL). You can use these shaders to create ripple, blur, stretch, and similar advanced effects in your apps. More here.

Media controls derived from PlaybackState - For apps targeting Android 13, the system now derives media controls from PlaybackState actions, providing a richer set of controls that are consistent across phones and tablet devices and align with other Android platforms such as Android Auto and Android TV. More here.

Android 13 media controls are consistent on phones and tablets.

Bluetooth LE Audio - Low Energy (LE) Audio is the next-generation wireless audio built to enable new use cases like sharing and broadcasting audio to friends and family, or subscribing to public broadcasts for information, entertainment, or accessibility. It’s designed to ensure that users can receive high fidelity audio without sacrificing battery life, and lets them seamlessly switch between different use cases. Android 13 adds built-in support for LE Audio, so developers can use the new capabilities on compatible devices. More here.

MIDI 2.0 - Android 13 adds support for the new MIDI 2.0 standard, including the ability to connect MIDI 2.0 hardware through USB. This updated standard offers features such as increased resolution for controllers, better support for non-Western intonation, and more expressive performance using per-note controllers. More here.

OpenJDK 11 updates - Android 13 Core Libraries now align with the OpenJDK 11 LTS release, with both library updates and Java 11 programming language support for app and platform developers. We plan to bring these Core Library changes to more devices through Google Play system updates, as part of an ART module update for devices running Android 12 and higher. More here.

Predictive back gesture - Android 13 introduces new APIs that let your app tell the system that it will handle back events in advance, a practice we call the "ahead-of-time" model. This new approach is part of a multi-year effort to help you prepare your app to support the predictive back gesture, which is available for testing in this release through a developer option. More here.

Built for tablets

Android 13 extends the 12L update that we released earlier this year, and it delivers an even better experience on tablets. You’ll find features like an enhanced multitasking taskbar, more large-screen layouts and optimizations in system UI and apps, improved compatibility modes for apps, and more. We’re continuing to invest to give you the tools you need to build great experiences for tablets as well as Chromebooks and foldables. You can learn more about how to get started optimizing for large screens, and be sure to check out our large screens developer resources.

Multitasking on tablets with Android 13.

Privacy and security

Photo picker and APIs - A new system photo picker now gives users a standard, privacy-protecting way to share local and cloud-based photos. Photo picker extends Android’s long-standing document picker and makes it easy for users to share specific photos and videos with an app, without giving the app permission to view all media files on the device. Photo picker provides a dedicated experience for photos and videos and includes APIs for apps to access the shared media files. The photo picker experience is now available to users who receive Google Play system updates, on devices (excepting Go devices) running Android 11 and higher. More here.


Photo picker lets users share specific photos and videos with an app.

Notification permission - To help users focus on the notifications that are most important to them, Android 13 introduces a new notifications runtime permission. Apps now need to request the notification permission from the user before posting notifications. For apps targeting Android 12 or lower, the system will handle the upgrade flow on your behalf. More here.

Notification permission dialog in Android 13.

Nearby device permission for Wi-Fi - Android 13 introduces the NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES runtime permission for apps that manage a device's connections to nearby access points over Wi-Fi. The new permission is required for many commonly-used Wi-Fi APIs and enables apps to discover and connect to nearby devices over Wi-Fi without also needing to acquire the location permission. More here.

Granular permissions for media file access - Photo picker is our recommended solution for user-friendly, permissionless sharing of photos and videos, but for apps that haven’t moved to photo picker yet or for audio use cases, Android 13 adds new granular media permissions. These new permissions replace the READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission and provide access to specific types of media files, including images, video, or audio. We highly recommend moving your app to photo picker if possible; otherwise, use the granular media permissions when targeting Android 13. More here.
Requesting permission to access audio files.

Developer downgradable permissions - Starting in Android 13, apps that no longer require permissions previously granted by the user can use a new API to downgrade the permissions. By removing unused permissions, your app can show that it’s using the minimum permissions needed, which can improve user trust. More here.

Safer exported Intent filters - Android 13 applies stricter rules when delivering explicit intents to exported intent filters in another app that’s targeting Android 13. For intents that specify actions, the system now delivers the intents to the exported component only if the intent matches the receiver’s declared <intent-filter> elements. More here.


Performance for apps

Android 13 improves performance and efficiency for all apps through updates to the ART runtime. We plan to bring these improvements to more Android users through Google Play system updates, as part of our ongoing ART module updates for devices running Android 12 and higher.

Improved garbage collection - A new garbage collector based on the Linux kernel feature userfaultfd is coming to ART on Android 13 devices in an upcoming Google Play system update. The new garbage collector eliminates the read barrier and its fixed overhead per object loaded, reducing memory pressure and leading to as much as ~10% reduction in compiled code size. It’s more efficient at GC-time as well, since pages are freed as compaction progresses. Overall, the new garbage collector helps to save battery, avoid jank during GC operations, and protect apps from low-memory kills.

Optimizations throughout ART - In Android 13, ART makes switching to and from native code much faster, with JNI calls now up to 2.5x faster. We’ve also reworked the runtime’s reference processing to make it mostly non-blocking, which further reduces jank. We’ve exposed a new public API, Reference.refersTo(), which is useful in reclaiming unreachable objects sooner, and we’ve made the interpreter faster by optimizing class/method lookups. Lastly, ART now performs more byte-code verification at install time, avoiding the expense of verification at runtime and keeping app startup times fast. More here.


Get your apps ready!

Now with today’s public release of Android 13 to AOSP, we’re asking all Android developers to finish your compatibility testing and publish your updates as soon as possible, to give your users a smooth transition to Android 13.

To test your app for compatibility, just install it on a device running Android 13 and work through the app flows looking for any functional or UI issues. Review the Android 13 behavior changes for all apps first, to focus on areas where your current app could be affected. Here are some of the top changes to test:

  • Notifications runtime permission - Make sure you understand how this new permission works with your app’s notifications, and plan on targeting Android 13 (API 33) as soon as possible to help support users. More here.
  • Clipboard preview - Make sure your app hides sensitive data in Android 13’s new clipboard preview, such as passwords or credit card information. More here.
  • JobScheduler prefetch - JobScheduler now tries to anticipate the next time your app will be launched and will run any associated prefetch jobs ahead of that time. If you use prefetch jobs, test that they are working as expected. More here.
Remember to test the libraries and SDKs in your app for compatibility. If you find any SDK issues, try updating to the latest version of the SDK or reaching out to the developer for help.

Once you’ve published the compatible version of your current app, you can start the process to update your app's targetSdkVersion. Review the behavior changes for apps targeting Android 13 for this, and use the compatibility framework to help detect issues quickly.


Tablet and large-screens support

With Android 13 bringing a better experience to tablets, make sure your apps look their best. You can test large-screen features by setting up an Android emulator in Android Studio, or you can use a large screen device from our Android 13 Beta partners. Here are some areas to watch for:

  • Taskbar interaction - Check how your app responds when viewed with the new taskbar on large screens. Make sure your app's UI isn't cut off or blocked by the taskbar. More here.
  • Multi-window mode - Multi-window mode is now enabled by default for all apps, regardless of app configuration, so make sure the app handles split-screen appropriately. You can test by dragging and dropping your app into split-screen mode and adjusting the window size. More here.
  • Improved compatibility experience - if your app isn’t optimized for tablets yet, such as using a fixed orientation or not being resizable, check how your app responds to compatibility mode adjustments such as letterboxing. More here.
  • Media projection - If your app uses media projection, check how your app responds while playing back, streaming, or casting media on large screens. Be sure to account for device posture changes on foldable devices as well. More here.
  • Camera preview - For camera apps, check how your camera preview UI responds on large screens when your app is constrained to a portion of the screen in multi-window or split-screen mode. Also check how your app responds when a foldable device's posture changes. More here.
You can read more about the tablet features in Android 13 and what to test here.


What’s next?

Android 13 is rolling out to Pixel devices starting today.

If you’re currently enrolled in the Android Beta program, you’ll get the Android 13 final release and remain enrolled to receive ongoing Beta updates for Android 13 feature drops, starting later this year. If you’d like to opt out of ongoing Beta updates without needing to wipe your device, just visit the Android Beta site and opt out after you get the Android 13 final release and before taking the first beta for Android 13 feature drops.

System images for Pixel devices are available here for manual download and flash, and you can get the latest Android Emulator system images via the SDK Manager in Android Studio. If you're looking for the Android 13 source, you'll find it here in the Android Open Source Project repository under the Android 13 branches.

Thanks again for participating in our program of early previews and Betas! We're looking forward to seeing your apps on Android 13!


Java and OpenJDK are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Build apps for the new Samsung devices

Posted by Diana Wong (Android Product Manager), Kseniia Shumelchyk (Developer Relations Engineer) and Sara Vickerman (Android Developer Marketing)

This week, Samsung launched the latest devices to come to the Android ecosystem at their Galaxy Unpacked event. If you haven’t already, check out their two new foldables, the Galaxy Z Fold4 and Z Flip4, and their new lineup of watches running on Wear OS, the Galaxy Watch5 series. You can learn more about their announcements here.

With the excitement around these new devices, there's never been a better time to invest in making sure your app has an amazing experience for users, on large screens or Wear OS! Here’s what you need to know to get started:

Get your apps ready for foldables, like the Galaxy Z Fold4 and Z Flip4

With their unique foldable experience, the Galaxy Z Flip4 and Z Fold4 are great examples of how Android devices come in all shapes and sizes. The Z Fold4 is the latest in large screen devices, a category that continues to see impressive growth. Active large screen users are approaching 270 million, making it a great time to optimize your apps for tablets, foldables and Chrome OS.

Last year, we launched Android 12L, a feature drop designed to make Android 12 even better on tablets and foldable devices, and Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold4 will be the first device to run 12L out of the box! Android 12L includes UI updates tailor-made for large screens, improvements to the multitasking experience, and enhancements to compatibility mode so your app looks better out of the box. Since 12L, we also launched Android 13, which includes all these large screen updates and more.

Get started building for foldables by checking out the documentation. The Z Fold4 and Z Flip4 can be used in multiple different folded states, like Samsung’s “flex mode” where you can go hands-free when doing anything from watching a show to taking a photo. To get your app looking great however it’s folded, you can use the Jetpack WindowManager library to make your app fold aware and test your app on foldables. And finally, the large screen app quality guidelines is a comprehensive set of checklists to help make your app the best it can be across an ever expanding ecosystem of large screen devices.

Developers who put in this work are starting to see results; eBay increased their app rating to 4.7 stars on Google Play after optimizing for large screens. Chrome's multitasking usage increased 18x for large screens with 12L.


Build exceptional Wear OS apps

The Wear OS platform expanded this week with the new and improved Galaxy Watch5 series. This lineup of devices builds on Samsung’s commitment to the wearable platform, which we saw last year when they launched Wear OS Powered by Samsung on the Galaxy Watch4 series.

If you’re looking to get started building for the latest Galaxy Watch 5 series, or any other Wear OS device, now is a great time to check out version 1.0 of Compose for Wear OS. This is the first stable release of our modern declarative UI toolkit designed to make building apps for Wear OS easier, faster, and more intuitive. The toolkit brings the best of Jetpack Compose to Wear OS, accelerating the development process so you can create beautiful apps with fewer lines of code.

The 1.0 release streamlines UI development by following the declarative approach and offering powerful Kotlin syntax. It also provides a rich set of UI components optimized for the watch experience and is accompanied by many powerful tools in Android Studio to streamline UI iteration. That’s why Compose for Wear OS is our recommended approach for building user interfaces for Wear OS apps.

We’ve built a set of materials to help you get started with Compose for Wear OS! Check out our curated learning pathway for a step-by-step journey, documentation including a quick start guide, the Compose for Wear OS codelab for hands-on experience, and samples available on Github.

Similarly to Compose for Wear OS, we’re building Wear OS Tile Components to make it faster and easier to build tiles. Tiles provide Wear OS users glanceable access to the information and actions they need in order to get things done quickly and they are one of the most used features on Wear OS. This update brings material components and layouts so you can create Tiles that embrace the latest Material design for Wear OS. Right now this is in beta, but keep a lookout for the launch announcement!

Another launch announcement to watch out for is Android Studio Dolphin, the latest release from Android Studio. Check out these features designed to make wearable app development easier:
  • Updated Wear OS emulator toolbar which now includes buttons and gestures available on Wear OS devices, such as palm and tilting and simulating two physical buttons.
  • Emulator pairing assistant to pair multiple Wear OS devices with a single virtual or physical phone. Android Studio remembers pairings after being closed and allows you to see Wear devices in the Device Manager.
  • Direct surface launch that allows you to create run/debug configurations for Wear OS tiles, watch faces, and complications, and launch them directly from Android Studio.
Between Jetpack Compose, Tile Components and Android Studio Dolphin, we are simplifying Wear OS app development. And, with the addition of the Galaxy Watch5 series to the Wear OS ecosystem, there are even more reasons to build an exceptional Wear OS app.


There’s never been a better time to start optimizing!

Form factors are having a major moment this year and Google is committed to helping you optimize and build across form factors with new content and tools, including sessions and workshops from this year’s Google I/O and new Android Studio features. Plus, we have Material Design guidance for large screens and Wear OS to help you in your optimization journey.

From the Watch5 series to the Z Fold4, Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked brought us innovations across screen sizes and types. Prepare your app so it looks great across the entire Android device ecosystem!

Build apps for the new Samsung devices

Posted by Diana Wong (Android Product Manager), Kseniia Shumelchyk (Developer Relations Engineer) and Sara Vickerman (Android Developer Marketing)

This week, Samsung launched the latest devices to come to the Android ecosystem at their Galaxy Unpacked event. If you haven’t already, check out their two new foldables, the Galaxy Z Fold4 and Z Flip4, and their new lineup of watches running on Wear OS, the Galaxy Watch5 series. You can learn more about their announcements here.

With the excitement around these new devices, there's never been a better time to invest in making sure your app has an amazing experience for users, on large screens or Wear OS! Here’s what you need to know to get started:

Get your apps ready for foldables, like the Galaxy Z Fold4 and Z Flip4

With their unique foldable experience, the Galaxy Z Flip4 and Z Fold4 are great examples of how Android devices come in all shapes and sizes. The Z Fold4 is the latest in large screen devices, a category that continues to see impressive growth. Active large screen users are approaching 270 million, making it a great time to optimize your apps for tablets, foldables and Chrome OS.

Last year, we launched Android 12L, a feature drop designed to make Android 12 even better on tablets and foldable devices, and Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold4 will be the first device to run 12L out of the box! Android 12L includes UI updates tailor-made for large screens, improvements to the multitasking experience, and enhancements to compatibility mode so your app looks better out of the box. Since 12L, we also launched Android 13, which includes all these large screen updates and more.

Get started building for foldables by checking out the documentation. The Z Fold4 and Z Flip4 can be used in multiple different folded states, like Samsung’s “flex mode” where you can go hands-free when doing anything from watching a show to taking a photo. To get your app looking great however it’s folded, you can use the Jetpack WindowManager library to make your app fold aware and test your app on foldables. And finally, the large screen app quality guidelines is a comprehensive set of checklists to help make your app the best it can be across an ever expanding ecosystem of large screen devices.

Developers who put in this work are starting to see results; eBay increased their app rating to 4.7 stars on Google Play after optimizing for large screens. Chrome's multitasking usage increased 18x for large screens with 12L.


Build exceptional Wear OS apps

The Wear OS platform expanded this week with the new and improved Galaxy Watch5 series. This lineup of devices builds on Samsung’s commitment to the wearable platform, which we saw last year when they launched Wear OS Powered by Samsung on the Galaxy Watch4 series.

If you’re looking to get started building for the latest Galaxy Watch 5 series, or any other Wear OS device, now is a great time to check out version 1.0 of Compose for Wear OS. This is the first stable release of our modern declarative UI toolkit designed to make building apps for Wear OS easier, faster, and more intuitive. The toolkit brings the best of Jetpack Compose to Wear OS, accelerating the development process so you can create beautiful apps with fewer lines of code.

The 1.0 release streamlines UI development by following the declarative approach and offering powerful Kotlin syntax. It also provides a rich set of UI components optimized for the watch experience and is accompanied by many powerful tools in Android Studio to streamline UI iteration. That’s why Compose for Wear OS is our recommended approach for building user interfaces for Wear OS apps.

We’ve built a set of materials to help you get started with Compose for Wear OS! Check out our curated learning pathway for a step-by-step journey, documentation including a quick start guide, the Compose for Wear OS codelab for hands-on experience, and samples available on Github.

Similarly to Compose for Wear OS, we’re building Wear OS Tile Components to make it faster and easier to build tiles. Tiles provide Wear OS users glanceable access to the information and actions they need in order to get things done quickly and they are one of the most used features on Wear OS. This update brings material components and layouts so you can create Tiles that embrace the latest Material design for Wear OS. Right now this is in beta, but keep a lookout for the launch announcement!

Another launch announcement to watch out for is Android Studio Dolphin, the latest release from Android Studio. Check out these features designed to make wearable app development easier:
  • Updated Wear OS emulator toolbar which now includes buttons and gestures available on Wear OS devices, such as palm and tilting and simulating two physical buttons.
  • Emulator pairing assistant to pair multiple Wear OS devices with a single virtual or physical phone. Android Studio remembers pairings after being closed and allows you to see Wear devices in the Device Manager.
  • Direct surface launch that allows you to create run/debug configurations for Wear OS tiles, watch faces, and complications, and launch them directly from Android Studio.
Between Jetpack Compose, Tile Components and Android Studio Dolphin, we are simplifying Wear OS app development. And, with the addition of the Galaxy Watch5 series to the Wear OS ecosystem, there are even more reasons to build an exceptional Wear OS app.


There’s never been a better time to start optimizing!

Form factors are having a major moment this year and Google is committed to helping you optimize and build across form factors with new content and tools, including sessions and workshops from this year’s Google I/O and new Android Studio features. Plus, we have Material Design guidance for large screens and Wear OS to help you in your optimization journey.

From the Watch5 series to the Z Fold4, Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked brought us innovations across screen sizes and types. Prepare your app so it looks great across the entire Android device ecosystem!

Final Android 13 Beta update, official release is next!

Posted by Maru Ahues Bouza, Director, Android Developer Relations

We’re just a few weeks away from the official release of Android 13! As we put the finishing touches on the next version of Android, today we’re bringing you Beta 4, a final update for your testing and development. Now is the time to make sure your apps are ready!

There’s a lot to explore in Android 13, from privacy features like the new notification permission and photo picker, to productivity features like themed app icons and per-app language support, as well as modern standards like HDR video, Bluetooth LE Audio, and MIDI 2.0 over USB. We’ve also extended the updates we made in 12L, giving you better tools to take advantage of tablet and large screen devices.

You can try Beta 4 today on your Pixel device by enrolling here for over-the-air updates. If you previously enrolled, you’ll automatically get today’s update. You can also get Android 13 Beta on select devices from several of our partners. Visit the Android 13 developer site for details.

Watch for more information on the official Android 13 release coming soon!

What’s in Beta 4?

Today’s update includes a release candidate build of Android 13 for Pixel devices and the Android Emulator. We reached Platform Stability at Beta 3, so all app-facing surfaces are final, including SDK and NDK APIs, app-facing system behaviors, and restrictions on non-SDK interfaces. With these and the latest fixes and optimizations, Beta 4 gives you everything you need to complete your testing.

Get your apps ready!

With the official Android 13 release just ahead, we’re asking all app and game developers to complete your final compatibility testing and publish your compatibility updates ahead of the final release. For SDK, library, tools, and game engine developers, it’s important to release your compatible updates as soon as possible -- your downstream app and game developers may be blocked until they receive your updates.

To test your app for compatibility, just install it on a device running Android 13 Beta 4 and work through the app flows, looking for any functional or UI issues. Review the Android 13 behavior changes for all apps to focus on areas where your app could be affected. Here are some of the top changes to test:

  • Runtime permission for notifications - Android 13 introduces a new runtime permission for sending notifications from an app. Make sure you understand how the new permission works, and plan on targeting Android 13 (API 33) as soon as possible. More here.
  • Clipboard preview - Make sure your app hides sensitive data in Android 13’s new clipboard preview, such as passwords or credit card information. More here.
  • JobScheduler prefetch - JobScheduler now tries to anticipate the next time your app will be launched and will run any associated prefetch jobs ahead of that time. If you use prefetch jobs, test that they are working as expected. More here.

Remember to test the libraries and SDKs in your app for compatibility. If you find any SDK issues, try updating to the latest version of the SDK or reaching out to the developer for help.

Once you’ve published the compatible version of your current app, you can start the process to update your app's targetSdkVersion. Review the behavior changes that apply when your app targets Android 13 and use the compatibility framework to help detect issues quickly.

Tablets and large-screens support

Android 13 builds on the tablet optimizations introduced in 12L, so as part of your testing, make sure your apps look their best on tablets and other large-screen devices. You can test large-screen features by setting up an Android emulator in Android Studio, or you can use a large screen device from our Android 13 Beta partners. Here are some areas to watch for:

  • Taskbar interaction - Check how your app responds when viewed with the new taskbar on large screens. Make sure your app's UI isn't cut off or blocked by the taskbar. More here.
  • Multi-window mode - Multi-window mode is now enabled by default for all apps, regardless of app configuration, so make sure the app handles split-screen appropriately. You can test by dragging and dropping your app into split-screen mode and adjusting the window size. More here.
  • Improved compatibility experience - if your app isn’t optimized for tablets yet, such as using a fixed orientation or not being resizable, check how your app responds to compatibility mode adjustments such as letterboxing. More here.
  • Media projection - If your app uses media projection, check how your app responds while playing back, streaming, or casting media on large screens. Be sure to account for device posture changes on foldable devices as well. More here.
  • Camera preview - For camera apps, check how your camera preview UI responds on large screens when your app is constrained to a portion of the screen in multi-window or split-screen mode. Also check how your app responds when a foldable device's posture changes. More here.

You can read more about the tablet features in Android 13 and what to test here.

Get started with Android 13

Today’s Beta 4 release has everything you need to test your app and try the Android 13 features. Just enroll your Pixel device to get the update over-the-air. To get started, set up the Android 13 SDK.

You can also test your app with Android 13 Beta on devices from several of our partners. Visit android.com/beta to see the full list of partners, with links to their sites for details on their supported devices and Beta builds, starting with Beta 1. Each partner will handle their own enrollments and support, and provide the Beta updates to you directly. For even broader testing, you can try Beta 4 on Android GSI images, and if you don’t have a device, you can test on the Android Emulator. For complete details on Android 13, visit the Android 13 developer site.

What’s next?

Watch for information on the official Android 13 launch coming in the weeks ahead! Until then, feel free to continue sharing your feedback through our hotlists for platform issues, app compatibility issues, and third-party SDK issues.

A huge thank you to our developer community for helping shape the Android 13 release! You’ve given us thousands of bug reports and shared insights that have helped us optimize APIs, improve features, fix significant bugs, and in general make the platform better for users and developers.

We’re looking forward to seeing your apps on Android 13!

13 Things to know for Android developers at Google I/O!

Posted by Maru Ahues Bouza, Director of Android Developer Relations

Android I/O updates: Jetpack, Wear OS, etc 

There aren’t many platforms where you can build something and instantly reach billions of people around the world, not only on their phones—but their TVs, cars, tablets, watches, and more. Today, at Google I/O, we covered a number of ways Android helps you make the most of this opportunity, and how Modern Android Development brings as much commonality as possible, to make it faster and easier for you to create experiences that tailor to all the different screens we use in our daily lives.

We’ve rounded up the top 13 things to know for Android developers—from Jetpack Compose to tablets to Wear OS and of course… Android 13! And stick around for Day 2 of Google I/O, when Android’s full track of 26 technical talks and 4 workshops drop. We’re also bringing back the Android fireside Q&A in another episode of #TheAndroidShow; tweet us your questions now using #AskAndroid, and we’ve assembled a team of experts to answer live on-air, May 12 at 12:30PM PT.


MODERN ANDROID DEVELOPMENT

#1: Jetpack Compose Beta 1.2, with support for more advanced use cases

Android’s modern UI toolkit, Jetpack Compose, continues to bring the APIs you need to support more advanced use cases like downloadable fonts, LazyGrids, window insets, nested scrolling interop and more tooling support with features like LiveEdit, Recomposition Debugging and Animation Preview. Check out the blog post for more details.

Jetpack Compose 1.2 Beta  

#2: Android Studio: introducing Live Edit

Get more done faster with Android Studio Dolphin Beta and Electric Eel Canary! Android Studio Dolphin includes new features and improvements for Jetpack Compose and Wear OS development and an updated Logcat experience. Android Studio Electric Eel comes with integrations with the new Google Play SDK Index and Firebase Crashlytics. It also offers a new resizable emulator to test your app on large screens and the new Live Edit feature to immediately deploy code changes made within composable functions. Watch the What’s new in Android Development Tools session and read the Android Studio I/O blog post here.

#3: Baseline Profiles - speed up your app load time!

The speed of your app right after installation can make a big difference on user retention. To improve that experience, we created Baseline Profiles. Baseline Profiles allow apps and libraries to provide the Android runtime with metadata about code path usage, which it uses to prioritize ahead-of-time compilation. We've seen up to 30% faster app startup times thanks to adding baseline profiles alone, no other code changes required! We’re already using baseline profiles within Jetpack: we’ve added baselines to popular libraries like Fragments and Compose – to help provide a better end-user experience. Watch the What’s new in app performance talk, and read the Jetpack blog post here.

Modern Android Development 

BETTER TOGETHER

#4: Going big on Android tablets

Google is all in on tablets. Since last I/O we launched Android 12L, a release focused on large screen optimizations, and Android 13 includes all those improvements and more. We also announced the Pixel tablet, coming next year. With amazing new hardware, an updated operating system & Google apps, improved guidelines and libraries, and exciting changes to the Play store, there has never been a better time to review your apps and get them ready for large screens and Android 13. That’s why at this year’s I/O we have four talks and a workshop to take you from design to implementation for large screens.


#5: Wear OS: Compose + more!

With the latest updates to Wear OS, you can rethink what is possible when developing for wearables. Jetpack Compose for Wear OS is now in beta, so you can create beautiful Wear OS apps with fewer lines of code. Health Services is also now in beta, bringing a ton of innovation to the health and fitness developer community. And last, but certainly not least, we announced the launch of The Google Pixel Watch - coming this Fall - which brings together the best of Fitbit and Wear OS. You can learn more about all the most exciting updates for wearables by watching the Wear OS technical session and reading our Jetpack Compose for Wear OS announcement.

Compose for Wear OS 

#6: Introducing Health Connect

Health Connect is a new platform built in close collaboration between Google and Samsung, that simplifies connectivity between apps making it easier to reach more users with less work, so you can securely access and share user health and fitness data across apps and devices. Today, we’re opening up access to Health Connect through Jetpack Health—read our announcement or watch the I/O session to find out more!

#7: Android for Cars & Android TV OS

Android for Cars and Android TV OS continue to grow in the US and abroad. As more users drive connected or tune-in, we’re introducing new features to make it even easier to develop apps for cars and TV this year. Catch the “What’s new with Android for Cars” and “What's new with Google TV and Android TV” sessions on Day 2 (May 12th) at 9:00 AM PT to learn more.

#8: Add Voice Across Devices

We’re making it easier for users to access your apps via voice across devices with Google Assistant, by expanding developer access to Shortcuts API for Android for Cars, with support for Wear OS apps coming later this year. We’re also making it easier to build those experiences with Smarter Custom Intents, enabling Assistant to better detect broader instances of user queries through ML, without any NLU training heavy lift. Additionally, we’re introducing improvements that drive discovery to your apps via voice on Mobile, first through Brandless Queries, that drive app usage even when the user hasn’t explicitly said your app’s name, and App Install Suggestions that appear if your isn’t installed yet–these are automatically enabled for existing App Actions today.


AND THE LATEST FROM ANDROID, PLAY, AND MORE:

#9: What’s new in Play!

Get the latest updates from Google Play, including new ways Play can help you grow your business. Highlights include the ability to deep-link and create up to 50 custom listings; our LiveOps beta, which will allow more developers to submit content to be considered for featuring on the Play Store; and even more flexibility in selling subscriptions. Learn about these updates and more in our blog post.

#10: Google Play SDK Index

Evaluate if an SDK is right for your app with the new Google Play SDK index. This new public portal lists over 100 of the most widely used commercial SDKs and information like which app permissions the SDK requests, statistics on the apps that use them, and which version of the SDK is most popular. Learn more on our blog post and watch “What’s new in Google Play” and “What’s new in Android development tools” sessions.

#11: Privacy Sandbox on Android

Privacy Sandbox on Android provides a path for new advertising solutions to improve user privacy without putting access to free content and services at risk. We recently released the first Privacy Sandbox on Android Developer Preview so you can get an early look at the SDK Runtime and Topics API. You can conduct preliminary testing of these new technologies, evaluate how you might adopt them for your solutions, and share feedback with us.

#12: The new Google Wallet API

The new Google Wallet gives users fast and secure access to everyday essentials across Android and Wear OS. We’re enhancing the Google Wallet API, previously called Google Pay Passes API, to support generic passes, grouping and mixing passes together, for example grouping an event ticket with a voucher, and launching a new Android SDK which allows you to save passes directly from your app without a backend integration. To learn more, read the full blog post, watch the session, or read the docs at developers.google.com/wallet.

#13: And of course, Android 13!

The second Beta of Android 13 is available today! Get your apps ready for the latest features for privacy and security, like the new notification permission, the privacy-protecting photo picker, and improved permissions for pairing with nearby devices and accessing media files. Enhance your app with features like app-specific language support and themed app icons. Build with modern standards like HDR video and Bluetooth LE Audio. You can get started by enrolling your Pixel device here, or try Android 13 Beta on select phones, tablets, and foldables from our partners - visit developer.android.com/13 to learn more.

That’s just a snapshot of some of the highlights for Android developers at this year’s Google I/O. Be sure to watch the What’s New in Android talk to get the landscape on the full Android technical track at Google I/O, which includes 26 talks and 4 workshops. Enjoy!

Second Beta of Android 13

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Android13 Logo

At Google I/O, we talked about everything that’s new for developers, including the second Beta of Android 13, which we’re releasing today for your testing and feedback. Our program of Beta releases is driven by a philosophy of openness and collaboration with you, our community, and your input makes Android a better platform for everyone. Thank you for the feedback you’ve given so far!

In Android 13, we’re continuing to focus on our core themes of privacy and security as well as developer productivity. We’ve added a new permission for sending notifications, a privacy-protecting photo picker, and improved permissions when pairing with nearby devices and accessing media files. We’ve made it easier to support app-specific language settings, match your app’s icons to the user’s selected theme colors, and build with modern standards like HDR video, Bluetooth LE Audio, and MIDI 2.0 over USB. We’re also continuing to make Android an even better OS on tablets and large screens, giving you better tools to take advantage of the 270+ million of these devices in active use. You can read more about Android 13 in our Keyword blog post.

Beta 2 has everything you need to try the Android 13 features, test your apps, and give us your feedback. Just enroll any supported Pixel device here to get Beta 2 and future updates over-the-air. If you’ve already installed an Android 13 preview or Beta build, you’ll automatically get Beta updates.

You can also get Android 13 Beta on select phones, tablets, and foldables from our partners who are working to deliver quality from day one, including ASUS, HMD (Nokia phones), Lenovo, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, Tecno, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE.

Beta available today

Visit android.com/beta to see the full list of partners, with links to their sites for details on their supported devices and Beta builds, starting with Beta 1. Each partner will handle their own enrollments and support, and provide the Beta updates to you directly.

With Beta 2 we’re just a step away from Platform Stability in June 2022, when we’ll have the final Android 13 SDK and NDK APIs as well as final app-facing system behaviors. Stay tuned, and for more on the timeline and how to get your apps ready for Android 13, visit the Android 13 developer site!