Tag Archives: android14

Android 14 is live in AOSP

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Today we're releasing Android 14 and pushing the Android 14 source to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Android 14 is designed to improve your productivity as developers while enhancing performance, privacy, security, and customization for users.

Android 14 is rolling out to select Pixel devices starting today, and will be available later this year on some of your favorite devices from Samsung Galaxy, iQOO, Nothing, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, Sony, Tecno, vivo and Xiaomi.

Thank you for taking the time to take Android 14 for an early spin though our developer preview and beta programs, sharing your feedback, and making sure your apps deliver a great experience on Android 14. Making Android work well for each and every one of the billions of Android users is a collaborative process between us, Android hardware manufacturers, and you, our developer community.

This post covers a selection of Android 14 changes that have the most developer impact. For a complete list of all of the Android 14 changes, visit the Android 14 developer site.

Performance and Efficiency

A big focus of Android 14 was on improving the performance and efficiency of the platform.

Freezing cached applications

Prior to Android 14, cached applications were allowed to run somewhat unconstrained. In Android 14, we freeze cached applications after a short period of time, giving them 0 CPU time. In Android 14 Beta populations, we see that cached processes consume up to 50% less CPU cycles as compared to Android 13 public devices. Thus, background work is disallowed outside of conventional Android app lifecycle APIs such as foreground services, JobScheduler, or WorkManager.

Optimized broadcasts

To keep frozen applications frozen longer (i.e. not get CPU time), we adjusted how apps receive context-registered broadcasts once they go into a cached state; they may be queued, and repeating ones, such as BATTERY_CHANGED, may be merged into one broadcast.

Faster app launches

With cached app and broadcast optimizations In Android 14, we were able to increase long-standing limits on the maximum number of cached applications in the platform, leading to a reduction in cold app starts that scales by the RAM present on the device. On 8GB devices, the beta group saw 20% fewer cold app starts, and on 12GB devices it was over 30% fewer. Cold startups are slow compared to warm startups and they are expensive in terms of power. This work effectively improves both power usage and overall app startup times.

Reduced memory footprint

Improving the Android Runtime (ART) has a huge impact on the Android user-experience. Code size is one of the key metrics we look at; smaller generated files are better for memory (both RAM and storage). In Android 14, ART includes optimizations that reduce code size by an average of 9.3% without impacting performance.

Customization

Customization is at the core of Android's DNA, and Android 14 continues our commitment to enabling Android users to tune their experience around their individual needs, including enhanced accessibility and internationalization features.

Bigger fonts with non-linear scaling – Starting in Android 14, users will be able to scale up their font to 200%. Previously, the maximum font size scale on Pixel devices was 130%. A non-linear font scaling curve is automatically applied to ensure that text that is already large enough doesn’t increase at the same rate as smaller text. Learn more here.

Image showing the differences between font with no scaling at 100% on the left, standard scaling at 200% in the middle, and non-linear scaling at 200% on the right

Per-app language preferences – You can dynamically update your app's localeConfig with LocaleManager.setOverrideLocaleConfig to customize the set of languages displayed in the per-app language list in Android Settings. IMEs can now use LocaleManager.getApplicationLocales to know the UI language of the current app to update the keyboard language. Starting with Android Studio Giraffe and AGP 8.1, you can configure your app to support Android 13's per-app language preferences automatically.

Regional preferences – Regional preferences enable users to personalize temperature units, the first day of the week, and numbering systems.

Grammatical Inflection – The Grammatical Inflection API allows you to more easily add support for users who speak languages that have grammatical gender. To show personalized translations, you just need to add translations inflected for each grammatical gender for impacted languages and integrate the API.

New media capabilities


Ultra HDR for images - Android 14 adds support for 10-bit high dynamic range (HDR) images, with support for the Ultra HDR image format. The format is fully backward-compatible with JPEG, allowing apps to seamlessly interoperate with HDR images.

Zoom, Focus, Postview, and more in Camera Extensions - Android 14 upgrades and improves Camera Extensions, allowing apps to handle longer processing times, enabling improved images using compute-intensive algorithms like low-light photography on supported devices.

Lossless USB audio - Android 14 devices can support lossless audio formats for audiophile-level experiences over USB wired headsets.

New graphics capabilities

Custom meshes with vertex and fragment shaders - Android 14 adds support for custom meshes, which can be defined as triangles or triangle strips, and can, optionally, be indexed. These meshes are specified with custom attributes, vertex strides, varying, and vertex/fragment shaders written in AGSL.

Hardware buffer renderer for Canvas - Android 14 introduces HardwareBufferRenderer to assist in using Android's Canvas API to draw with hardware acceleration into a HardwareBuffer, which is particularly helpful when your use case involves communication with the system compositor through SurfaceControl for low-latency drawing.

Developing across form factors

Android 14 builds on the work done in Android 12L and 13 to support tablets and foldable form factors including a taskbar supporting enhanced multitasking, large-screen optimized system apps and notification UI, activity embedding, enhanced letterboxing, improved media projection, and more. Our app quality guidance for large screens along with additional learning opportunities around building for large screens and foldables can help optimize your app across all Android surfaces, while the large screen gallery contains design patterns and inspiration for social and communications, media, productivity, shopping, and reading apps.

Improving your productivity

Android 14 contains many updates focused on making your development experience more consistent, fun, and productive. Many of these updates are being made available on older platform releases using a combination of Google Play system updates, Jetpack libraries, and Google Play services, so you can reach more users with them.

OpenJDK 17 Support - Thanks to Google Play system updates (Project Mainline), over 600M devices are enabled to receive the latest Android Runtime (ART) updates that ship with Android 14. Learn more here.

Credential Manager and Passkeys support - Credential Manager is a new Jetpack API that supports multiple sign-in methods, such as username and password, passkeys, and federated sign-in solutions (such as Sign-in with Google) in a single API, simplifying your integration. Using Google Play services, Credential Manager is supported back to Android 4.4 (API level 19). Read more here.

Health Connect - Health Connect is a user controlled on-device repository for user health and fitness data that makes it easier than ever to support an integrated health and fitness experience across apps and connected devices. Health Connect is part of the Android platform and receives updates via Google Play system updates without requiring a separate download, and is available to older devices as an app on the Google Play store. Read about Health Connect and more in What's new in Android Health.

Superior system sharesheets - To make it easy to give your app's users a rich, consistent, sharing experience, the system sharesheets in Android 14 are configurable with custom actions and improved ranking.

More consistent and reliable foreground services- We've collaborated with hardware manufacturers such as Samsung to create both a more consistent developer experience and a more reliable user experience. To this end, Android 14 has a new requirement to declare foreground service types and request type-specific permissions and we have Google Play policies to enforce appropriate use of these APIs. We've also added a new user-initiated data transfer job type, making the experience of managing large user-initiated uploads and downloads smoother by leveraging JobScheduler's constraints (e.g. network constraints such as unmetered WiFi).

User experience

Predictive Back - Android 14 introduces new Predictive Back system animations – cross-activity and cross-task – to join the back-to-home animation introduced in Android 13. The system animations remain behind a developer option to allow time for additional polish and for more apps to opt-into Predictive Back; Material and Jetpack Predictive Back animations are available to users today.

Privacy and security

 
Data sharing updates – Users will see a new section in the location runtime permission dialog that highlights when an app shares location data with third parties, where they can get more information and control the app’s data access.

Partial access to photos and videos – When your app targeting SDK 34 requests any of the visual media permissions introduced in SDK 33 (READ_MEDIA_IMAGES / READ_MEDIA_VIDEO), Android 14 users can now grant your app access to only selected photos and videos. To adapt your app to this change, we recommend following our recent best practices.

Background activity launching – Android 10 (API level 29) and higher place restrictions on when apps can start activities when running in the background. To further reduce instances of unexpected interruptions, apps targeting Android 14 need to grant privileges to start activities in the background when sending a PendingIntent or when binding a service.

Block installation of apps targeting older SDK versions – To protect against malware that targets older API levels to bypass security and privacy protections, apps with a targetSdkVersion lower than 23 cannot be installed on Android 14.

Runtime receivers – Apps targeting Android 14 must indicate if dynamic Context.registerReceiver() usage should be treated as "exported" or "unexported", a continuation of the manifest-level work from previous releases. Learn more here.

Secure full screen Intent notifications – Since full-screen intent notifications are designed for extremely high-priority notifications demanding the user's immediate attention, Android 14 limits the apps granted this permission on app install to those that provide calling and alarms only. Your app can now launch the settings page where users can grant the permission.

Safer dynamic code loading – Apps targeting Android 14 require dynamically loaded files to be marked as read-only. Learn more here.

Safer implicit intents – For apps targeting Android 14, creating a mutable pending intent with an implicit intent will throw an exception, preventing them from being able to be used to trigger unexpected code paths. Apps need to either make the pending intent immutable or make the intent explicit. Learn more here.

App compatibility

We’re working to make updates faster and smoother with each platform release by prioritizing app compatibility. In Android 14 we’ve made most app-facing changes opt-in until your app targets SDK version 34 to give you more time to make any necessary app changes, and we’ve updated our tools and processes to help you get ready sooner.

Easier testing and debugging of changes – To make it easier for you to test the opt-in changes that can affect your app, we’ll make many of them toggleable again this year. With the toggles, you can force-enable or disable the changes individually from Developer options or adb. Check out the details here.

image of app compatibility toggles in Developer Options
App compatibility toggles in Developer Options.

Get your apps, libraries, tools, and game engines ready!

Now is the time to finish your final compatibility testing and publish any necessary updates to ensure a smooth app experience.

If you develop an SDK, library, tool, or game engine, it's even more important to release any necessary updates now to prevent your downstream app and game developers from being blocked by compatibility issues and allow them to target the latest SDK features. Please make sure to let your developers know if updates are needed to fully support Android 14.

Testing your app involves installing your production app onto a device running Android 14; you can use Google Play or other means. Work through all the app's flows and look for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing. Each release of Android contains changes to the platform that improve privacy, security, and the overall user experience, and these changes can affect your apps. Here are some top changes to test:

Remember to exercise libraries and SDKs that your app is using in your compatibility testing. You may need to update to current SDK versions or reach 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 14 and use the compatibility framework to help detect issues quickly.

Get started with Android 14

If you have a supported Pixel device, and are not enrolled in the Android Beta program, you will receive the public Android 14 OTA update as it becomes available (it may take a week or longer as this is a phased rollout dependent on device type and carrier). If you are currently enrolled in the Android Beta program running Android 14, you likely have received and installed the beta of the next Android 14 quarterly platform release (QPR1).

System images for Pixel devices are available here for manual download and flash, and you can get the latest 64-bit Android Emulator system images via the Android Studio SDK Manager. If you're looking for the Android 14 source, you'll find it here in the Android Open Source Project repository under the Android 14 branches.

For the best development experience with Android 14, we recommend that you use the latest release of Android Studio Hedgehog. Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:

  • Try the new features and APIs. Report issues in our tracker on the feedback page.
  • Test your current app for compatibility – learn whether your app is affected by default behavior changes in Android 14. Install your app onto a device or emulator running Android 14 and extensively test it.
  • Test your app with opt-in changes – Android 14 has opt-in behavior changes that only affect your app when it’s targeting the new platform. It’s important to understand and assess these changes early. To make it easier to test, you can toggle the changes on and off individually.
  • Update your app with the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant – Android Studio Hedgehog now filters and identifies the specific Android 14 API changes that are relevant to your app, and walks you through the steps to upgrade your targetSdkVersion with the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant.
Screengrab of Android SDK Upgrade Assistant on Google Pixel Fold

Thank you again for participating in our Android developer preview and beta program! We're looking forward to seeing how your apps take advantage of the updates in Android 14.

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

Android 14 Beta 5

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering
Android 14 logo

With the official release of Android 14 only weeks away, today we're bringing you Beta 5, the last scheduled update in our Android 14 beta program. It's the last chance to make sure your apps are ready and provide feedback before non-beta users start getting Android 14. To enable you to test your applications on devices spanning multiple form factors, Beta 5 is available for Pixel Tablet and Pixel Fold, in addition to the rest of the supported Pixel family and the Android emulator.

What's in Beta 5?

Beta 5 is our third Platform Stable Android 14 release, which means that the developer APIs and all app-facing behaviors are final for you to review and integrate into your apps, and you can publish apps on Google Play targeting Android 14's SDK version 34. It includes the latest fixes and optimizations, giving you everything you need to complete your testing.

Image of timeline showing Android 14 release is on schedule with Platform Stability testing happening in August

Get your apps, libraries, tools, and game engines ready!

The official Android 14 release is just weeks ahead, so please finish your final compatibility testing and publish any necessary updates to ensure a smooth app experience ahead of the final release of Android 14.

If you develop an SDK, library, tool, or game engine, it's even more important to release any necessary updates now to prevent your downstream app and game developers from being blocked by compatibility issues and allow them to target the latest SDK features. Please make sure to let your developers know if updates are needed to fully support Android 14.

Testing your app involves installing your production app onto a device running Android 14 Beta 5; you can use Google Play or other means. Work through all the app's flows and look for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing. Each release of Android contains changes to the platform that improve privacy, security, and the overall user experience, and these changes can affect your apps. Here are some top changes to test:

Remember to exercise libraries and SDKs that your app is using in your compatibility testing. You may need to update to current SDK versions or reach 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 14 and use the compatibility framework to help detect issues quickly.

Get started with Android 14

Today's Beta 5 release has everything you need to try Android 14 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. You can enroll any supported Pixel device here to get this and future Android 14 Beta and feature drop Beta updates over-the-air, and 64-bit Android Emulator system images will be available soon in the Android Studio SDK Manager.

For the best development experience with Android 14, we recommend that you use the latest release of Android Studio Hedgehog. Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:

  • Try the new features and APIs. Report issues in our tracker on the feedback page.
  • Test your current app for compatibility – learn whether your app is affected by default behavior changes in Android 14. Install your app onto a device or emulator running Android 14 and extensively test it.
  • Test your app with opt-in changes – Android 14 has opt-in behavior changes that only affect your app when it’s targeting the new platform. It’s important to understand and assess these changes early. To make it easier to test, you can toggle the changes on and off individually.
  • Update your app with the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant - Android Studio Hedgehog now filters and identifies the specific Android 14 API changes that are relevant to your app, and walks you through the steps to upgrade your targetSdkVersion with the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant.

We’ll update the beta system images regularly throughout the Android 14 release cycle.

If you are already enrolled in the Android 14 Beta program and your device is supported, Beta 5 will be made available to you as an Over The Air update without taking any additional action.

For complete information on how to get the Beta, visit the Android 14 developer site.

Android 14 Beta 4

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering
Android 14 logo

Today we're bringing you Android 14 Beta 4, continuing our work on polish and performance as we get closer to the general availability release of Android 14. Beta 4 is available for Pixel Tablet and Pixel Fold, in addition to the rest of the supported Pixel family, so you can test your applications on devices spanning multiple form factors and directly experience the work we're doing to improve the large-screen and foldable device experience.

Platform Stability

Beta 4 is our second Platform Stable Android 14 release, which means that the developer APIs and all app-facing behaviors are final for you to review and integrate into your apps, and you can publish apps on Google Play to devices running Android 14 at the official API level.

It's a good time to finish compatibility testing and publish any necessary updates to ensure a smooth app experience ahead of the final release of Android 14 later this year.

image of timeline illustrates that we are in July and on track with Platform Stability for Android 14 ahead of final release

If you develop an SDK, library, tool, or game engine, it's even more important to release any necessary updates now to prevent your downstream app and game developers from being blocked with compatibility issues. Also, when you release a compatible update, please make sure to let your developers know.

App Compatibility

Each release of Android contains changes to the platform that improve privacy, security, and the overall user experience. These changes can affect your apps. Testing your app involves installing your production app onto a device running Android 14 Beta 4; you can use Google Play or other means. Work through all the app's flows and look for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing.

Get started with Android 14

Today's Beta 4 release has everything you need to try Android 14 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. The easiest way to get started is using the 64-bit Android Emulator system images for the Pixel Tablet or Pixel Fold configurations found in the latest preview of the Android Studio SDK Manager. You can also enroll any supported Pixel device here — including the new Pixel 7a, Pixel Tablet, and the Pixel Fold — to get this and future Android 14 Beta and feature drop Beta updates over-the-air.

For the best development experience with Android 14, we recommend that you use the latest release of Android Studio Hedgehog which includes the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant to help with your migration. Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:
  • Try the new features and APIs. Report issues in our tracker on the feedback page.
  • Test your current app for compatibility – learn whether your app is affected by default behavior changes in Android 14. Install your app onto a device or emulator running Android 14 and extensively test it.
  • Test your app with opt-in changes – Android 14 has opt-in behavior changes that only affect your app when it’s targeting the new platform. It’s important to understand and assess these changes early. To make it easier to test, you can toggle the changes on and off individually.
  • Update your app with the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant - Android Studio Hedgehog now filters and identifies the specific Android 14 API changes that are relevant to your app, and walks you through the steps to upgrade your targetSdkVersion with the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant.
screengrab of Android SDK Updgrade Assistant in Android Studio Hedgehog
Android SDK Upgrade Assistant in Android Studio Hedgehog

We’ll update the beta system images regularly throughout the Android 14 release cycle.

If you are already enrolled in the Android 14 Beta program and your device is supported, Beta 4 will be made available to you as an Over The Air update without taking any additional action.

For complete information on how to get the Beta, visit the Android 14 developer site.

Android 14 Beta 3 and Platform Stability

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering
Android 14 logo

With today's Android 14 Beta 3 release, we're continuing into the next phase of the Android development cycle. It builds upon our core themes of privacy, security, performance, developer productivity, and user customization while continuing to improve the large-screen device experience on tablets, foldables, and more.

Beta 3 takes Android 14 to Platform Stability, which means that the developer APIs and all app-facing behaviors are now final for you to review and integrate into your apps. Thank you for all of your continued feedback in getting us to this milestone.

There's a lot to explore in Android 14 and test in your apps. Today with Beta 3, we’re highlighting new accessibility features such as non-linear font scaling, privacy upgrades including partial photos/videos access, new animation support in gesture navigation, and features that further align with the OpenJDK 17 LTS release.


Platform Stability

With Platform Stability in Beta 3, you can confidently develop and release any necessary compatibility updates. Please start your final compatibility testing now and prepare to publish any necessary updates so you can get valuable feedback during the remainder of the beta releases. This will help ensure a smooth app experience ahead of the final release of Android 14 later this year.

image of timeline illustrates that we are in June and on track with Platform Stability for Android 14

If you develop an SDK, library, tool, or game engine, it's even more important to be testing now so you can release your compatible updates as soon as possible to prevent your downstream app and game developers from being blocked with compatibility issues. Also, when you've released a compatible update, please make sure to let your developers know.


App Compatibility

Each release of Android contains changes to the platform that improve privacy, security, and the overall user experience. These changes can affect your apps. Testing your app involves installing your production app onto a device running Android 14 Beta 3; you can use Google Play or other means. Work through all the app's flows and look for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing. Changes that may impact your app include:


Non-linear font scaling.
Starting in Android 14, the system supports font scaling up to 200% by default, providing low-vision users with additional accessibility options that align with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Perform UI testing with the maximum font size enabled (200%) to ensure that your app can accommodate larger font sizes without impacting usability. To get the most out of this feature, make sure that you're not hardcoding sp calculations from Configuration or DisplayMetrics, and use TypedValue's applyDimension() and deriveDimension() to convert between sp and px.

Grant partial access to photos and videos.
Users can now grant partial access to their media library when your app requests any of the visual media permissions (READ_MEDIA_IMAGES or READ_MEDIA_VIDEO) introduced in Android 13 (API level 33). When your app moves to the background, or when the user actively kills your app, the system treats these as one-time-permissions and eventually denies them. If your app is following permissions best practices, this change shouldn't break your app. Android 14 introduces the READ_MEDIA_VISUAL_USER_SELECTED permission to help apps better support the new changes. For a more seamless user experience, we recommend that you consider using the photo picker which provides a safe way for users to grant your app access to selected images and videos that does not require any permissions.

Data safety information is more visible.
To enhance user privacy, Android 14 increases the number of places where the system shows the information you have declared in the Play Console Form. For some permissions, the system runtime permission dialog now includes a clickable section that highlights your app's data sharing practices. This section of the system dialog includes information, such as why your app may decide to share data with third parties, and links users to where they can control your app's data access. We encourage you to review your app's location data sharing policies and take a moment to make any applicable updates to your app's Google Play Data safety section.

Please review the behavior changes section to see all of the changes that may impact the compatibility of your app or game. If you find any issues with libraries and SDKs in your app, try updating to the latest library or SDK version, reaching out to the developer for help if necessary.

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 14 and consider using the compatibility framework to help you detect issues quickly. Here are some of the changes to test for (these apply only to apps with targetSdkVersion set to API 34 or higher):


Foreground service types are required.
If your app targets Android 14, it must specify at least one foreground service type for each foreground service within your app. You should choose a foreground service type that represents your app's use case. The system checks for proper use of foreground service types and confirms that the app has requested the proper runtime permissions or uses the required APIs. For instance, the system expects apps that use the foreground service type FOREGROUND_SERVICE_TYPE_LOCATION type to request either ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION or ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION. Android 14 introduces foreground service types for health and remote messaging use cases. The system also reserves new types for short services, special use cases, and system exemptions. If a use case in your app isn't associated with any of these types, it's strongly recommended that you migrate your logic to use WorkManager or user-initiated data transfer jobs.

OpenJDK 17 updates.
A few of the changes Android 14 makes to refresh core libraries to align with features in the latest OpenJDK LTS releases can affect app compatibility, including changes to regular expressions, UUID handling, and issues involving ProGuard and the addition of java.lang.ClassValue.

Security changes.
Apps targeting Android 14 can no longer send certain implicit intents to internal components. Runtime registered broadcast receivers must specify export behavior, unless they are receiving only system broadcasts. Dynamically-loaded code files must be marked as read-only. ZipFile(String) and ZipInputStream.getNextEntry() throws a ZipException if zip file entry names contain ".." or start with "/" to prevent the Zip path traversal vulnerability. There are additional restrictions on starting activities from the background, and updated restrictions to calling non-SDK interfaces.

Get started with Android 14

Today's Beta 3 release has everything you need to try the Android 14 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. For testing your app with tablets and foldables, you can test with devices from our partners, but the easiest way to get started is using the 64-bit Android Emulator system images for the Pixel Tablet or Pixel Fold configurations found in the latest preview of the Android Studio SDK Manager. You can also enroll any supported Pixel device here, including the new Pixel 7a, to get this and future Android 14 Beta and feature drop Beta updates over-the-air.

For the best development experience with Android 14, we recommend that you use the latest release of Android Studio Hedgehog. Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:

  • Try the new features and APIs. Report issues in our tracker on the feedback page.
  • Test your current app for compatibility – learn whether your app is affected by default behavior changes in Android 14. Install your app onto a device or emulator running Android 14 and extensively test it.
  • Test your app with opt-in changes – Android 14 has opt-in behavior changes that only affect your app when it’s targeting the new platform. It’s important to understand and assess these changes early. To make it easier to test, you can toggle the changes on and off individually.

We’ll update the beta system images regularly throughout the Android 14 release cycle.

If you are already enrolled in the Android 14 Beta program and your device is supported, Beta 3 will be made available to you as an Over The Air update without taking any additional action.

For complete information on how to get the Beta, visit the Android 14 developer site.

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

Android 14 Beta 1

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Illustration of badge style Android 14 logo

Today we're releasing the first Beta of Android 14, building around our core themes of privacy, security, performance, developer productivity, and user customization while continuing to improve the large-screen device experience on tablets, foldables, and more. We've been making steady progress refining the features and stability of Android 14, and it's time to open the experience up to both developers and early-adopters.

Android delivers enhancements and new features year-round, and your feedback on the Android beta program plays a key role in helping Android continuously improve. The Android 14 developer site has lots more information about the beta, including downloads for Pixel and the release timeline. We’re looking forward to hearing what you think, and thank you in advance for your continued help in making Android a platform that works for everyone.


Working across form factors

Android 14 builds on the work done in past releases to support tablets and foldable form factors, and we've been building tools and resources to help polish your app experience, including design inspiration and development guides.


Smarter System UI

In the Android operating system, features are implemented by two separate yet equally important packages: the framework, which provides services, and the System UI, which gives the user control of those services. Each Android release brings new refinements to the system UI, and here are some that you might notice in Beta 1.


New back arrow

Image showing the back arrow indicating gesture navigation on a mobile device

The gesture navigation experience includes a more prominent back arrow while interacting with your app to help improve back gesture understanding and usefulness. The back arrow also compliments the user's wallpaper or device theme.



A superior system sharesheet

Screen image of custom sharesheet with direct share targets


In Android 14, apps can now add custom actions to system sharesheets they invoke. Create your custom ChooserAction using ChooserAction.Builder and specify a list of your ChooserActions as the Intent.EXTRA_CHOOSER_CUSTOM_ACTIONS of the Intent created with Intent.createChooser.

In addition, the system now uses more app signals to determine the ranking of the direct share targets. You provide the signal by calling pushDynamicShortcut to report shortcut usage with the corresponding capability bindings.






More graphics capabilities

Android 14 adds new graphics features that you can use to make your app really stand out.


Paths are now queryable and interpolatable

Android's Path API is a powerful and flexible mechanism for creating and rendering vector graphics. Starting in Android 14, you can query paths to find out what's inside of them. The API updates include functionality to interpolate between paths whose structures match exactly, enabling morphing effects, and an AndroidX library provides backwards compatibility back to API 21. More details here.


Personalization

 Per-app language preferences

Android 14 enhances per-app language preferences, allowing for dynamic customization of the set of languages displayed in the Android Settings per-app language list, and giving IMEs a way to know the UI language of the current app. Starting with Android Studio Giraffe Canary 7 and AGP 8.1.0-alpha07, you can configure your app to support per-app language preferences automatically. Based on your project resources, the Android Gradle plugin generates the LocaleConfig file and adds a reference to it in the generated manifest file, so you no longer have to create or update the file manually when your language support changes. See Automatic per-app language support for more information and leave feedback.


Privacy

 Limiting visibility to disability-focused accessibility services

Android 14 introduces the accessibilityDataSensitive attribute to allow apps to limit visibility of specified views only to accessibility services that claim to help users with disabilities. Play Protect ensures apps downloaded from the Play Store are truthful about these claims. TalkBack and other services that claim to help users with disabilities will not be affected by this attribute.

Apps can consider using accessibilityDataSensitive to:

  • Protect user data (such as personal details or plaintext passwords) 
  • Prevent critical actions from being executed unintentionally (such as transfering money or checking out in a shopping app)
    •  

App compatibility

If you haven't yet tested your app for compatibility with Android 14, now is the time to do it! With Android 14 now in beta, we're opening up access to early-adopter users as well as developers. In the weeks ahead, you can expect more users to be trying your app on Android 14 and raising issues they find.

To test for compatibility, install your published app on a device or emulator running Android 14 Beta and work through all of the app’s flows. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing. After you’ve resolved any issues, publish an update as soon as possible.

Image of Android 14 preview and release timeline indicating we are on target with Beta release in April

It’s also a good time to start getting ready for your app to target Android 14, by testing with the app compatibility changes toggles in Developer Options.

Partial screenshot of App Compatibility Changes in Developer Options
App compatibility toggles in Developer Options.

Get started with Android 14

Today's Beta release has everything you need to try the Android 14 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. For testing your app with tablets and foldables, the easiest way to get started is using the Android Emulator in a tablet or foldable configuration in the latest preview of the Android Studio SDK Manager. Now that we've entered the beta phase, you can enroll any supported Pixel device here to get this and future Android 14 Beta and feature drop Beta updates over-the-air. If you don’t have a Pixel device, you can use the 64-bit system images with the Android Emulator in Android Studio.

For the best development experience with Android 14, we recommend that you use the latest preview of Android Studio Giraffe (or more recent Giraffe+ versions). Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:

  • Try the new features and APIs - your feedback is critical as we finalize the APIs. Report issues in our tracker on the feedback page. 
  • Test your current app for compatibility - learn whether your app is affected by default behavior changes in Android 14. Install your app onto a device or emulator running Android 14 and extensively test it. 
  • Test your app with opt-in changes - Android 14 has opt-in behavior changes that only affect your app when it’s targeting the new platform. It’s important to understand and assess these changes early. To make it easier to test, you can toggle the changes on and off individually.

We’ll update the preview and beta system images and SDK regularly throughout the Android 14 release cycle.

If you are already enrolled in the Android 13 QPR Beta program and your device is supported, Android 14 Beta 1 will be made available to you without taking any additional action.

For complete information on how to get the Beta, visit the Android 14 developer site.

Android 14 Developer Preview 2

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Today, we're releasing the second Developer Preview of Android 14, building on the work of the first developer preview of Android 14 from last month with additional enhancements to privacy, security, performance, developer productivity, and user customization while continuing to refine the large-screen device experience on tablets, foldables, and more.

Android delivers enhancements and new features year-round, and your feedback on the Android 14 developer preview and Quarterly Platform Release (QPR) beta program plays a key role in helping Android continuously improve. The Android 14 developer site has lots more information about the preview, including downloads for Pixel and the release timeline. We’re looking forward to hearing what you think, and thank you in advance for your continued help in making Android a platform that works for everyone.

Working across form factors

Android 14 builds on the work done in Android 12L and 13 to support tablets and foldable form factors. See get started with building for large screens and learn about foldables for a quick jumpstart on how to get your apps ready. Our app quality guidance for large screens contains detailed checklists to review your app. We've also recently released libraries supporting low latency stylus and motion prediction.

The large screen gallery contains design inspiration for social and communications, media, productivity, shopping, and reading app experiences.

Privacy and security

Privacy and security have always been a core part of Android's mission, built on the foundation of app sandboxing, open source code, and open app development. In Android 14, we’re building the highest quality platform for all by providing a safer device environment and giving users more controls to protect their information.

Selected photos access

We recommend that you use the Photo Picker if your app needs to access media that the user selects; it provides a permissionless experience on devices running Android 4.4 onwards, using a combination of core platform features, Google Play system updates, and Google Play services.

If you cannot use Photo Picker, when your app requests any of the visual media permissions (READ_MEDIA_IMAGES / READ_MEDIA_VIDEO) introduced in SDK 33, Android 14 users can now grant your app access to only selected photos and videos.

In the new dialog, the permission choices will be:

  • Allow access to all photos: the full library of all on-device photos & videos is available
  • Select photos: only the user's selection of photos & videos will be temporarily available via MediaStore
  • Don’t allow: access to all photos and videos is denied

Apps can prompt users to select media again by requesting the media permissions again and having the READ_MEDIA_VISUAL_USER_SELECTED permission declared in their app manifest.

Please test this new behavior with your apps and adapt your UX to handle the new permission and the media file reselection flow.

Credential manager

Android 14 adds Credential Manager as a platform API, and we're supporting it back to Android 4.4 (API level 19) devices through a Jetpack Library with a Google Play services implementation. It aims to make sign-in easier for users with APIs that retrieve and store credentials with user-configured credential providers. In addition to supporting passwords, the API allows your app to sign-in using passkeys, the new industry standard for passwordless sign-in. Passkeys are built on industry standards, can work across different operating systems and browser ecosystems, and can be used with both websites and apps. Developer Preview 2 features improvements in the UI styling for the account selector, along with changes to the API based upon feedback from Developer Preview 1. Learn more here.

Safer implicit intents

For apps targeting Android 14, creating a mutable pending intent with an implicit intent will throw an exception, preventing them from being able to be used to trigger unexpected code paths. Apps need to either make the pending intent immutable or make the intent explicit. Learn more here.

Background activity launching

Android 10 (API level 29) and higher place restrictions on when apps can start activities when the app is running in the background. These restrictions help minimize interruptions for the user and keep them more in control of what's shown on their screen. To further reduce instances of unexpected interruptions, Android 14 gives foreground apps more control over the ability of apps they interact with to start activities. Specifically, apps targeting Android 14 need to grant privileges to start activities in the background when sending a PendingIntent or when binding a Service.

Streamlining background work

Android 14 continues our effort to optimize the way apps work together, improve system health and battery life, and polish the end-user experience.

Background optimizations

Developer Preview 2 includes optimizations to Android’s memory management system to improve resource usage while applications are running in the background. Several seconds after an app goes into the cached state, background work is disallowed outside of conventional Android app lifecycle APIs such as foreground services, JobScheduler, or WorkManager. Background work is disallowed an order of magnitude faster than on Android 13.

Fewer non-dismissible notifications

Notifications on Android 14 containing FLAG_ONGOING_EVENT will be user dismissible on unlocked handheld devices. Notifications will stay non-dismissible when the device is locked, and notification listeners will not be able to dismiss these notifications. Notifications that are important to device functionality, like system and device policy notifications, will remain fully non-dismissible.

Improved App Store Experiences

Android 14 introduces several new PackageInstaller APIs which allow app stores to improve their user experience, including the requestUserPreapproval() method that allows the download of APKs to be deferred until after the installation has been approved, the setRequestUpdateOwnership() method that allows an installer to indicate that it is responsible for future updates to an app it is installing, and the setDontKillApp() method that can seamlessly install optional features of an app through split APKs while the app is in use. Also, the InstallConstraints API gives installers a way to ensure that app updates happen at an opportune moment, such as when an app is no longer in use.

If you develop an app store, please give these APIs a try and let us know what you think!

Personalization

Regional Preferences

Regional preferences enable users to personalize temperature units, the first day of the week, and numbering systems. A European living in the United States might prefer temperature units to be in Celsius rather than Fahrenheit and for apps to treat Monday as the beginning of the week instead of the US default of Sunday.

New Android Settings menus for these preferences provide users with a discoverable and centralized location to change app preferences. These preferences also persist through backup and restore. Several APIs and intents grant you read access to user preferences for adjusting app information display (getTemperatureUnit, getFirstDayOfWeek). You can also register a BroadcastReceiver on ACTION_LOCALE_CHANGED to handle locale configuration changes when regional preferences change.

App compatibility

We’re working to make updates faster and smoother with each platform release by prioritizing app compatibility. In Android 14 we’ve made most app-facing changes opt-in to give you more time to make any necessary app changes, and we’ve updated our tools and processes to help you get ready sooner.

Developer Preview 2 is in the period where we're looking for input on our APIs, along with details on how platform changes affect your apps, so now is the time to try new features and give us your feedback.

It’s also a good time to start your compatibility testing and identify any work you’ll need to do. You can test some of them without changing your app's targetSdkVersion using the behavior change toggles in Developer Options. This will help you get a preliminary idea of how your app might be affected by opt-in changes in Android 14.

Image of a partial screen shot of a device showing App compatibility toggles in Developer Options
App compatibility toggles in Developer Options.

Platform Stability is when we’ll deliver final SDK/NDK APIs and app-facing system behaviors. We’re expecting to reach Platform Stability in June 2023, and from that time you’ll have several weeks before the official release to do your final testing. The release timeline details are here.

Get started with Android 14

The Developer Preview has everything you need to try the Android 14 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. For testing your app with tablets and foldables, the easiest way to get started is using the Android Emulator in a tablet or foldable configuration in the latest preview of the Android Studio SDK Manager. For phones, you can get started today by flashing a system image onto a Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 7, Pixel 6a, Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6, Pixel 5a 5G, Pixel 5, or Pixel 4a (5G) device. If you don’t have a Pixel device, you can use the 64-bit system images with the Android Emulator in Android Studio.

For the best development experience with Android 14, we recommend that you use the latest preview of Android Studio Giraffe (or more recent Giraffe+ versions). Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:

  • Try the new features and APIs - your feedback is critical during the early part of the developer preview. Report issues in our tracker on the feedback page.
  • Test your current app for compatibility - learn whether your app is affected by default behavior changes in Android 14; install your app onto a device or emulator running Android 14 and extensively test it.
  • Test your app with opt-in changes - Android 14 has opt-in behavior changes that only affect your app when it’s targeting the new platform. It’s important to understand and assess these changes early. To make it easier to test, you can toggle the changes on and off individually.

We’ll update the preview system images and SDK regularly throughout the Android 14 release cycle. This preview release is for developers only and not intended for daily or consumer use, so it will only available by manual download for new Android 14 developer preview users. Once you’ve manually installed a preview build, you’ll automatically get future updates over-the-air for all later previews and Betas. Read more here.

If you intend to move from the Android 13 QPR Beta program to the Android 14 Developer Preview program and don't want to have to wipe your device, we recommend that you move to Developer Preview 2 now. Otherwise, you may run into time periods where the Android 13 Beta will have a more recent build date which will prevent you from going directly to the Android 14 Developer Preview without doing a data wipe.

As we reach our Beta releases, we'll be inviting consumers to try Android 14 as well, and we'll open up enrollment for the Android 14 Beta program at that time. For now, please note that the Android Beta program is not yet available for Android 14.

For complete information, visit the Android 14 developer site.

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

The first developer preview of Android 14

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Making Android work well for each and every one of the billions of Android users is a collaborative process between us, Android hardware manufacturers, and you, our developer community.

Illustration of badge style Android 14 logo

Today we're releasing the first Developer Preview of Android 14, and your feedback in these previews is a critical part of making Android better for everyone. Android 14 continues our work to improve your productivity as developers, along with enhancements to performance, privacy, security, and user customization. This preview is just the beginning, and we’ll have lots more to share as we move through the release cycle.

Android continues to deliver enhancements and new features year-round, and your Android 14 developer preview and Quarterly Platform Release (QPR) beta program feedback plays a key role in helping Android continuously improve. The Android 14 developer site has lots more information about the preview, including downloads for Pixel and the release timeline. We’re looking forward to hearing what you think, and thank you in advance for your continued help in making Android a platform that works for everyone.

Working across devices and form factors

Android 14 builds on the work done in Android 12L and 13 to support tablets and foldable form factors. To help you build apps that adapt to different screen sizes, we've created window size classes, sliding pane layout, Activity embedding, and box with constraints and more, all supported in Jetpack Compose. With every release, our goal is to make it easier for you to optimize your app across all Android surfaces.

To help streamline getting your apps ready we have updated our app quality guidance for large screens, and provided additional learning opportunities around building for large screens and foldables. The large screen gallery contains proven design patterns along with design inspiration around the markets that your app supports such as social and communications, media, productivity, shopping, and reading apps.

Multi-device experiences are a big part of the future of Android. You can get started today with the Cross device SDK preview, allowing you to build rich experiences that intuitively work across different devices and form factors, and there's more to come.

Streamlining background work

Android 14 continues our effort to optimize the way apps work together, improve system health and battery life, and polish the end-user experience.

Updates and additions to JobScheduler and Foreground Services

It's more complicated than necessary to perform some background work, such as downloading large files when WiFi is available. We're creating a standard path for this work to simplify your app development and potentially improve the user experience. We're also being more opinionated about how foreground services should be used, reserving them for only the highest priority user-facing tasks so that Android can improve resource consumption and battery life.

In Android 14, we are making changes to existing Android APIs (Foreground Services and JobScheduler) including adding new functionality for user-initiated data transfers, along with an updated requirement to declare foreground service types. The user-initiated data transfer job will make managing user initiated downloads and uploads easier, particularly when they require constraints such as downloading on Wi-Fi only. The requirement to declare foreground service types allows you to clearly define the intent of the background work of your app while making it clear which use-cases are appropriate for foreground services. In addition, Google Play will be rolling out new policies to ensure the appropriate use of these APIs, with more details coming soon.

Optimized broadcasts

We’ve made several optimizations to the internal broadcast system to improve battery life and responsiveness. While most of the optimizations are internal to Android and should not impact your apps, we have adjusted how apps receive context-registered broadcasts once the app goes into a cached state. Broadcasts to context-registered receivers may be queued and only delivered to the app once it comes out of the cached state. Furthermore, some repeating context-registered broadcasts, such as BATTERY_CHANGED, may be merged into one final broadcast before it is delivered once the app comes out of the cached state.

Exact alarms

The invocation of exact alarms can significantly affect the device's resources, such as battery life. So in Android 14, newly installed apps targeting Android 13+ (SDK 33+) that are not clocks or calendars must request the user to grant them the SCHEDULE_EXACT_ALARM special permission before setting exact alarms. Apps can direct users to the settings page via an intent to toggle this permission, but we encourage you to evaluate your use cases and choose more flexibly scheduled alternatives when possible.

Clock and calendar apps targeting Android 13+ (SDK 33+) that rely on exact alarms as part of their core app workflow will be able to declare the USE_EXACT_ALARM normal permission instead (granted on install). Apps will not be able to publish a version of their app to the Play store with this permission in the manifest unless they qualify based on the policy language.

Customization

We're continuing to make sure that Android users can tune their experience around their individual needs, including enhanced accessibility and internationalization features.

Bigger fonts with non-linear scaling

Starting in Android 14, users will be able to scale up their font to 200%. Previously, the maximum font size scale on Pixel devices was 130%.

To mitigate issues where text gets too large, starting in Android 14, a non-linear font scaling curve is automatically applied. This ensures that text that is already large enough doesn’t increase at the same rate as smaller text.
Examples of text scaling showing the differences between the sizing of standard font at 100% (no scaling)on the left, standard scaling (200%) in the middle, and non-linear scaling (200%)on the rightIn Android 14, you should test your app UI with the maximum font size using the Font size option within the Accessibility > Display size and text settings. Ensure that the adjusted large text size setting is reflected in the UI, and that it doesn’t cause text to be cut off. Our documentation has more on best practices.

Per-app language preferences

You can dynamically update your app's localeConfig with LocaleManager.setOverrideLocaleConfig to customize the set of languages displayed in the per-app language list in Android Settings. This allows you to customize the language list per region, run A/B experiments, and provide updated locales if your app utilizes server-side localization pushes.

IMEs can now use LocaleManager.getApplicationLocales to know the UI language of the current app to update the keyboard language.

Grammatical Inflection API

The Grammatical Infection API allows you to more easily add support for users who speak languages which have grammatical gender. For example,

Masculine: “Vous êtes abonné à...”

Feminine: “Vous êtes abonnée à…”

Neutral: “Abonnement à…activé”

Grammatical gender is inherent to the language and cannot be easily worked around in some non-English languages. This new API lowers the effort to support viewer gender (who’s viewing the UI; not who’s being talked about) as compared to using the SelectFormat in ICU which must be applied on a per string basis.

To show personalized translations, you just need to add translations inflected for each grammatical gender for impacted languages and integrate the API.

Privacy and Security

Runtime receivers

Apps targeting Android 14 must indicate if dynamic Context.registerReceiver() usage should be treated as "exported" or "unexported", a continuation of the manifest-level work from previous releases. Learn more here.

Safer implicit intents

To prevent malicious apps from intercepting intents, apps targeting Android 14 are restricted from sending intents internally that don't specify a package. Learn more here.

Safer dynamic code loading

Dynamic code loading (DCL) introduces outlets for malware and exploits, since dynamically downloaded executables can be unexpectedly manipulated, causing code injection. Apps targeting Android 14 require dynamically loaded files to be marked as read-only. Learn more here.

Block installation of apps

Malware often targets older API levels to bypass security and privacy protections that have been introduced in newer Android versions. To protect against this, starting with Android 14, apps with a targetSdkVersion lower than 23 cannot be installed. This specific version was chosen because some malware apps use a targetSdkVersion of 22 to avoid being subjected to the runtime permission model introduced in 2015 by Android 6.0 (API level 23).

On devices that upgrade to Android 14, any apps with a targetSdkVersion lower than 23 will remain installed.

You can test apps targeting an older API level using the following ADB command: 

adb install --bypass-low-target-sdk-block FILENAME.apk

Credential Manager and Passkeys support

We recently announced the alpha release of Credential Manager, a new Jetpack API that allows you to simplify your users' authentication journey, while also increasing security with support of passkeys. Passkeys are a significantly safer replacement for passwords and other phishable authentication factors and more convenient for users (they require just a biometric swipe to securely sign in on any device). Read more here.

App compatibility

We’re working to make updates faster and smoother with each platform release by prioritizing app compatibility. In Android 14 we’ve made most app-facing changes opt-in to give you more time to make any necessary app changes, and we’ve updated our tools and processes to help you get ready sooner.

OpenJDK 17 Support - This preview includes access to 300 OpenJDK 17 classes. We are working hard to fully enable Java 17 language features in upcoming developer previews. These include record classes, multi-line strings and pattern matching instanceof. Thanks to Google Play system updates (Project Mainline), over 600M devices are enabled to receive the latest Android Runtime (ART) updates that include these changes. This is part of our commitment to give apps a more consistent, secure environment across devices, and to deliver new features and capabilities to users independent of platform releases.

Easier testing and debugging of changes - To make it easier for you to test the opt-in changes that can affect your app, we’ll make many of them toggleable again this year. With the toggles, you can force-enable or disable the changes individually from Developer options or adb. Check out the details here.
App compatibility toggles in Developer Options
Platform stability milestone - Like last year, we’re letting you know our Platform Stability milestone well in advance, to give you more time to plan for app compatibility work. At this milestone we’ll deliver final SDK/NDK APIs and also final internal APIs and app-facing system behaviors. We’re expecting to reach Platform Stability in June 2023, and from that time you’ll have several weeks before the official release to do your final testing. The release timeline details are here.

Get started with Android 14

The Developer Preview has everything you need to try the Android 14 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. For testing your app with tablets and foldables, the easiest way to get started is using the Android Emulator in a tablet or foldable configuration in the latest preview of the Android Studio SDK Manager. For phones, you can get started today by flashing a system image onto a Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 7, Pixel 6a, Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6, Pixel 5a 5G, Pixel 5, or Pixel 4a (5G) device. If you don’t have a Pixel device, you can use the 64-bit system images with the Android Emulator in Android Studio.

For the best development experience with Android 14, we recommend that you use the latest preview of Android Studio Giraffe (or more recent Giraffe+ versions). Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:

  • Try the new features and APIs - your feedback is critical during the early part of the developer preview. Report issues in our tracker on the feedback page.
  • Test your current app for compatibility - learn whether your app is affected by default behavior changes in Android 14; install your app onto a device or emulator running Android 14 and extensively test it.
  • Test your app with opt-in changes - Android 14 has opt-in behavior changes that only affect your app when it’s targeting the new platform. It’s important to understand and assess these changes early. To make it easier to test, you can toggle the changes on and off individually.

We’ll update the preview system images and SDK regularly throughout the Android 14 release cycle. This initial preview release is for developers only and not intended for daily or consumer use, so we're making it available by manual download only. Once you’ve manually installed a preview build, you’ll automatically get future updates over-the-air for all later previews and Betas. Read more here.

If you intend to move from the Android 13 QPR Beta program to the Android 14 Developer Preview program and don't want to have to wipe your device, we recommend that you move to Developer Preview 1 now. Otherwise you may run into time periods where the Android 13 Beta will have a more recent build date which will prevent you from going directly to the Android 14 Developer Preview without doing a data wipe.

As we reach our Beta releases, we'll be inviting consumers to try Android 14 as well, and we'll open up enrollment for the Android Beta program at that time. For now, please note that the Android Beta program is not yet available for Android 14.

For complete information, visit the Android 14 developer site.

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

The first developer preview of Android 14

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Making Android work well for each and every one of the billions of Android users is a collaborative process between us, Android hardware manufacturers, and you, our developer community.

Illustration of badge style Android 14 logo

Today we're releasing the first Developer Preview of Android 14, and your feedback in these previews is a critical part of making Android better for everyone. Android 14 continues our work to improve your productivity as developers, along with enhancements to performance, privacy, security, and user customization. This preview is just the beginning, and we’ll have lots more to share as we move through the release cycle.

Android continues to deliver enhancements and new features year-round, and your Android 14 developer preview and Quarterly Platform Release (QPR) beta program feedback plays a key role in helping Android continuously improve. The Android 14 developer site has lots more information about the preview, including downloads for Pixel and the release timeline. We’re looking forward to hearing what you think, and thank you in advance for your continued help in making Android a platform that works for everyone.

Working across devices and form factors

Android 14 builds on the work done in Android 12L and 13 to support tablets and foldable form factors. To help you build apps that adapt to different screen sizes, we've created window size classes, sliding pane layout, Activity embedding, and box with constraints and more, all supported in Jetpack Compose. With every release, our goal is to make it easier for you to optimize your app across all Android surfaces.

To help streamline getting your apps ready we have updated our app quality guidance for large screens, and provided additional learning opportunities around building for large screens and foldables. The large screen gallery contains proven design patterns along with design inspiration around the markets that your app supports such as social and communications, media, productivity, shopping, and reading apps.

Multi-device experiences are a big part of the future of Android. You can get started today with the Cross device SDK preview, allowing you to build rich experiences that intuitively work across different devices and form factors, and there's more to come.

Streamlining background work

Android 14 continues our effort to optimize the way apps work together, improve system health and battery life, and polish the end-user experience.

Updates and additions to JobScheduler and Foreground Services

It's more complicated than necessary to perform some background work, such as downloading large files when WiFi is available. We're creating a standard path for this work to simplify your app development and potentially improve the user experience. We're also being more opinionated about how foreground services should be used, reserving them for only the highest priority user-facing tasks so that Android can improve resource consumption and battery life.

In Android 14, we are making changes to existing Android APIs (Foreground Services and JobScheduler) including adding new functionality for user-initiated data transfers, along with an updated requirement to declare foreground service types. The user-initiated data transfer job will make managing user initiated downloads and uploads easier, particularly when they require constraints such as downloading on Wi-Fi only. The requirement to declare foreground service types allows you to clearly define the intent of the background work of your app while making it clear which use-cases are appropriate for foreground services. In addition, Google Play will be rolling out new policies to ensure the appropriate use of these APIs, with more details coming soon.

Optimized broadcasts

We’ve made several optimizations to the internal broadcast system to improve battery life and responsiveness. While most of the optimizations are internal to Android and should not impact your apps, we have adjusted how apps receive context-registered broadcasts once the app goes into a cached state. Broadcasts to context-registered receivers may be queued and only delivered to the app once it comes out of the cached state. Furthermore, some repeating context-registered broadcasts, such as BATTERY_CHANGED, may be merged into one final broadcast before it is delivered once the app comes out of the cached state.

Exact alarms

The invocation of exact alarms can significantly affect the device's resources, such as battery life. So in Android 14, newly installed apps targeting Android 13+ (SDK 33+) that are not clocks or calendars must request the user to grant them the SCHEDULE_EXACT_ALARM special permission before setting exact alarms. Apps can direct users to the settings page via an intent to toggle this permission, but we encourage you to evaluate your use cases and choose more flexibly scheduled alternatives when possible.

Clock and calendar apps targeting Android 13+ (SDK 33+) that rely on exact alarms as part of their core app workflow will be able to declare the USE_EXACT_ALARM normal permission instead (granted on install). Apps will not be able to publish a version of their app to the Play store with this permission in the manifest unless they qualify based on the policy language.

Customization

We're continuing to make sure that Android users can tune their experience around their individual needs, including enhanced accessibility and internationalization features.

Bigger fonts with non-linear scaling

Starting in Android 14, users will be able to scale up their font to 200%. Previously, the maximum font size scale on Pixel devices was 130%.

To mitigate issues where text gets too large, starting in Android 14, a non-linear font scaling curve is automatically applied. This ensures that text that is already large enough doesn’t increase at the same rate as smaller text.
Examples of text scaling showing the differences between the sizing of standard font at 100% (no scaling)on the left, standard scaling (200%) in the middle, and non-linear scaling (200%)on the rightIn Android 14, you should test your app UI with the maximum font size using the Font size option within the Accessibility > Display size and text settings. Ensure that the adjusted large text size setting is reflected in the UI, and that it doesn’t cause text to be cut off. Our documentation has more on best practices.

Per-app language preferences

You can dynamically update your app's localeConfig with LocaleManager.setOverrideLocaleConfig to customize the set of languages displayed in the per-app language list in Android Settings. This allows you to customize the language list per region, run A/B experiments, and provide updated locales if your app utilizes server-side localization pushes.

IMEs can now use LocaleManager.getApplicationLocales to know the UI language of the current app to update the keyboard language.

Grammatical Inflection API

The Grammatical Infection API allows you to more easily add support for users who speak languages which have grammatical gender. For example,

Masculine: “Vous êtes abonné à...”

Feminine: “Vous êtes abonnée à…”

Neutral: “Abonnement à…activé”

Grammatical gender is inherent to the language and cannot be easily worked around in some non-English languages. This new API lowers the effort to support viewer gender (who’s viewing the UI; not who’s being talked about) as compared to using the SelectFormat in ICU which must be applied on a per string basis.

To show personalized translations, you just need to add translations inflected for each grammatical gender for impacted languages and integrate the API.

Privacy and Security

Runtime receivers

Apps targeting Android 14 must indicate if dynamic Context.registerReceiver() usage should be treated as "exported" or "unexported", a continuation of the manifest-level work from previous releases. Learn more here.

Safer implicit intents

To prevent malicious apps from intercepting intents, apps targeting Android 14 are restricted from sending intents internally that don't specify a package. Learn more here.

Safer dynamic code loading

Dynamic code loading (DCL) introduces outlets for malware and exploits, since dynamically downloaded executables can be unexpectedly manipulated, causing code injection. Apps targeting Android 14 require dynamically loaded files to be marked as read-only. Learn more here.

Block installation of apps

Malware often targets older API levels to bypass security and privacy protections that have been introduced in newer Android versions. To protect against this, starting with Android 14, apps with a targetSdkVersion lower than 23 cannot be installed. This specific version was chosen because some malware apps use a targetSdkVersion of 22 to avoid being subjected to the runtime permission model introduced in 2015 by Android 6.0 (API level 23).

On devices that upgrade to Android 14, any apps with a targetSdkVersion lower than 23 will remain installed.

You can test apps targeting an older API level using the following ADB command: 

adb install --bypass-low-target-sdk-block FILENAME.apk

Credential Manager and Passkeys support

We recently announced the alpha release of Credential Manager, a new Jetpack API that allows you to simplify your users' authentication journey, while also increasing security with support of passkeys. Passkeys are a significantly safer replacement for passwords and other phishable authentication factors and more convenient for users (they require just a biometric swipe to securely sign in on any device). Read more here.

App compatibility

We’re working to make updates faster and smoother with each platform release by prioritizing app compatibility. In Android 14 we’ve made most app-facing changes opt-in to give you more time to make any necessary app changes, and we’ve updated our tools and processes to help you get ready sooner.

OpenJDK 17 Support - This preview includes access to 300 OpenJDK 17 classes. We are working hard to fully enable Java 17 language features in upcoming developer previews. These include record classes, multi-line strings and pattern matching instanceof. Thanks to Google Play system updates (Project Mainline), over 600M devices are enabled to receive the latest Android Runtime (ART) updates that include these changes. This is part of our commitment to give apps a more consistent, secure environment across devices, and to deliver new features and capabilities to users independent of platform releases.

Easier testing and debugging of changes - To make it easier for you to test the opt-in changes that can affect your app, we’ll make many of them toggleable again this year. With the toggles, you can force-enable or disable the changes individually from Developer options or adb. Check out the details here.
App compatibility toggles in Developer Options
Platform stability milestone - Like last year, we’re letting you know our Platform Stability milestone well in advance, to give you more time to plan for app compatibility work. At this milestone we’ll deliver final SDK/NDK APIs and also final internal APIs and app-facing system behaviors. We’re expecting to reach Platform Stability in June 2023, and from that time you’ll have several weeks before the official release to do your final testing. The release timeline details are here.

Get started with Android 14

The Developer Preview has everything you need to try the Android 14 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. For testing your app with tablets and foldables, the easiest way to get started is using the Android Emulator in a tablet or foldable configuration in the latest preview of the Android Studio SDK Manager. For phones, you can get started today by flashing a system image onto a Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 7, Pixel 6a, Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6, Pixel 5a 5G, Pixel 5, or Pixel 4a (5G) device. If you don’t have a Pixel device, you can use the 64-bit system images with the Android Emulator in Android Studio.

For the best development experience with Android 14, we recommend that you use the latest preview of Android Studio Giraffe (or more recent Giraffe+ versions). Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:

  • Try the new features and APIs - your feedback is critical during the early part of the developer preview. Report issues in our tracker on the feedback page.
  • Test your current app for compatibility - learn whether your app is affected by default behavior changes in Android 14; install your app onto a device or emulator running Android 14 and extensively test it.
  • Test your app with opt-in changes - Android 14 has opt-in behavior changes that only affect your app when it’s targeting the new platform. It’s important to understand and assess these changes early. To make it easier to test, you can toggle the changes on and off individually.

We’ll update the preview system images and SDK regularly throughout the Android 14 release cycle. This initial preview release is for developers only and not intended for daily or consumer use, so we're making it available by manual download only. Once you’ve manually installed a preview build, you’ll automatically get future updates over-the-air for all later previews and Betas. Read more here.

If you intend to move from the Android 13 QPR Beta program to the Android 14 Developer Preview program and don't want to have to wipe your device, we recommend that you move to Developer Preview 1 now. Otherwise you may run into time periods where the Android 13 Beta will have a more recent build date which will prevent you from going directly to the Android 14 Developer Preview without doing a data wipe.

As we reach our Beta releases, we'll be inviting consumers to try Android 14 as well, and we'll open up enrollment for the Android Beta program at that time. For now, please note that the Android Beta program is not yet available for Android 14.

For complete information, visit the Android 14 developer site.

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