Today we're bringing you Android 16 beta 4, the last scheduled update in our Android 16 beta program. Make sure your app or game is ready. It's also the last chance to give us feedback before Android 16 is released.

Android 16 Beta 4

This is our second platform stability release; the developer APIs and all app-facing behaviors are final. Apps targeting Android 16 can be made available in Google Play. Beta 4 includes our latest fixes and optimizations, giving you everything you need to complete your testing. Head over to our Android 16 summary page for a list of the features and behavior changes we've been covering in this series of blog posts, or read on for some of the top changes of which you should be aware.

Now available on more devices

The Android 16 Beta is now available on handset, tablet, and foldable form factors from partners including Honor, iQOO, Lenovo, OnePlus, OPPO, Realme, vivo, and Xiaomi. With more Android 16 partners and device types, many more users can run your app on the Android 16 Beta.

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

If you develop an SDK, library, tool, or game engine, it's even more important to prepare 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 let your developers know if updates to your SDK are needed to fully support Android 16.

Testing involves installing your production app or a test app making use of your library or engine using Google Play or other means onto a device or emulator running Android 16 Beta 4. Work through all your app's flows and look for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing. Each release of Android contains platform changes that improve privacy, security, and overall user experience, and these changes can affect your apps. Here are several changes to focus on that apply, even if you aren't yet targeting Android 16:

• JobScheduler: JobScheduler quotas are enforced more strictly in Android 16; enforcement will occur if a job executes while the app is on top, when a foreground service is running, or in the active standby bucket. setImportantWhileForeground is now a no-op. The new stop reason STOP_REASON_TIMEOUT_ABANDONED occurs when we detect that the app can no longer stop the job.
• Broadcasts: Ordered broadcasts using priorities only work within the same process. Use other IPC if you need cross-process ordering.
• ART: If you use reflection, JNI, or any other means to access Android internals, your app might break. This is never a best practice. Test thoroughly.
• Intents: Android 16 has stronger security against Intent redirection attacks. Test your Intent handling, and only opt-out of the protections if absolutely necessary.
• 16KB Page Size: If your app isn't 16KB-page-size ready, you can use the new compatibility mode flag, but we recommend migrating to 16KB for best performance.
• Accessibility: announceForAccessibility is deprecated; use the recommended alternatives. Make sure to test with the new outline text feature.
• Bluetooth: Android 16 improves Bluetooth bond loss handling that impacts the way re-pairing occurs.

Other changes that will be impactful once your app targets Android 16:

• User Experience: Changes include the removal of edge-to-edge opt-out, required migration or opt-out for predictive back, and the disabling of elegant font APIs.
• Core Functionality: Optimizations have been made to fixed-rate work scheduling.
• Large Screen Devices: Orientation, resizability, and aspect ratio restrictions will be ignored. Ensure your layouts support all orientations across a variety of aspect ratios to adapt to different surfaces.
• Health and Fitness: Changes have been implemented for health and fitness permissions.

Get your app ready for the future:

• Local network protection: Consider testing your app with the upcoming Local Network Protection feature. It will give users more control over which apps can access devices on their local network in a future Android major release.

Remember to thoroughly exercise libraries and SDKs that your app is using during your compatibility testing. You may need to update to current SDK versions or reach out to the developer for help if you encounter any issues.

Once you’ve published the Android 16-compatible version of your app, you can start the process to update your app's targetSdkVersion. Review the behavior changes that apply when your app targets Android 16 and use the compatibility framework to help quickly detect issues.

Two Android API releases in 2025

This Beta is for the next major release of Android with a planned launch in Q2 of 2025 and we plan to have another release with new developer APIs in Q4. This Q2 major release will be the only release in 2025 that includes behavior changes that could affect apps. The Q4 minor release will pick up feature updates, optimizations, and bug fixes; like our non-SDK quarterly releases, it will not include any intentional app-breaking behavior changes.

We'll continue to have quarterly Android releases. The Q1 and Q3 updates provide incremental updates to ensure continuous quality. We’re putting additional energy into working with our device partners to bring the Q2 release to as many devices as possible.

There’s no change to the target API level requirements and the associated dates for apps in Google Play; our plans are for one annual requirement each year, tied to the major API level.

Get started with Android 16

You can enroll any supported Pixel device to get this and future Android 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. If you are currently on Android 16 Beta 3 or are already in the Android Beta program, you will be offered an over-the-air update to Beta 4.

While the API and behaviors are final and we are very close to release, we'd still like you to report issues on the feedback page. The earlier we get your feedback, the better chance we'll be able to address it in this or a future release.

For the best development experience with Android 16, we recommend that you use the latest Canary build of Android Studio Narwhal. Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:

• Compile against the new SDK, test in CI environments, and report any issues in our tracker on the feedback page.
• Test your current app for compatibility, learn whether your app is affected by changes in Android 16, and install your app onto a device or Android Emulator running Android 16 and extensively test it.

We’ll update the beta system images and SDK regularly throughout the Android 16 release cycle. Once you’ve installed a beta build, you’ll automatically get future updates over-the-air for all later previews and Betas.

For complete information on Android 16 please visit the Android 16 developer site.

Android 16 has officially reached Platform Stability today with Beta 3! That means the API surface is locked, the app-facing behaviors are final, and you can push your Android 16-targeted apps to the Play store right now. Read on for coverage of new security and accessibility features in Beta 3.

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 16 developer site has more information about the beta, including how to get it onto devices 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 benefits everyone.

New in Android 16 Beta 3

At this late stage in the development cycle, there are only a few new things in the Android 16 Beta 3 release for you to consider when developing your apps.

Broadcast audio support

Pixel 9 devices on Android 16 Beta now support Auracast broadcast audio with compatible LE Audio hearing aids, part of Android's work to enhance audio accessibility. Built on the LE Audio standard, Auracast enables compatible hearing aids and earbuds to receive direct audio streams from public venues like airports, concerts, and classrooms. Our Keyword post has more on this technology.

Outline text for maximum text contrast

Users with low vision often have reduced contrast sensitivity, making it challenging to distinguish objects from their backgrounds. To help these users, Android 16 Beta 3 introduces outline text, replacing high contrast text, which draws a larger contrasting area around text to greatly improve legibility.

Android 16 also contains new AccessibilityManager APIs to allow your apps to check or register a listener to see if this mode is enabled. This is primarily for UI Toolkits like Compose to offer a similar visual experience. If you maintain a UI Toolkit library or your app performs custom text rendering that bypasses the android.text.Layout class then you can use this to know when outline text is enabled.

Test your app with Local Network Protection

Android 16 Beta 3 adds the ability to test the Local Network Protection (LNP) feature which is planned for a future Android major release. It gives users more control over which apps can access devices on their local network.

What's Changing?

Currently, any app with the INTERNET permission can communicate with devices on the user's local network. LNP will eventually require apps to request a specific permission to access the local network.

Beta 3: Opt-In and Test

In Beta 3, LNP is an opt-in feature. This is your chance to test your app and identify any parts that rely on local network access. Use this adb command to enable LNP restrictions for your app:

adb shell am compat enable RESTRICT_LOCAL_NETWORK <your_package_name>

After rebooting your device, your app's local network access is restricted. Test features that might interact with local devices (e.g., device discovery, media casting, connecting to IoT devices). Expect to see socket errors like EPERM or ECONNABORTED if your app tries to access the local network without the necessary permission. See the developer guide for more information, including how to re-enable local network access.

This is a significant change, and we're committed to working with you to ensure a smooth transition. By testing and providing feedback now, you can help us build a more private and secure Android ecosystem.

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

If you develop an SDK, library, tool, or game engine, it's even more important to prepare 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 let your developers know if updates are needed to fully support Android 16.

Testing involves installing your production app or a test app making use of your library or engine using Google Play or other means onto a device or emulator running Android 16 Beta 3. Work through all your app's flows and look for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing. Each release of Android contains platform changes that improve privacy, security, and overall user experience, and these changes can affect your apps. Here are several changes to focus on that apply, even if you don't yet target Android 16:

• JobScheduler: JobScheduler quotas are enforced more strictly in Android 16; enforcement will occur if a job executes while the app is on top, when a foreground service is running, or in the active standby bucket. setImportantWhileForeground is now a no-op. The new stop reason STOP_REASON_TIMEOUT_ABANDONED occurs when we detect that the app can no longer stop the job.
• Broadcasts: Ordered broadcasts using priorities only work within the same process. Use other IPC if you need cross-process ordering.
• ART: If you use reflection, JNI, or any other means to access Android internals, your app might break. This is never a best practice. Test thoroughly.
• Intents: Android 16 has stronger security against Intent redirection attacks. Test your Intent handling, and only opt-out of the protections if absolutely necessary.
• 16KB Page Size: If your app isn't 16KB-page-size ready, you can use the new compatibility mode flag, but we recommend migrating to 16KB for best performance.
• Accessibility: announceForAccessibility is deprecated; use the recommended alternatives.
• Bluetooth: Android 16 improves Bluetooth bond loss handling that impacts the way re-pairing occurs.

Other changes that will be impactful once your app targets Android 16:

• User Experience: Changes include the removal of edge-to-edge opt-out, requiring migration or opt-out for predictive back, and disabling elegant font APIs.
• Core Functionality: Optimizations have been made to fixed-rate work scheduling.
• Large Screen Devices: Orientation, resizability, and aspect ratio restrictions will be ignored. Ensure your layouts support all orientations across a variety of aspect ratios.
• Health and Fitness: Changes have been implemented for health and fitness permissions.

Remember to thoroughly exercise libraries and SDKs that your app is using during your compatibility testing. You may need to update to current SDK versions or reach out to the developer for help if you encounter any issues.

Once you’ve published the Android 16-compatible version of your app, you can start the process to update your app's targetSdkVersion. Review the behavior changes that apply when your app targets Android 16 and use the compatibility framework to help quickly detect issues.

Two Android API releases in 2025

This preview is for the next major release of Android with a planned launch in Q2 of 2025 and we plan to have another release with new developer APIs in Q4. This Q2 major release will be the only release in 2025 that includes behavior changes that could affect apps. The Q4 minor release will pick up feature updates, optimizations, and bug fixes; like our non-SDK quarterly releases, it will not include any intentional app-breaking behavior changes.

We'll continue to have quarterly Android releases. The Q1 and Q3 updates provide incremental updates to ensure continuous quality. We’re putting additional energy into working with our device partners to bring the Q2 release to as many devices as possible.

There’s no change to the target API level requirements and the associated dates for apps in Google Play; our plans are for one annual requirement each year, tied to the major API level.

Get started with Android 16

You can enroll any supported Pixel device to get this and future Android 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. If you are currently on Android 16 Beta 2 or are already in the Android Beta program, you will be offered an over-the-air update to Beta 3.

While the API and behaviors are final, we're still looking for your feedback so please report issues on the feedback page. The earlier we get your feedback, the better chance we'll be able to address it in this or a future release.

For the best development experience with Android 16, we recommend that you use the latest feature drop of Android Studio (Meerkat). Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:

• Compile against the new SDK, test in CI environments, and report any issues in our tracker on the feedback page.
• Test your current app for compatibility, learn whether your app is affected by changes in Android 16, and install your app onto a device or emulator running Android 16 and extensively test it.

We’ll update the beta system images and SDK regularly throughout the Android 16 release cycle. Once you’ve installed a beta build, you’ll automatically get future updates over-the-air for all later previews and Betas.

For complete information on Android 16 please visit the Android 16 developer site.

Today we're releasing the second beta of Android 16, continuing our work to build a platform that enables creative expression. You can enroll any supported Pixel device to get this and future Android Beta updates over-the-air.

This build adds new support for professional camera experiences, graphical effects, extends our performance framework, and continues the evolution of features related to privacy, security, and background tasks. 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.

Media and camera updates

Android 16 enhances support for professional camera users, allowing for hybrid auto exposure along with precise color temperature and tint adjustments. It's easier than ever to capture motion photos with new Intent actions, and we're continuing to improve UltraHDR images, with support for HEIC encoding and new parameters from the ISO 21496-1 draft standard.

Hybrid auto-exposure

Android 16 adds new hybrid auto-exposure modes to Camera2, allowing you to manually control specific aspects of exposure while letting the auto-exposure (AE) algorithm handle the rest. You can control ISO + AE, and exposure time + AE, providing greater flexibility compared to the current approach where you either have full manual control or rely entirely on auto-exposure.

fun setISOPriority() {
   // ...

    val availablePriorityModes = mStaticInfo.characteristics.get(
        CameraCharacteristics.CONTROL_AE_AVAILABLE_PRIORITY_MODES
    )
    // ...
    
    // Turn on AE mode to set priority mode
    reqBuilder[CaptureRequest.CONTROL_AE_MODE] = CameraMetadata.CONTROL_AE_MODE_ON
    reqBuilder[CaptureRequest.CONTROL_AE_PRIORITY_MODE] = CameraMetadata.CONTROL_AE_PRIORITY_MODE_SENSOR_SENSITIVITY_PRIORITY
    reqBuilder[CaptureRequest.SENSOR_SENSITIVITY] = TEST_SENSITIVITY_VALUE
    val request: CaptureRequest = reqBuilder.build()

    // ...

}

Precise color temperature and tint adjustments

Android 16 adds camera support for fine color temperature and tint adjustments to better support professional video recording applications. White balance settings are currently controlled through CONTROL_AWB_MODE, which contains options limited to a preset list, such as Incandescent, Cloudy, and Twilight. The COLOR_CORRECTION_MODE_CCT enables the use of COLOR_CORRECTION_COLOR_TEMPERATURE and COLOR_CORRECTION_COLOR_TINT for precise adjustments of white balance based on the correlated color temperature.

fun setCCT() {
    // ... (Your existing code before this point) ...

    val colorTemperatureRange: Range<Int> =
        mStaticInfo.characteristics[CameraCharacteristics.COLOR_CORRECTION_COLOR_TEMPERATURE_RANGE]

    // Set to manual mode to enable CCT mode
    reqBuilder[CaptureRequest.CONTROL_AWB_MODE] = CameraMetadata.CONTROL_AWB_MODE_OFF
    reqBuilder[CaptureRequest.COLOR_CORRECTION_MODE] = CameraMetadata.COLOR_CORRECTION_MODE_CCT
    reqBuilder[CaptureRequest.COLOR_CORRECTION_COLOR_TEMPERATURE] = 5000
    reqBuilder[CaptureRequest.COLOR_CORRECTION_COLOR_TINT] = 30

    val request: CaptureRequest = reqBuilder.build()

    // ... (Your existing code after this point) ...
}

Motion photo capture intent actions

Android 16 adds standard Intent actions — ACTION_MOTION_PHOTO_CAPTURE, and ACTION_MOTION_PHOTO_CAPTURE_SECURE — which request that the camera application capture a motion photo and return it.

You must either pass an extra EXTRA_OUTPUT to control where the image will be written, or a Uri through Intent setClipData. If you don't set a ClipData, it will be copied there for you when calling Context.startActivity.

UltraHDR image enhancements

Android 16 continues our work to deliver dazzling image quality with UltraHDR images. It adds support for UltraHDR images in the HEIC file format. These images will get ImageFormat type HEIC_ULTRAHDR and will contain an embedded gainmap similar to the existing UltraHDR JPEG format. We're working on AVIF support for UltraHDR as well, so stay tuned.

In addition, Android 16 implements additional parameters in UltraHDR from the ISO 21496-1 draft standard, including the ability to get and set the colorspace that gainmap math should be applied in, as well as support for HDR encoded base images with SDR gainmaps.

Custom graphical effects with AGSL

Android 16 adds RuntimeColorFilter and RuntimeXfermode, allowing you to author complex effects like Threshold, Sepia, and Hue Saturation and apply them to draw calls. Since Android 13, you've been able to use AGSL to create custom RuntimeShaders that extend Shaders. The new API mirrors this, adding an AGSL-powered RuntimeColorFilter that extends ColorFilters, and a Xfermode effect that allows you to implement AGSL-based custom compositing and blending between source and destination pixels.

private val thresholdEffectString = """
    uniform half threshold;
    half4 main(half4 c) {
        half luminosity = dot(c.rgb, half3(0.2126, 0.7152, 0.0722));
        half bw = step(threshold, luminosity);
        return bw.xxx1 * c.a;
    }"""

fun setCustomColorFilter(paint: Paint) {
   val filter = RuntimeColorFilter(thresholdEffectString)
   filter.setFloatUniform(0.5)
   paint.colorFilter = filter
}

Behavior changes

With every Android release, we seek to make the platform more efficient, privacy conscious, internationalization friendly, and robust, balancing the needs of apps against hardware support, system performance, user privacy, and battery life. This can result in behavior changes that impact compatibility.

Edge to edge opt-out going away

Android 15 enforced edge-to-edge for apps targeting Android 15 (SDK 35), but your app could opt-out by setting R.attr#windowOptOutEdgeToEdgeEnforcement to true. Once your app targets Android 16 (Baklava), R.attr#windowOptOutEdgeToEdgeEnforcement is deprecated and disabled and your app cannot opt-out of going edge-to-edge. To be compatible with Android 16 Beta 2, ensure your app supports edge-to-edge and remove any use of R.attr#windowOptOutEdgeToEdgeEnforcement. To support edge-to-edge, see the Compose and Views guidance. Please let us know about concerns in our tracker on the feedback page.

Health and fitness permissions

For apps targeting Android 16 or higher, BODY_SENSORS permissions are transitioning to the granular permissions under android.permissions.health also used by Health Connect. Any API previously requiring BODY_SENSORS or BODY_SENSORS_BACKGROUND will now require the corresponding android.permissions.health permission. This affects the following data types, APIs, and foreground service types:

• HEART_RATE_BPM from Wear Health Services
• Sensor.TYPE_HEART_RATE from Android Sensor Manager
• heartRateAccuracy and heartRateBpm from Wear ProtoLayout
• FOREGROUND_SERVICE_TYPE_HEALTH where the respective android.permission.health permission is needed in place of BODY_SENSORS

If your app uses these APIs, it should now request the respective granular permissions:

• For while-in-use monitoring of Heart Rate, SpO2, or Skin Temperature, request the granular permission under android.permissions.health, such as READ_HEART_RATE instead of BODY_SENSORS.
• For background sensor access, request READ_HEALTH_DATA_IN_BACKGROUND instead of BODY_SENSORS_BACKGROUND.

These permissions are the same as those that guard access to reading data from Health Connect, the Android datastore for health, fitness, and wellness data.

Abandoned empty jobs stop reason

An abandoned job occurs when the JobParameters object associated with the job has been garbage collected, but jobFinished has not been called to signal job completion. This indicates that the job may be running and being rescheduled without the application's awareness.

Applications in Android 16 that rely on JobScheduler without maintaining a strong reference to the JobParameters object will now be granted the new job stop reason STOP_REASON_TIMEOUT_ABANDONED on timeout, instead of STOP_REASON_TIMEOUT.

If there are frequent occurrences of the new abandoned stop reason, the system will take mitigation steps to reduce job frequency. Please use the new stop reason to detect and reduce abandoned jobs.

Note: If you're using WorkManager, you're not expected to be impacted by this change — one nice side effect of using Android Jetpack to schedule your work.

Intent redirect changes

Android 16 introduces default security hardening against Intent redirection attacks regardless of your app's targetSDK version. The removeLaunchSecurityProtection API allows you to opt-out of this protection if your testing reveals issues.

Note: Opting out of security protections should be done with caution and only when absolutely necessary, as it can increase the risk of security vulnerabilities.

val iSublevel = intent.getParcelableExtra("sub_intent", Intent::class.java)
iSublevel?.let {
    it.removeLaunchSecurityProtection()
    startActivity(it)
}

Elegant font APIs deprecated and disabled

Apps targeting Android 15 (API level 35) have the elegantTextHeight TextView attribute set to true by default, replacing the compact font with one that is much more readable. You could override this by setting the elegantTextHeight attribute to false.

Android 16 deprecates the elegantTextHeight attribute, and the attribute will be ignored once your app targets Android 16. The “UI fonts” controlled by these APIs are being discontinued, so you should adapt any layouts to ensure consistent and future proof text rendering in Arabic, Lao, Myanmar, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Telugu or Thai.

16 KB page size compatibility mode

Android 15 introduced support for 16KB memory pages to optimize performance of the platform. Android 16 adds a compatibility mode, allowing some apps built for 4K memory pages to run on a device configured for 16KB memory pages.

If Android detects that your app has 4KB aligned memory pages, it will automatically use compatibility mode and display a notification dialog to the user. Setting the android:pageSizeCompat property in the AndroidManifest.xml to enable the backwards compatibility mode will prevent the display of the dialog when your app launches. For best performance, reliability, and stability, your app should still be 16KB aligned. Read our recent blog post about updating your apps to support 16KB memory pages for more details.

Measurement system customization

Users can now customize their measurement system in regional preferences within Settings. The user preference is included as part of the locale code, so you can register a BroadcastReceiver on ACTION_LOCALE_CHANGED to handle locale configuration changes when regional preferences change.

Using formatters can help match the local experience. For example, "0.5 in" in English (United States), is "12,7 mm" for a user who has set their phone to English (Denmark) or who uses their phone in English (United States) with the metric system as the measurement system preference.

To find these settings in Android 16 Beta 2, open the Settings app and navigate to System > Languages & region.

Content handling for live wallpapers

In Android 16, the live wallpaper framework is gaining a new content API to address the challenges of dynamic, user-driven wallpapers. Currently, live wallpapers incorporating user-provided content require complex, service-specific implementations. Android 16 introduces WallpaperDescription and WallpaperInstance. WallpaperDescription allows you to identify distinct instances of a live wallpaper from the same service. For example, a wallpaper that has instances on both the home screen and on the lock screen may have unique content in both places. The wallpaper picker and WallpaperManager use this metadata to better present wallpapers to users, streamlining the process for you to create diverse and personalized live wallpaper experiences.

Headroom APIs in ADPF

The SystemHealthManager introduces the getCpuHeadroom and getGpuHeadroom APIs, designed to provide games and resource-intensive apps with estimates of available CPU and GPU resources. These methods offer a way for you to gauge how your app or game can best improve system health, particularly when used in conjunction with other Android Dynamic Performance Framework (ADPF) APIs that detect thermal throttling. By using CpuHeadroomParams and GpuHeadroomParams on supported devices, you will be able to customize the time window used to compute the headroom and select between average or minimum resource availability. This can help you reduce your CPU or GPU resource usage accordingly, leading to better user experiences and improved battery life.

Key sharing API

Android 16 adds APIs that support sharing access to Android Keystore keys with other apps. The new KeyStoreManager class supports granting and revoking access to keys by app uid, and includes an API for apps to access shared keys.

Standardized picture and audio quality framework for TVs

The new MediaQuality package in Android 16 exposes a set of standardized APIs for access to audio and picture profiles and hardware-related settings. This allows streaming apps to query profiles and apply them to media dynamically:

• Movies mastered with a wider dynamic range require greater color accuracy to see subtle details in shadows and adjust to ambient light, so a profile that prefers color accuracy over brightness may be appropriate.
• Live sporting events are often mastered with a narrow dynamic range, but are often watched in daylight, so a profile that gives preference to brightness over color accuracy can give better results.
• Fully interactive content wants minimal processing to reduce latency, and wants higher frame rates, which is why many TV's ship with a game profile.

The API allows apps to switch between profiles and users to enjoy the benefits of tuning supported TVs to best suit their content.

Accessibility

Android 16 adds additional APIs to enhance UI semantics that help improve consistency for users that rely on accessibility services, such as TalkBack.

Duration added to TtsSpan

Android 16 extends TtsSpan with a TYPE_DURATION, consisting of ARG_HOURS, ARG_MINUTES, and ARG_SECONDS. This allows you to directly annotate time duration, ensuring accurate and consistent text-to-speech output with services like TalkBack.

Support elements with multiple labels

Android currently allows UI elements to derive their accessibility label from another, and now offers the ability for multiple labels to be associated, a common scenario in web content. By introducing a list-based API within AccessibilityNodeInfo, Android can directly support these multi-label relationships. As part of this change, we've deprecated AccessibilityNodeInfo setLabeledBy and getLabeledBy in favor of addLabeledBy, removeLabeledBy, and getLabeledByList.

Improved support for expandable elements

Android 16 adds accessibility APIs that allow you to convey the expanded or collapsed state of interactive elements, such as menus and expandable lists. By setting the expanded state using setExpandedState and dispatching TYPE_WINDOW_CONTENT_CHANGED AccessibilityEvents with a CONTENT_CHANGE_TYPE_EXPANDED content change type, you can ensure that screen readers like TalkBack announce state changes, providing a more intuitive and inclusive user experience.

Indeterminate ProgressBars

Android 16 adds RANGE_TYPE_INDETERMINATE, giving a way for you to expose RangeInfo for both determinate and indeterminate ProgressBar widgets, allowing services like TalkBack to more consistently provide feedback for progress indicators.

Tri-state CheckBox

The new AccessibilityNodeInfo getChecked and setChecked(int) methods in Android 16 now support a "partially checked" state in addition to "checked" and "unchecked." This replaces the deprecated boolean isChecked and setChecked(boolean).

Two Android API releases in 2025

This preview is for the next major release of Android with a planned launch in Q2 of 2025 and we plan to have another release with new developer APIs in Q4. The Q2 major release will be the only release in 2025 to include behavior changes that could affect apps. The Q4 minor release will pick up feature updates, optimizations, and bug fixes; like our non-SDK quarterly releases, it will not include any intentional app-impacting behavior changes.

We'll continue to have quarterly Android releases. The Q1 and Q3 updates provide incremental updates to ensure continuous quality. We’re putting additional energy into working with our device partners to bring the Q2 release to as many devices as possible.

There’s no change to the target API level requirements and the associated dates for apps in Google Play; our plans are for one annual requirement each year, tied to the major API level.

How to get ready

In addition to performing compatibility testing on this next major release, make sure that you're compiling your apps against the new SDK, and use the compatibility framework to enable targetSdkVersion-gated behavior changes as they become available for early testing.

App compatibility

The Android 16 Preview program runs from November 2024 until the final public release in Q2 of 2025. At key development milestones, we'll deliver updates for your development and testing environments. Each update includes SDK tools, system images, emulators, API reference, and API diffs. We'll highlight critical APIs as they are ready to test in the preview program in blogs and on the Android 16 developer website.

We’re targeting March of 2025 for our Platform Stability milestone. At this milestone, we’ll deliver final SDK/NDK APIs and also final internal APIs and app-facing system behaviors. From that time you’ll have several months before the final release to complete your testing. Learn more by checking the release timeline details.

Get started with Android 16

You can enroll any supported Pixel device to get this and future Android 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. If you are currently on Android 16 Beta 1 or are already in the Android Beta program, you will be offered an over-the-air update to Beta 2.

We're looking for your feedback so please report issues and submit feature requests on the feedback page. The earlier we get your feedback, the more we can include in our work on the final release.

For the best development experience with Android 16, we recommend that you use the latest preview of Android Studio (Meerkat). Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:

• Compile against the new SDK, test in CI environments, and report any issues in our tracker on the feedback page.
• Test your current app for compatibility, learn whether your app is affected by changes in Android 16, and install your app onto a device or emulator running Android 16 and extensively test it.

We’ll update the beta system images and SDK regularly throughout the Android 16 release cycle. Once you’ve installed a beta build, you’ll automatically get future updates over-the-air for all later previews and Betas.

For complete information, visit the Android 16 developer site.