We’re excited to announce that Material You, specifically dynamic color, will soon be available on more Android 12 phones globally, including devices by Samsung, OnePlus, Oppo, Vivo, realme, Xiaomi, Tecno, and more!
With the release of Android 12 and the introduction of Material You, we made the Android experience more fluid and personal than ever for our users. The gorgeous new design brought to life experiences such as a more dynamic touch ripple, a silky-smooth scroll, and a spacious layout. But the star of the show was, and continues to be, dynamic color – pick your favorite wallpaper and the entire phone experience transforms to better express you, from your home screen to some of your favorite apps.
With Material You, personalization is now a defining trait of Android that our ecosystem will continue building on for years to come. We want to make sure that you, our developers, have the confidence to join us on the journey and bring a more personal look and feel to users through your apps.
A Gmail rainbow with different wallpaper-based themes, shown on some of the Android device experiences that will support Material You
As more Android 12 devices land in the next couple months, our OEM partners are working with us to ensure that key design APIs, especially around dynamic color, work consistently across the Android ecosystem so developers can have peace of mind and users can benefit from a cohesive experience.
To better help you understand how to implement dynamic color and fit it into your overall brand story, the Material team has published the comprehensive Customizing Material article with codelabs and guides to get started with Views or Jetpack Compose. Watch for ongoing updates to Material Theme Builder and Material Color Utilities in the coming months to provide you with the tools you need for design and implementation.
Visualize dynamic color in your app with the Material Theme Builder
Google apps (Gmail, Photos, Chrome, and many more) have used the very same tools and guidance to bring the color story to life on their branded experiences, and we’re excited for you to hop on board as well. As you learn more about how color can harmonize with user choice and work with dynamic color in your app, we’d love to get your feedback via the Material Android issue tracker. Happy coloring!
Today we’re pushing the source to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and officially releasing the latest version of Android. Keep an eye out for Android 12 coming to a device near you starting with Pixel in the next few weeks and Samsung Galaxy, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Tecno, Vivo, and Xiaomi devices later this year.
As always, thank you for your feedback during Android 12 Beta! More than 225,000 of you tested our early releases on Pixel and devices from our partners, and you sent us nearly 50,000 issue reports to help improve the quality of the release. We also appreciate the many articles, discussions, surveys, and in-person meetings where you voiced your thoughts, as well as the work you’ve done to make your apps compatible in time for today’s release. Your support and contributions are what make Android such a great platform for everyone.
We’ll also be talking about Android 12 in more detail at this year’s Android Dev Summit, coming up on October 27-28. We’ve just released more information on the event, including a snapshot of the technical Android sessions; read on for more details later in the post.
What’s in Android 12 for developers?
Here’s a look at some of what’s new in Android 12 for developers. Make sure to check out the Android 12 developer site for details on all of the new features.
A new UI for Android
Material You - Android 12 introduces a new design language called Material You, helping you to build more personalized, beautiful apps. To bring all of the latest Material Design 3 updates into your apps, try an alpha version of Material Design Components and watch for support for Jetpack Compose coming soon.
Redesigned widgets - We refreshed app widgets to make them more useful, beautiful, and discoverable. Try them with new interactive controls, responsive layouts for any device, and dynamic colors to create a personalized but consistent look. More here.
Notification UI updates - We also refreshed notification designs to make them more modern and useful. Android 12 also decorates custom notifications with standard affordances to make them consistent with all other notifications. More here.
Stretch overscroll - To make scrolling your app’s content more smooth, Android 12 adds a new “stretch” overscroll effect to all scrolling containers. It’s a natural scroll-stop indicator that’s common across the system and apps. More here.
App launch splash screens - Android 12 also introduces splash screens for all apps. Apps can customize the splash screen in a number of ways to meet their unique branding needs. More here.
Performance
Faster, more efficient system performance - We reduced the CPU time used by core system services by 22% and the use of big cores by 15%. We’ve also improved app startup times and optimized I/O for faster app loading, and for database queries we’ve improved CursorWindow by as much as 49x for large windows.
Optimized foreground services - To provide a better experience for users, Android 12 prevents apps from starting foreground services while in the background. Apps can use a new expedited job in JobScheduler instead. More here.
More responsive notifications - Android 12’s restriction on notification trampolines helps reduce latency for apps started from a notification. For example, the Google Photos app now launches 34% faster after moving away from notification trampolines. More here.
Performance class - Performance Class is a set of device capabilities that together support demanding use-cases and higher quality content on Android 12 devices. Apps can check for a device’s performance class at runtime and take full advantage of the device’s performance. More here.
Faster machine learning - Android 12 helps you make the most of ML accelerators and always get the best possible performance through the Neural Networks API. ML accelerator drivers are also now updatable outside of platform releases, through Google Play services, so you can take advantage of the latest drivers on any compatible device.
Privacy
Privacy Dashboard - A new dashboard in Settings gives users better visibility over when your app accesses microphone, camera, and location data. More here.
Approximate location - Users have even more control over their location data, and they can grant your app access to approximate location even if it requests precise location. More here.
Microphone and camera indicators - Indicators in the status bar let users know when your app is using the device camera or microphone. More here.
Microphone and camera toggles - On supported devices, new toggles in Quick Settings make it easy for users to instantly disable app access to the microphone and camera. More here.
Nearby device permissions - Your app can use new permissions to scan for and pair with nearby devices without needing location permission. More here.
Better user experience tools
Rich content insertion - A new unified API lets you receive rich content in your UI from any source: clipboard, keyboard, or drag-and-drop. For back-compatibility, we’ve added the unified API to AndroidX. More here.
Support for rounded screen corners - Many modern devices use screens with rounded corners. To deliver a great UX on these devices, you can use new APIs to query for corner details and then manage your UI elements as needed. More here.
AVIF image support - Android 12 adds platform support for AV1 Image File Format (AVIF). AVIF takes advantage of the intra-frame encoded content from video compression to dramatically improve image quality for the same file size when compared to older image formats, such as JPEG.
Compatible media transcoding - For video, HEVC format offers significant improvements in quality and compression and we recommend that all apps support it. For apps that can’t, the compatible media transcoding feature lets your app request files in AVC and have the system handle the transcoding. More here.
Easier blurs, color filters and other effects - new APIs make it easier to apply common graphics effects to your Views and rendering hierarchies. You can use RenderEffect to apply blurs, color filters, and more to RenderNodes or Views. You can also create a frosted glass effect for your window background using a new Window.setBackgroundBlurRadius() API, or use blurBehindRadius to blur all of the content behind a window.
Enhanced haptic experiences - Android 12 expands the tools you can use to create informative haptic feedback for UI events, immersive and delightful effects for gaming, and attentional haptics for productivity. More here.
New camera effects and sensor capabilities - New vendor extensions let your apps take advantage of the custom camera effects built by device manufacturers—bokeh, HDR, night mode, and others. You can also use new APIs to take full advantage of ultra high-resolution camera sensors that use Quad / Nona Bayer patterns. More here.
Better debugging for native crashes - Android 12 gives you more actionable diagnostic information to make debugging NDK-related crashes easier. Apps can now access detailed crash dump files called tombstones through the App Exit Reasons API.
Android 12 for Games - With Game Mode APIs, you can react to the players' performance profile selection for your game - like better battery life for a long commute, or performance mode to get peak frame rates. Play as you download will allow game assets to be fetched in the background during install, getting your players into gameplay faster.
Get your apps ready for Android 12
Now with today’s public release of Android 12, we’re asking all Android developers to finish your compatibility testing and publish your updates as soon as possible, to give your users a smooth transition to Android 12.
To test your app for compatibility, just install it on a device running Android 12 and work through the app flows looking for any functional or UI issues. Review the Android 12 behavior changes for all apps to focus on areas where your app could be affected. Here are some of the top changes to test:
Privacy dashboard — Use this new dashboard in Settings to check your app’s accesses to microphone, location, and other sensitive data, and consider providing details to users on the reasons. More here.
Microphone & camera indicators — Android 12 shows an indicator in the status bar when an app is using the camera or microphone. Make sure this doesn’t affect your app’s UI. More here.
Microphone & camera toggles — Try using the new toggles in Quick Settings to disable microphone and camera access for apps and ensure that your app handles the change properly. More here.
Clipboard read notification — Watch for toast notifications when your app reads data from the clipboard unexpectedly. Remove unintended accesses. More here.
Stretch overscroll — Try your scrolling content with the new “stretch” overscroll effect and ensure that it displays as expected. More here.
App splash screens — Launch your app from various flows to test the new splash screen animation. If necessary, you can customize it. More here.
Keygen changes — Several deprecated BouncyCastle cryptographic algorithms are removed in favor of Conscrypt versions. If your app uses a 512-bit key with AES, you’ll need to use one of the standard sizes supported by Conscrypt. More here.
Remember to test the libraries and SDKs in your app for compatibility. If you find any SDK issues, try updating to the latest version of the SDK or reaching out to the developer for help.
Tune in to Android Dev Summit to learn about Android 12 and more!
The #AndroidDevSummit is back! Join us October 27-28 to hear about the latest updates in Android development, including Android 12. This year’s theme is excellent apps, across devices; tune in later this month to learn more about the development tools, APIs and technology to help you be more productive and create better apps that run across billions of devices, including tablets, foldables, wearables, and more.
We’ve just released more information on the event, including a snapshot of the 30+ technical Android sessions; you can take a look at some of those sessions here, and start planning which talks you want to check out. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be asking you to share your top #AskAndroid questions, to be answered live by the team during the event.
The show kicks off at 10 AM PT on October 27 with The Android Show, a 50-minute technical keynote where you’ll hear all the latest news and updates for Android developers. You can learn more and sign up for updates here.
We’re just a few weeks away from the official release of Android 12! As we put the finishing touches on the new version of Android, today we’re bringing you a final Beta update to help you with testing and development. For developers, now is the time to make sure your apps are ready!
You can get Beta 5 today on your Pixel device, including on the Pixel 5a with 5G, by enrolling here for over-the-air updates. If you’re already enrolled, you’ll automatically get the update. You can also try Android 12 Beta 5 on select devices from several of our partners like Sharp. Visit the Android 12 developer site for details.
Watch for more information on the official Android 12 release coming soon!
What’s in Beta 5?
Today’s update includes a release candidate build of Android 12 for Pixel and other devices and the Android Emulator. We reached Platform Stability at Beta 4, so all app-facing surfaces are final, including SDK and NDK APIs, app-facing system behaviors, and restrictions on non-SDK interfaces. With these and the latest fixes and optimizations, Beta 5 gives you everything you need to complete your testing.
Get your apps ready!
With the official Android 12 release coming next, we’re asking all app and game developers to complete your final compatibility testing and publish your compatibility updates ahead of the final release. For SDK, library, tools, and game engine developers, it’s important to release your compatible updates as soon as possible -- your downstream app and game developers may be blocked until they receive your updates.
To test your app for compatibility, just install it on a device running Android 12 Beta 5 and work through the app flows looking for any functional or UI issues. Review the Android 12 behavior changes for all apps to focus on areas where your app could be affected. Here are some of the top changes to test:
Privacy dashboard — A new dashboard in Settings lets users see which apps are accessing which type of data and when. Users can adjust permissions if needed, and they can request details from your app on the reason for access. More here.
Microphone & camera indicators — Android 12 shows an indicator in the status bar when an app is using the camera or microphone. More here.
Microphone & camera toggles — New toggles in Quick Settings let users instantly disable microphone and camera access for all apps. More here.
Clipboard read notification — A toast alerts users when an app reads data from the clipboard unexpectedly. More here.
Stretch overscroll — A new “stretch” overscroll effect replaces the previous “glow” overscroll effect systemwide. More here.
App splash screens — Android 12 launches apps with a new splash screen animation. More here.
Keygen changes — Several deprecated BouncyCastle cryptographic algorithms are removed in favor of Conscrypt versions. If your app uses a 512-bit key with AES, you’ll need to use one of the standard sizes supported by Conscrypt.More here.
Remember to test the libraries and SDKs in your app for compatibility. If you find any SDK issues, try updating to the latest version of the SDK or reaching out to the developer for help.
Android 12 has a ton of new features to help you build great experiences for users. Check out our Android 12 Beta 2 post for a recap and links to Android 12 talks at Google I/O. For complete details on all of the new features and APIs, visit the Android 12 developer site.
Also make sure to try Android Studio Arctic Fox with your Android 12 development and testing. We’ve added lint checks to help you catch where your code might be affected by Android 12 changes, such as for custom declarations of splash screens, coarse location permission for fine location usage, media formats, and high sensor sampling rate permission. You can give these a try by downloading and configuring the latest version of Android Studio.
You can also get Beta 5 on devices from several of our partners like Sharp. For even broader testing, you can try Beta 5 on Android GSI images, and if you don’t have a device, you can test on the Android Emulator. This update is also available for Android TV, so you can check out the latest TV features and test your apps on the all-new Google TV experience.
A huge thank you to our developer community for helping shape the Android 12 release! You’ve given us thousands of bug reports and shared insights that have helped us adjust APIs, improve features, fix significant bugs, and in general make the platform better for users and developers.
We’re looking forward to seeing your apps on Android 12!
Today we’re bringing you the fourth Beta of Android 12, and moving into the final phase of the release. We’ve built Android 12 with a new UI that adapts to you, performance improvements, privacy and security enhancements, and more. We’re now shifting our focus to polish, performance, and stability. Thanks for all the feedback you’ve shared to help us refine the release and get us to this point.
For developers, Beta 4 takes us to Platform Stability, which means that Android 12’s APIs and all app-facing behaviors are finalized. For apps, the focus is now on compatibility and quality. It’s time to start preparing your compatible app updates in time for the official release later in the year.
You can try Beta 4 today on your Pixel device by enrolling here for over-the-air updates, and if you previously enrolled, you’ll automatically get today’s update. You can also get Android 12 Beta 4 on select devices from several of our partners like ASUS, Oneplus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, and ZTE - learn more at android.com/beta. Visit the Android 12 developer site for details on how to get started.
Platform Stability
Android 12 Beta 4 has reached Platform Stability, a milestone that means all app-facing surfaces and behaviors are now final in Android 12. This includes not only the official SDK and NDK APIs, but also final app-facing system behaviors and restrictions on non-SDK interfaces that may affect apps. So from Beta 4, you can confidently release your compatibility updates knowing that the platform won’t change. More on the timeline is here.
We’re asking all app and game developers to start your final compatibility testing now and prepare to publish your compatibility updates as soon as possible ahead of the final release.
For all SDK, library, tools, and game engine developers, it’s even more important to start testing now and release your compatible updates as soon as possible -- your downstream app and game developers may be blocked until they receive your updates. When you’ve released a compatible update, be vocal and let developers know!
App compatibility
For Android, App compatibility means that your app runs as intended on a new version of the platform. You can check your app’s compatibility just by installing the production version of your app on a device or emulator and testing it - if the app looks good and runs properly, then you’re done, it’s compatible!
Testing your app for compatibility is important because with each release, we make integral changes to the platform that improve privacy and security and the overall user experience across the OS. These can affect your apps, so you should take a look at the behavior changes and test against them, then publish a compatible update to your users. It’s a basic but critical level of quality that ensures users have a good app experience.
As people update their devices to Android 12, they want to explore the latest version of Android, and experience it with their favorite apps. If those apps don’t work properly, it’s a major issue, ultimately resulting in uninstalls.
So while there are a ton of new APIs and capabilities to explore, start by testing your current app and releasing a compatible update first.
Get your apps ready
To test your app for compatibility with Android 12, just install your production app from Google Play or other source onto a device running Android 12 Beta 4. Work through all of the app’s flows and watch for functional or UI issues. Review the Android 12 behavior changes for all apps to focus your testing. Here are some changes to watch for:
Privacy dashboard - A new dashboard in Settings lets users see which apps are accessing which type of data and when. Users can adjust permissions if needed, and they can request details from your app on the reason for access. More here.
Microphone & camera indicators - Android 12 shows an indicator in the status bar when an app is using the camera or microphone. More here.
Microphone & camera toggles - New toggles in Quick Settings let users instantly disable microphone and camera access for all apps. More here.
Clipboard read notification - A toast alerts users when an app reads data from the clipboard unexpectedly. More here.
Stretch overscroll - A new “stretch” overscroll effect replaces the previous “glow” overscroll effect systemwide. More here.
App splash screens - Android 12 launches apps with a new splash screen animation. More here.
Keygen changes - Several deprecated BouncyCastle cryptographic algorithms are removed in favor of Conscrypt versions. If your app uses a 512-bit key with AES, you’ll need to use one of the standard sizes supported by Conscrypt. More here.
Remember to test the libraries and SDKs in your app for compatibility. If you find any SDK issues, try updating to the latest version of the SDK or reaching out to the developer for help.
Foreground service launch restriction - Apps can no longer launch foreground services from the background. For high-priority background tasks, use expedited jobs in WorkManager instead. More here.
Approximate location - When apps request permission for precise location, users can now choose to grant either precise or approximate location. More here.
New permission for exact alarms - Apps that want to use exact alarms must request a new normal permission, SCHEDULE_EXACT_ALARM. More here.
Modern SameSite cookie behaviors in WebView - If your app uses WebView, test your app with the new SameSite cookie behaviors. More here.
Safer exporting of components - your app must explicitly specify an android:exported attribute for any app components that use intent filters. More here.
Custom notifications - The system applies a standard notification template to fully custom notifications, with affordances for app name, app icon, and expand/collapse data. More here.
Notification trampolines restriction - Notifications can no longer launch your app using a “trampoline” - an intermediary broadcast receiver or service that starts the target Activity. More here.
During testing, also watch for uses of restricted non-SDK interfaces in your app and move those to public SDK equivalents instead. You can read about the restricted APIs here.
You can also get Android 12 Beta 4 on devices from some of our partners like ASUS, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, and ZTE. Visit android.com/beta to see the full list of partners participating in Android 12 Beta. For even broader testing, you can try Android 12 Beta 4 on Android GSI images, and if you don’t have a device, you can test on the Android Emulator.
Beta 4 is also available for Android TV, so you can check out the latest TV features and test your apps on the all-new Google TV experience. Try it out with the ADT-3 developer kit. More here.
Watch for one more Beta coming in the weeks ahead as a release candidate for your final testing.
Each month we’re bringing Android 12 closer to its final form, with innovative features, a new UI that adapts to you, performance improvements, privacy enhancements, security benefits, and much more. Many of you are already developing and testing on Android 12 through our Beta program - thank you for all of the feedback you’ve shared so far!
There’s still a lot to do to land this release, though, and today we’re pushing out the third Beta of Android 12 for you to try. Along with updates like scrolling screenshots, privacy indicator APIs, and enhanced auto-rotate, Beta 3 also includes the final Android 12 APIs and the official SDK. WIth these, you can start testing and updating your app ahead of Platform Stability, coming up next at Beta 4. Now is the time to make sure your apps are ready!
You can get Beta 3 today on your Pixel device by enrolling here for over-the-air updates, and if you previously enrolled, you’ll automatically get today’s update. You can also get Android 12 Beta 3 on select devices from several of our device-maker partners like Sharp and TCL - learn more at android.com/beta. Visit the Android 12 developer site for details on how to get started.
What’s new in Beta 3?
Beta 3 includes a number of updates to improve functionality, user experience, and performance. Here are a few highlights.
Scrolling screenshots - To make it easier to capture and share scrolling content, we’re adding scrolling screenshots. Starting in Beta 3, when users capture a screenshot of content that’s scrollable, they’ll now see a “Capture more” button to extend the screenshot to the full content and they can then adjust the crop.
Capturing a scrolling screenshot in the Settings app
Scrolling screenshots work out-of-the-box for most apps -- if your app uses a standard View-based UI, no changes should be needed. For apps and UI toolkits that are not using View-based UI or that use highly customized UI, we’re introducing a new ScrollCapture API to support scrolling screenshots. With this API, the system notifies your app of scroll capture requests and provides a Surface for you to draw your UI into. We’re continuing to iterate on scrolling screenshots and in Beta 4 you’ll see improvements to the default support, such as for scrolling ListViews. We're also working to provide support for a wider variety of content (such as web content). Let us know what you think!
On-device search - With Beta 3 we’re highlighting platform support for AppSearch, a new high-performance on-device search engine. With AppSearch, apps can index structured data and search over it with built-in full-text search capabilities, and they can use native features like highly-efficient indexing and retrieval, multi-language support, and relevancy ranking.
AppSearch comes in two flavors: a local index for your app to use that’s backward-compatible through a new AppSearch Jetpack library, and a central index that’s maintained for the entire system in Android 12 (and later releases). When you participate in the central index, the system will be able to display your app’s data on System UI surfaces unless you choose to opt out. Additionally, you can securely share data with other apps, allowing them to search your app’s data as well as their own. More here.
Privacy indicator APIs in WindowInsets - In Beta 2 we added support for privacy indicators in the status bar that show when an app is using the device camera or microphone. Since the indicators can be displayed when an app is in immersive mode and could potentially cover controls or content, apps need to know where the indicators can be drawn and make any adjustments needed to prevent useful content from being covered. In Beta 3 we’ve added new privacy indicator APIs to WindowInsets that let you get the maximum bounds of the indicators and their relative placement on the screen, taking into account the current orientation and language settings. More here.
Camera and microphone toggles configurable for enterprises - In Beta 2 we also introduced new toggles that let users instantly turn off access to the device microphone and camera for all apps. We’ve now made these accessible to enterprise administrators who can set any restrictions needed on fully managed devices. More here.
New permission for CDM-paired apps starting foreground services - To better support companion apps carrying out core functionality while providing transparency to the system, apps paired with Companion Device Manager (CDM) can launch foreground services from the background by declaring a new normal permission. More here.
Better, faster auto-rotate - We’ve enhanced Android’s auto-rotate feature with face detection, using the front-facing camera to more accurately recognize when to rotate the screen. This is especially helpful for people who are using their devices while lying down on a couch or in bed, for example. For developers, this means that the auto-rotation behavior will provide a better user experience for users who have opted in through Settings. The enhanced auto-rotate feature lives within our recently announced Private Compute Core, so images are never stored or sent off the device. In Beta 3 this feature is available on Pixel 4 and later Pixel devices.
To make screen rotation as speedy as possible on all devices, we’ve also optimized the animation and redrawing and added an ML-driven gesture-detection algorithm. As a result, the latency for the base auto-rotate feature has been reduced by 25%, and the benefits of the face detection enhancement build on top of those improvements. Give the auto-rotate improvements a try and let us know what you think.
Android 12 for Games - With Game Mode APIs, you can react to the players' performance profile selection for your game - like better battery life for a long commute, or performance mode to get peak frame rates. These APIs will be tied to the upcoming game dashboard which provides an overlay experience with quick access to key utilities during gameplay. The game dashboard will be available on select devices later this year.
Play as you download on Android 12 with Touchgrind BMX
Meanwhile, play as you download will allow game assets to be fetched in the background during install, getting your players into gameplay faster.
Over the past several weeks we've been working to finalize the Android 12 APIs and today we're releasing them with Beta 3, along with the official API Level 31 SDK. We plan to reach full Platform Stability at Beta 4, when all app-facing system behaviors and non-SDK interface restrictions will also be final, in addition to the API surfaces.
If you’re compiling your app against the Android 12 APIs, we recommend using today’s release to update your environment and recompile your apps with the final SDK and latest tools.
App compatibility
With many early-adopter users and developers getting Android 12 Beta on Pixel and other devices, now is the time to make sure your apps are compatible and ready for them to use!
To test your app for compatibility with Beta 3, just install the published version from Google Play or other source onto a device or emulator running Android 12 Beta. Work through all of the app’s flows and watch for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing on areas where underlying changes may affect your app. There’s no need to change your app’s targetSdkVersion at this time, so once you’ve resolved any issues, we recommend publishing an update as soon as possible for your Android 12 Beta users.
As mentioned earlier, Android 12 will reach Platform Stability in the next release, Beta 4. With Platform Stability, all app-facing system behaviors, SDK/NDK APIs, and non-SDK restrictions will be finalized. At that time, you can begin your final compatibility testing and release a fully compatible version of your app, SDK, or library. More on the Android 12 timeline for developers is here.
You can also get Android 12 Beta 3 on devices from some of our top device-maker partners like Sharp and TCL. Visit android.com/beta to see the full list of partners participating in Android 12 Beta. For even broader testing, you can try Android 12 Beta on Android GSI images, and if you don’t have a device you can test on the Android Emulator.
Beta 3 is also available for Android TV, so you can check out the latest TV features and test your apps on the all-new Google TV experience. Try it out with the ADT-3 developer kit. More here.
