IT House February 11 news, Google today released the first Android 13 developer preview. Every day, Google says, billions of people around the world pull out their Android devices to help them get their jobs done. Android is great for every single one of them, in part by working with our developer community to share feedback to help us make Android stronger.
Today, we're going to share with you the next version of Android, android 13 developer preview 1. In Android 13, we'll continue with some important topics: privacy and security, and developer productivity. We'll also build on some of the newer updates in Android 12L to help you take advantage of the more than 250 million Android big-screen devices currently running.
Here are the highlights of android 13 developer preview
With privacy and security at its core
People want an operating system and applications that can be trusted to handle their most personal and sensitive information. Privacy is at the heart of Android product principles, and Android 13 focuses on building a responsible, high-quality platform for everyone by providing a more secure environment on devices and more control for users. In today's release, we're introducing a photo picker that allows users to securely share photos and videos with the app, as well as a new Wi-Fi permission to further reduce the app's need for location permissions. We recommend trying out new APIs and testing the impact these changes might have on your application.
Photo Pickers and APIs - To help protect users' photo and video privacy, Android 13 adds a system photo picker – a standard, optimized way for users to securely share photos locally and in the cloud. Android's long-standing document picker allows users to share any type of specific file with one app that doesn't need to get permission to view all the media files on the device. Photo Picker expands this capability with a dedicated photo and video selection experience. Applications can use photo picker's API to access shared photos and videos without gaining permission to view all media files on the device. We plan to bring the photo picker experience to more Android users through the Google Play System Update as part of the MediaProvider module update for devices running Android 11 and above (except Go devices).
Nearby device permissions for Wi-Fi - Android 13 introduces NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES runtime permissions (part of the NEARBY_DEVICES permission group) for applications that manage devices connected to nearby access points over Wi-Fi. Applications that call many commonly used Wi-Fi APIs will require new permissions and enable applications to discover and connect to nearby devices over Wi-Fi without requiring location permissions. Previously, location licensing requirements were a challenge for apps that needed to connect to nearby Wi-Fi devices but didn't actually need the device's location. Apps targeting Android 13 will now be able to request NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES permissions with the "neverForLocation" flag flag, which should help promote privacy-friendly app design while reducing disputes among developers.
Developer productivity and tools
Android 13 also brings new features and tools to developer productivity. Helping you create beautiful apps that run on billions of devices is one of our core tasks. Whether it's in Android 13 or through our modern Android development tools like your favorite Kotlin language or Jetpack's opinionated APIs. By helping you work more efficiently, our goal is to reduce your development costs so you can focus on continuing to build amazing experiences. Here are some of the new things in today's release.
Quick Settings Placement API - Quick Settings in the notification bar is a convenient way for users to change settings or take quick actions without leaving the app. For apps that provide custom tiles, we'll make it easier for users to discover and add your tiles to Quick Settings. With a new tile placement API, your application can now prompt users to add custom tiles directly to the active Quick Settings tile set. A new system dialog lets users add tiles in one step without having to leave your application instead of going to Quick Settings to add tiles.
Theme App Icons — In Android 13, we extended Material You Live Colors to all app icons outside of Google Apps, letting users choose icons that inherit their wallpaper and other theme preferences. All your application needs to provide is a monochrome application icon (for example, your notifications are drawable) and adjustments to the adaptive icon XML. We encourage all developers to provide compatible icons to help provide a consistent experience for users who opt in. The theme app icon was originally supported on Pixel devices, and we're working with device manufacturer partners to bring it to more devices.
Language preference for each application — Some applications let the user choose a language that is different from the system language to meet the needs of multilingual users. Such an application can now call a new platform API to set or get the user's preferred language, help reduce template code, and improve compatibility when setting the application's runtime language. For broader compatibility, we'll be adding a similar API to the upcoming Jetpack library.
Faster hyphens — Hyphens make wrapped text easier to read and help make your UI more adaptable. In Android 13, we've optimized the performance of hyphens by 200%, so you can now enable it in your TextViews with little impact on rendering performance. To enable faster hyphenation, use the new fullFast or normalFast frequency in setHyphenationFrequency ().
Programmable Shaders —Android 13 adds support for programmable RuntimeShader objects whose behavior is defined using the Android Graphics Shading Language (AGSL). AGSL shares most of its syntax with GLSL, but works in the Android rendering engine to customize painting within the Android canvas and filter view content. Android internally uses these shaders for ripple effects, blur, and stretch overwinding, and Android 13 enables you to create similar advanced effects for your application.
OpenJDK 11 Update — In Android 13, we've started refreshing the Android core libraries to align with the OpenJDK 11 LTS release, as well as library updates and Java 11 programming language support for application and platform developers. We also plan to bring these core library changes to more devices through Google Play System Updates as part of the ART module update for devices running Android 12 and above.
Application compatibility
As each platform is released, we prioritize application compatibility when launching new platform versions, working to make updates faster and smoother. At Android 13, we've opted in for most application-oriented changes to give you more time, and we've updated our tools and processes to help you get ready faster.
More Android updates through Google Play — In Android 13, we continue to expand our investment in Project Mainline to make the app more consistent and secure across devices and to provide users with new features and functionality. We can now push new features such as photo pickers and OpenJDK 11 directly to users of older versions of Android with updates to existing modules. We've also added new modules, such as Bluetooth and Ultra-Broadband, to further expand the range of core features that Android can update.
Optimized for tablets, foldable devices, and Chromebooks – As large-screen devices like tablets, folding screens, and Chromebooks evolve, it's time to get your apps ready for those devices and design fully adaptive apps that fit any screen. You can get started with our optimization guidance for tablets and learn how to build for big screens and develop for foldable devices.
Easier to test and debug changes— To make it easier for you to test for choice changes that might affect your application, we're making many changes switchable again this year. With toggle switches, you can force these changes to be enabled or disabled individually from Developer Options or adb.
Platform Stability Milestones – As with last year, we let you know our platform stability milestones in advance so you have more time to plan your app compatibility efforts. At this milestone, we will deliver not only the final SDK/NDK API, but also the final internal API and application-oriented system behavior. This year, we expect to reach the platform's stable version in June 2022, and from then on, you'll have a few weeks to do the final testing before the official release.
▲ Timeline includes: February and March developer previews. The final beta release in April. The final platform stability release in June.
Get started with Android 13
The Developer Preview has everything you need to try out Android 13 features, test your app, and give us feedback. For testing your app on tablets and folding devices, the easiest way to do this is to use the Android emulator in a tablet or foldable device configuration. For phones, you can start using your device today by flashing system mirroring to Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6, Pixel 5a 5G, Pixel 5, Pixel 4a (5G), Pixel 4a, Pixel 4 XL, or Pixel 4 devices. If you don't have a Pixel device, you can use 64-bit system mirroring on Android Studio's Android emulator. For more extensive testing, GSI images can also be used.
Once you're set up, here are some things you should do.
Try out new features and APIs — Your feedback is critical in the early stages of developer previews. Report a problem in our tracker or give direct feedback on selected features on the Feedback and Requests page through surveys.
Test the compatibility of your current app — See if your app is affected by the default behavior changes in Android 13. Just install your currently published app on a device or emulator running Android 13 and test it.
Test your app for opt-in changes—Android 13 has opt-in behavior changes that will only be affected if your app is targeting a new platform. It is extremely important to understand and evaluate these changes as early as possible. For ease of testing, you can toggle these varying switches individually.
Throughout the Android 13 release cycle, we regularly update preview system images and SDKs. This initial preview is intended for developers only and is not intended for everyday or consumer use, so we are only available through manual downloads. Once you manually install a preview, you will automatically get over-the-air updates for all post-preview and beta versions.
Google said that with the release of our beta version, we will also invite consumers to try the Android 13 system, at which time we will open up registration for the Android Beta program. At this time, please note that Android Beta is not yet available for Android 13.
For full information, visit the Android 13 developer website.