Android 13’s first developer preview has simply been launched, and it presents a few attention-grabbing hints about Google’s focus for this 12 months’s massive cellular OS replace. The brand new options embrace upgraded theming choices and privateness options, new language controls, and, after all, loads of back-end updates. These early previews are meant for builders quite than finish customers, so it’s greatest to carry off on upgrading till the software program is in a extra completed state.
After Android 12’s heavy give attention to Materials You customizable themes, Android 13 is increasing the dynamic app icons to all apps quite than simply Google’s. The themed icons characteristic lets app icons tackle a coloration tint that compliments your wallpaper as long as app builders provide a suitable monochromatic app icon. The characteristic is coming first to Pixel units, however Google says it’s working with different producers to launch it extra extensively.
Permissions and safety are additionally being tweaked
There are additionally tweaks to how Android handles permissions and safety. A brand new picture picker will let customers share pictures and movies with a person app with out the app needing permission to see all of the pictures you will have in your machine. Google plans to finally convey this characteristic to all telephones working Android 11 and up.
In fact, there’s additionally so much happening below the hood with this new developer preview, with adjustments which are prone to be much less apparent in on a regular basis use. For instance, a brand new Wi-Fi permission will permit apps to find and hook up with Wi-Fi factors without having location permissions, and language preferences will now have the choice of being set on a per-app foundation (useful for multilingual customers). Google additionally says it’s persevering with to put money into its Mission Mainline initiative to ship extra updates by way of Google Play quite than on the OS stage.
Google says that it intends to launch Android 13’s developer previews over the course of February and March and transition to beta releases round April. It expects Android 13 to be steady by round June or July, forward of an official launch later within the 12 months. Hopefully, this 12 months’s replace goes extra easily than Android 12, which was plagued with stability points on many units.
