The Android development team today announced the first beta for the upcoming Android 16, which is expected to be released in Q2 of 2025.
Currently, it’s expected that Android 16 will reach platform stability in March, at which point the Android team will deliver the final SDK and NDK APIs as well as final internal APIs and app-facing system behaviors.
“This build includes support for the future of app adaptivity, Live Updates, the Advanced Professional Video format, and more. 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,” Matthew McCullough, VP of Product Management for Android Developer at Google, wrote in a blog post.
To better support adaptive apps — apps that change layouts based on the size of the screen — the Android team has decided to begin phasing out the ability for apps to restrict screen orientation and resizability for large screens. For screens that are larger than 600dp wide, apps targeting API level 36 will have app windows that resize, and therefore, it is recommended developers check their apps to ensure the UI scales seamlessly.
The Android team is also introducing Live Updates, which are notifications that help “users monitor and quickly access important ongoing activities.” There is now a ProgressStyle notification template that can be used to build these types of notifications for rideshare, delivery, and navigation. Live Updates support custom icons for start, end, and current progress tracking, segments and points, user journey states, milestones, and more.
Camera and media updates in Android 16 include support for the Advanced Professional Video (APV) code and night mode scene detection to help apps decide when to switch to and from night mode in the camera.
This release will also include low-level support for rendering and measuring text vertically, which is useful for languages that use a vertical writing system, like Japanese.
And finally, this release includes new accessibility updates, including the ability to provide text about a ViewGroup without overriding information about its children, and the addition of setFieldRequired to AccessibilityNodeInfo, which enables apps to tell an accessibility service that input to a form field is required. “This is an important scenario for users filling out many types of forms, even things as simple as a required terms and conditions checkbox, helping users to consistently identify and quickly navigate between required fields,” McCullough wrote.
According to the Android development team, with this release, any supported Pixel device is able to get this update over-the-air. If a Pixel device isn’t available, developers can use the Android Emulator in Android Studio.
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