android 14

Google releases second Android 14 developer preview

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From Dave Burke, over on the Android Developers blog announcing the second Android 14 developer preview:

Today, we’re releasing the second Developer Preview of Android 14, building on the work of the first developer preview of Android 14 from last month with additional enhancements to privacy, security, performance, developer productivity, and user customization while continuing to refine the large-screen device experience on tablets, foldables, and more.

Android delivers enhancements and new features year-round, and your feedback on the Android 14 developer preview and Quarterly Platform Release (QPR) beta program plays a key role in helping Android continuously improve. The Android 14 developer site has lots more information about the preview, including downloads for Pixel 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 works for everyone.

The second developer preview of Android 14 brings a number of changes from the first preview, including a new permission dialog when an app tries to access a user’s photo library, improvements in the UI and API interface for the new credentials manager, optimisations to Android’s memory management system when an app is running in the background:

Several seconds after an app goes into the cached state, background work is disallowed outside of conventional Android app lifecycle APIs such as foreground services, JobScheduler, or WorkManager. Background work is disallowed an order of magnitude faster than on Android 13.

There are also a number of changes to the APIs the alternate app marketplaces can use, as well as new Android settings menus for regional settings.

As noted on Twitter, Google also released a swathe of library updates including Lifecycle 2.6.0, RecyclerView 1.3.0 and a number of release candidates for other libraries.

Google continues to target platform stability for June, and is likely to announce more consumer-oriented changes in Android in May at Google I/O. For now the beta program remains unavailable, so the only way to install Android 14 is to flash it onto selected devices. Google warns that this preview build is not ready for daily use yet.

First Android 14 developer preview released

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Google has today rolled out the first Android 14 developer preview, making it available for download immediately.

In a similar fashion to the path taken with Android 13, Android 14 will go through a series of developer previews before reaching beta in April, platform stability in early June and reaching production-ready status sometime in late July or early August.

While Google is no doubt keeping some features up its sleeve for Google I/O or announcement later this year, for developers there’s a number of important changes that you need to be aware of. They include:

  • Changes to the declaration of services, including limiting the types of services that can be permitted
  • Context-registered broadcasts have some minor changes when an app is cached
  • A new SCHEDULE_EXACT_ALARM permission for setting exact alarms
  • Requirement to declare if receivers are exported or unexported
  • Changes for apps using dynamic code loading
  • Apps with a targetSdkVersion lower than 23 can no longer be installed to protect against malware
  • Credential manager and passkeys support
  • OpenJDK 17 support

In addition, users will be able to increase their font size up to 200%. Currently Pixel devices allow customers to enlarge their fonts by 130% – so developers will want to test to ensure screens are still functional at the larger font size.

“Android 14 continues our work to improve your productivity as developers, along with enhancements to performance, privacy, security, and user customization,” Dave Burke, VP of Engineering wrote. “This preview is just the beginning, and we’ll have lots more to share as we move through the release cycle.”

The Android 14 SDK can now be installed in preview builds of Android Studio Giraffe. You can also flash Pixel devices with Android 14, but keep in mind you may need to use developer support images to downgrade.