Android 13 Developer Preview: Everything you need to know

Android is the most important operating system all over the world. According to statistics over 2. 5 billion smartphones are available worldwide, and every year get a new upgrade with improvements over the previous version. Android 13 developer preview is bringing life, conveyance on a number of modifications that advantage developers and making improvements to privacy, Material You, language controls, and more.

As the title “Developer Preview” is implicit, these releases are considered for usage through developers only. It’s for looking for new features and ensuring that their apps work on updated devices as they’re believed to. There are going to be bugs, there are going to be other problems, and Google will be sent for feedback from developers over the approaching months. If you don’t mind running into problems, then, by all means, offer android 13 a try. However, if you depend on your device being always stable, then it might be worth waiting for the full Android 13 launch that’s expected to release in the latter half of the year.

When will Android 13 released?

For Android updates, Google sometimes reveals a “platform stability” milestone so that developers can know when Google intends on delivering the final SDK/NDK APIs, alongside the previous internal APIs and app-facing device behaviors. Google intends on reaching platform stability in June 2022, with various weeks at minimum planned before the official unleash. android 12 hit platform stability in August of 2021 and also the previous version was launched in Oct of that year. Google has launched more details about the release timeline that you simply just may look at.

Updated privacy controls in Android 13

Google is aware that users need an operating system that they might trust with their data. After all, smartphones have reached the point in which they may be correctly an extension of ourselves and our own lives in a lot of ways. We use them for storing important photos, having personal conversations with buddies and family, and sporting them with us day to day with the trust that microphones or cameras aren’t recording every interaction. android twelve did a lot for user privacy, and android 13 expands on that.

Android 13 Photo Picker API

Android’s document picker allows you to share documents with an individual app, while not having to provide the app permission to look at each file on your phone. Now, the first developer build of android 13 increased this capability to the photo picker. The new image picker API can offer you access to shared photos and movies without asking for permission to appear all of the media files on your device.

However, Google says that this option will not be restricted to android 13 devices alone. the company plans to roll out the new photo picker API to users running android 11 and more recently via Google Play system updates. All android devices are also ready to access it via the MediaProvider module update, aside from android Go devices.

Nearby Device Permission for Wi-Fi

Google is introducing nearby device permission for Wi-Fi that allows apps to find out nearby devices — like earbuds and IoT products — without having to invite for location permission. Google has already taken a step in the right direction with one-time location permission access in Android 11 (I use that function a lot), and that is an evolution of that feature.

Developer Tools in Android 13

Android wouldn’t be what it’s far without developers, and each platform update generally brings updates that make the lives of developers easier. Some updates actually create it more difficult, however, Google usually tries to streamline the mobile app development process of apps with every iteration.

Quick Settings Placement API

The new quick settings API will allow you to require action when an app needs to add a custom tile. A new system dialog will allow the user to add the custom tile in a single step, instead of navigating to quick Settings to do a similar. The new feature will create it easier for users to create changes to settings via the notification shade while not having to leave the app.

Theme App Icons

One of the notable features of the first Android 13 Developer Preview is support for Material You dynamic color theme across all icons, and it’ll not be limited to Google’s apps alone. Currently, android 12 phones with the dynamic theme have an odd mix of each, icons with and while not the theme, making it look unappealing. this can’t be a problem with the new android 13 Developer Preview. it will 1st be available for pixel devices and can roll out for other devices in the future.

Per-App Language Preferences

Some apps let users select a language that differs from the system language, to meet the requirements of multilingual users. Such apps will now call a new platform API to set or get the user’s preferred language, helping to reduce boilerplate code and improve compatibility once setting the app’s runtime language. For broader compatibility, we’ll be adding a similar API in an upcoming Jetpack library.

Faster Hyphenation

When the text reaches the tip of a line during a TextView, rather than exceed the margin and go off-screen, a line break will be inserted, and also the text can wrap around to the next line. Hyphens may be inserted at the tip of the line to create the text a lot of pleasure to read if a word is split, however, enabling hyphenation comes at a performance cost. Google found that when hyphenation is enabled, up to 70th of the CPU time spent on measuring text is on hyphenation. Thus, hyphenation was disabled by default in android 10.

However, android 13 significantly improves hyphenation performance by as much as 200th. this suggests that developers will change hyphenation in their TextViews with very little to no impact on rendering performance. to create use of the optimized hyphenation performance in android 13, developers will use the new fullFast or normalFast frequencies when calling TextView’s setHyphenationFrequency method.

Programmable Shaders

Android 13 adds support for programmable RuntimeShader objects, with behavior defined using the android Graphics Shading Language (AGSL). AGSL shares a lot of its syntax with GLSL but works within the android rendering engine to customize painting within Android’s canvas as well as filtering of view content.

OpenJDK 11 Support

Google has been recently experimenting with building android with Java 11 because of the default version and the company says that they plan to not only refresh android’s Core Libraries in android 13 but that these changes will be backported to Android 12 devices through an update to the ART module. this suggests that Android’s Core Libraries can align with the OpenJDK 11 LTS release, bringing each library updates and new programming language features for app and platform developers.

App Compatibility

With every platform release, we’re operating to create updates quicker and smoother by prioritizing app compatibility as we roll out new platform versions. In Android 13 we’ve created most app-facing changes opt-in to provide you more time, and we’ve updated our tools and processes to help you get ready sooner.

Optimizing for Tablets, Foldable, and Chromebooks

With all the momentum in large screen devices like tablets, foldable, and Chromebooks, now’s the time to get your apps ready for these devices and design totally adaptive apps that fit any screen. you’ll be able to get started using our guidance on optimizing for tablets, then learn how to create big screens and develop foldably.

Easier testing and debugging of changes

To make it easier for you to check the opt-in changes that may have an effect on your app, we’ll create many of them toggleable once more this year. With the toggles, you’ll force-enable or disable the changes one by one from Developer options or ADB.

Platform Stability Milestone

Like last year, we’re letting you recognize our Platform Stability milestone well in advance, to offer you longer to set up for app compatibility work. At this milestone, we’ll deliver not only final SDK/NDK APIs but also final internal APIs and app-facing system behaviors. This year we’re expecting to achieve Platform Stability in June 2022, and from that point, you’ll have several weeks before the official release to do your final testing.

How to get involved with the Developer Preview?

If you’re an android developer, you’ll need to get an early beginning on tooling your apps for the next release. To do that, you’ll head over to the setup instructions and flash a system image to one of the following devices:

· Pixel 6

· Pixel 5a 5G

· Pixel 5

· Pixel 4a (5G)

· Pixel 4a

· Pixel 4 XL

· Pixel 4

At NetDroidtech, we support android on a range of form factors, from handhelds to large screen devices like tablets and POS terminals. though the release of android 13 is many months away, we’ll be diligently watching new releases to examine what new options, behavior changes, and APIs that users, developers, and more importantly, enterprises, need to be aware of. because android could be a speedily evolving OS, it’s easy to fall behind the most recent developments. Let NetDroidtech manage the software that runs on your device fleet; we care about the nitty-gritty implementation details so you don’t need to.