Android 14 Beta available for testing
Android 14 Beta available for testing
Android 14 Beta available for testing
Recently, Google released the first beta version of Android 14 (Android 14 Beta 1), which focuses on core features such as privacy, security, performance, developer productivity, and user customization, while continuing to improve the performance of tablets, foldable devices, etc. Big screen device experience.
Smarter system UI
In the Android operating system, functionality is delivered by two separate but equally important packages: the framework, which provides services, and the system UI, which lets users control those services.
Each Android version will bring new improvements to the system user interface, the following are some of the improvements you may notice in Beta1.
New back arrow
Gesture Navigation has a more prominent back arrow when you’re interacting with apps to help improve the comprehension and usefulness of the back gesture. The back arrow also matches the user’s wallpaper or device theme.
System Share Menu
In Android 14, apps can now add custom actions to the system share table they call and use ChooserAction.Builder to create custom ChooserActions.
Additionally, the system now ranks direct sharing targets based on how often a user uses an app.
More graphics features
Paths are now queryable and interpolable
Android’s Path API is a powerful and flexible mechanism for creating and rendering vector graphics.
Starting with Android 14, you can query a path to find out what’s in it. Updates to the API include the ability to interpolate between paths with exact structural matches, enable warping effects, and the Android X library is backwards compatible up to API 21.
Customization
Language preference per app
Android 14 enhances per-app language preferences, allowing dynamic customization of the set of languages displayed in each app’s language list in Android Settings, and giving IMEs a way to know the current app’s UI language.
Starting with Android Studio Giraffe Canary 7 and AGP 8.1.0-alpha07, you can configure your app to automatically support per-app language preferences. Based on your project resources, the Android Gradle plugin generates a LocaleConfig file and adds a reference to it in the generated manifest file, so you no longer need to manually create or update this file when your language support changes.
Privacy
Accessibility Services
Android 14 introduces the accessibilityDataSensitive attribute, which allows apps to limit the visibility of specified views to accessibility services that claim to help users with disabilities. Play Protect ensures that apps downloaded from the Play Store are true to these claims. TalkBack and other services that claim to help users with disabilities will not be affected by this attribute.
Applications may consider using accessibilityDataSensitive to:
- Protect user data (such as personal data or clear text passwords)
- Prevents critical actions from being inadvertently performed (such as transferring money or checking out in a shopping app)
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The release of Android 14 Beta 1 also means that Android 14 is now out of the developer preview stage, and ordinary users who want to try it out can also install this version on compatible devices (supporting Pixel 4a 5G and newer Pixel devices). According to Google’s development plan, Android 14 will have a total of 4 beta versions, and will reach the platform stable stage in June this year.
More details can be found at: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2023/04/android-14-beta-1.html
