First public beta of Android 14 is out now

Google has launched the primary public beta of Android 14. In a weblog publish on Wednesday, the tech large introduced that the primary public beta is now obtainable to be downloaded by customers, so long as they’ve a appropriate telephone. The beta brings quite a few revamps, tweaks, enhancements to privateness and safety, and extra.

“Immediately we’re releasing the primary Beta of Android 14, constructing round our core themes of privateness, safety, efficiency, developer productiveness, and consumer customization whereas persevering with to enhance the large-screen system expertise on tablets, foldables, and extra. We’ve been making regular progress refining the options and stability of Android 14, and it’s time to open the expertise as much as each builders and early adopters,” Google mentioned within the weblog publish.

The record of appropriate gadgets goes again to the Pixel 4a 5G, based on the weblog publish. The gadgets are the Pixel 7 Professional, the Pixel 7, the Pixel 6A, the Pixel 6 Professional, the Pixel 6, the Pixel 5A, the Pixel 5, and the Pixel 4A 5G. Google remained mum on the assist for non-Google smartphones however knowledgeable that it’ll add extra gadgets to the record as they turned supported.

“We’ve been making regular progress refining the options and stability of Android 14, and it’s time to open the expertise as much as each builders and early adopters,” Dave Burke, Google’s VP of Engineering, wrote within the official weblog publish. Google additionally displayed its roadmap for the approaching months, whereby it revealed that the general public beta will proceed to be obtainable throughout April and Could. The corporate will launch a platform stability construct in June, whereas the ultimate secure rollout may begin round August or September. Nonetheless, it needs to be famous that a few of the new options which are in improvement won’t find yourself within the last model of Android 14.

The primary beta is extra secure than the primary Android 14 developer preview that dropped just a few months in the past and introduces a wiser system UI and a brand new “again arrow” function. The latter is aimed to supply a smoother navigation expertise whereas interacting with the app so as “to assist enhance again gesture understanding and usefulness. The again arrow additionally compliments the consumer’s wallpaper or system theme.”

Subsequent comes a superior system share sheet, whereby apps can add customized actions to the system share sheet they set off. Moreover, the system now makes use of extra app alerts to find out the rating of the direct share targets. The beta additionally brings higher graphics options, in addition to giving customers the flexibility to question paths to “discover out what’s within them.” The enhancement of per-app language preferences additionally permits dynamic customizations of the languages displayed within the Android settings per-app language record. Customers can, with Android 14, configure their apps to assist per-app language preferences robotically.

The brand new data-sensitive API for builders will now permit apps to restrict the visibility of specified views solely to accessibility providers to assist customers with disabilities.