Android 14 Developer 2: Google starts rolling the update to eligible users
The Android 14 season is here and as usual, we will be bombarded with features from Google via several updates. The Android 14 Developer 2 is out with a lot of interesting features. Keys take a look.
Features of the Android 14 Developer 2
The Android 14 Developer 2 improves the Privacy and security section as “users can now grant your app access to only selected photos and videos”
- Allow access to all photos: the full library of all on-device photos & videos is available
- Select photos: only the user’s selection of photos & videos will be temporarily available via MediaStore
- Don’t allow access to all photos and videos is denied
This is what customers will see if an app does not support the Photo Picker, as Google recommends. Meanwhile, with Android 14 Developer 2, the Credential Manager is becoming a platform API. It supports username/password, federated sign-in (such as Google Sign-in), and passkeys. “It aims to make sign-in easier for users with APIs that retrieve and store credentials with user-configured credential providers.”
Safer Implicit intents: “For apps targeting Android 14, creating a mutable pending intent with an implicit intent will throw an exception, preventing them from being able to used to trigger unexpected code paths. Apps need to either make the pending intent immutable or make the intent explicit.”
Background activity launching: “To further reduce instances of unexpected interruptions, Android 14 gives foreground apps more control over the ability of apps they interact with to start activities. Specifically, apps targeting Android 14 need to grant privileges to start activities in the background when sending a PendingIntent or when binding a Service.”
There’s the Streamlining background work via Android 14 Developer 2 that “includes optimizations to Android’s memory management system to improve resource usage while applications are backgrounded.”
“Notifications will stay non-dismissible when the device is locked, and notification listeners will not be able to dismiss these notifications. Notifications that are important to device functionality, like system and device policy notifications, will remain fully non-dismissible.”
Under Improved App Store Experiences, there are new Packagelnstaller APIs that benefit the end user workflow:
- requestUserPreapproval(): allows the download of APKs to be deferred until after the installation has been approved
- setRequestUpdateOwnership(): allows an installer to indicate that it is responsible for future updates to an app it is installing
- setDontKillApp(): method that can seamlessly install optional features of an app through split APKs while the app is in use
- Install Constraints API: gives installers a way to ensure that app updates happen at an opportune moment, such as when an app is no longer in use.
Lastly(via the Android 14 Developer 2), personalization is improved as centralized “Regional preferences” in system Settings will let you personalize temperature units, the first day of the week, and even numbering systems. Apps will then be able to use that information.
The Android 14 Developer 2 system images alongside the March security patch(for developers) for Pixel 4a 5G, Pixel 5, Pixel 5a, Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6a, Pixel 7, and Pixel 7 Pro are available via the link at the end of the article. Meanwhile, Google left a message as regards the software beta.
“If you intend to move from the Android 13 QPR Beta program to the Android 14 Developer Preview program and don’t want to have to wipe your device, we recommend that you move to Developer Preview 2 now. Otherwise, you may run into periods where the Android 13 Beta will have a more recent build date which will prevent you from going directly to the Android 14 Developer Preview without doing a data wipe.”