Final Android 12 beta, more!
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This month we got another Android 12 beta ahead of the big release, news from the next Dev Summit, and some useful changes to the Google Play Console. It hasn’t been a big month for big news, but with Android 12’s official release only a few weeks (or less) away, this could just be the calm before the storm.
Android 12 Beta 5 update, official release to follow! – If September seemed a little slow, the next month is sure to be a lot bigger! Just a few weeks before the official release of Android 12, Google released another beta version. This version does not focus on exciting new features, but instead serves as a “release candidate” for the final build.
Android Dev Summit returns from October 27-28, 2021 – As the title of this post has probably already revealed, Google has now set a date for the next Dev Summit. This year the theme is “Excellent apps, across all devices”. In early Google posts, “excellence” of the app was defined as a consistent, effortless, and “seamless” user experience.
Improved user management of the Google Play Console: access requests, authorization groups and more – This is news for larger development teams: The Google Play Console now supports better tools for user and authorization management. Now teams can delegate more work without giving away the keys to their entire kingdom!
Make automatic permissions reset available for billions more devices – This relatively small change should be on the radar of developers, however. If your app is not used for a few months, the permissions will be reset. This change previously affected Android 11 users, but will now be rolled out on devices running Android 6.0 and higher. There are some exceptions and necessary code changes so it is worth reading the full post.
Wear OS Jetpack Libraries Now Stable – The first five Jetpack Wear OS libraries are now stable. These are: wear, wear-input, wear-ongoing, wear-phone interactions, and wear-remote interaction. These deal with UI elements, hardware buttons, notifications, phone compatibility and Android intents.
More Android Auto users with more extensive navigation, charging and parking apps – at the beginning of September, Google released a beta version of the Android for Cars App Library 1.1. This also completes the transition to Jetpack.
