Android 13 brings themed app icons, safety tweaks

Android 13, the most recent model of Google’s fashionable cellular OS, has arrived, with new options for builders comparable to themed app icons, per-app language preferences,  and higher textual content assist. The discharge additionally brings new privateness and safety capabilities.

Supply code for Android 13 was pushed to the Android Open Supply Undertaking on August 15.

Android 13 extends Materials You dynamic coloration to all app icons, giving customers the flexibility to choose into icons that inherit the tint of their wallpaper and different theme preferences. For apps to the assist this functionality, builders want to provide a monochromatic app icon and a tweak to the adaptive icon XML.

Additionally in Android 13, textual content and language enhancements have been made to allow a extra polished expertise, with options comparable to sooner hyphenation, improved line heights for non-latin scripts, and improved textual content wrapping for Japanese. New textual content conversion APIs pace up looking and autocompletion when utilizing phonetic lettering enter for languages comparable to Chinese language and Japanese.

Different new capabilities and enhancements in Android 13:

• Core libraries now align with the OpenJDK 11 LTS launch of Java.
• New APIs let an app inform the system the way it will deal with again gesture/button occasions upfront, a apply referred to as the “ahead-of-time” mannequin. The predictive again gesture will allow previews that permit customers to keep away from sudden behaviors, comparable to instantly closing an app.
• A system picture picker provides customers an ordinary, privacy-protecting mechanism for sharing native and cloud-based photographs. APIs are included for apps to entry shared media recordsdata.
• New granular media permissions present entry to particular kinds of media recordsdata, together with photographs, video, or audio. These exchange the READ EXTERNAL STORAGE permission.
• Updates to the ART runtime enhance efficiency and effectivity for all apps.
• Rubbish assortment might be improved by way of a brand new collector primarily based on the Linux kernel function userfaultfd, which is coming to ART on Android 13 units in an upcoming Google Play system replace. The brand new collector saves battery life, avoids jank throughout GC operations, and protects apps from low-memory kills.
• A close by Wi-Fi units permission for apps is launched to handle a tool’s connections to close by entry factors.
• A notification runtimes permission functionality will assist customers extra simply tune into the notifications they deem crucial.
• A tile placement API permits apps to immediate the consumer to instantly add a customized Fast Settings tile in a single step with out leaving the app.
• Programmable RuntimeShader objects are launched.
• Rendering assist is added for COLR model 1 fonts.
• Help for multilingual customers has been improved with an ordinary “App Language” Settings panel and a new platform API.