At Google I/O 2026, Google has introduced new “Metric Style” notifications template that expands Live Updates to health and fitness apps, timers, and travel app use cases. In the first Android 16 stable release, the Android system treats these notifications just like other notifications. Instead, the first release supported progress-centric notifications, a new type of notification that merely displayed progress and milestones on ride-share and food delivery apps.
Chinese companies are building a PC and mobile operating system, based on Android, to “compete directly with Microsoft Windows and Google Android”. For example, as Android was developed initially as a phone OS, hardware such as microphones were required, while over time the phone function became optional. Some other hardware was initially required, but those requirements have been relaxed or eliminated altogether. Some hardware components are not required, but became standard in certain classes of devices, such as smartphones, and additional requirements apply if they are present.

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation has denounced that the fact that developers will be required to pay a fee and provide government-issued identification will dishearten free and open-source communities, as several of them operate with limited or no funding, and that it further expands Google’s Play Store monopoly over alternative app stores.
• Gone Reports say Meta has axed 8,000 employees this week, and it looks like the company really wants AI by this point.
• Once enabled, you won’t see any blur in the Quick Settings panel, the notification shade, the lock screen, the app drawer, or the Recents menu.
• The “retake” button will be handy for quickly starting over after a mistake, while the “delete” button adds a convenient way to discard a recording without having to find it in your gallery.
• Local Network Protection will eventually require apps to request specific permission to access the local network.
• While the core Android system remains free, OEMs in Europe would be required to purchase a paid license to the core suite of Google applications, such as Gmail, Google Maps and the Google Play Store.

Features

In some cases it may not be possible to deny certain permissions to pre-installed apps, nor be possible to disable them. An opt-in system is used instead, in which users are prompted to grant or deny individual permissions to an app when they are needed for the first time. After reviewing these permissions, the user could choose to accept or refuse them, installing the application only if they accepted. In former Android versions, before installing an application, the Google Play store displayed a list of the requirements an app needs to function. Originally only doing so during installation, Verify Apps received an update in 2014 to “constantly” scan apps, and in 2017 the feature was made visible to users through a menu in Settings. Android applications run in a sandbox, an isolated area of the system that does not have access to the rest of the system’s resources, unless access permissions are explicitly granted by the user when the application is installed, however this may not be possible for pre-installed apps.

Charging while powered off

To try it out, open the Terminal app and tap the Display button in the top-right corner to launch a session that supports graphical output. This Time zone change notification went live in the July 2025 Android Canary release and was graduated to the stable release with Android 16 QPR2 stable release. The notification’s title will say “Your time zone changed,” and the body will include the exact time zone you’re now in. The description states that the feature will allow you to “receive a notification when your time zone is automatically updated.” Your Android phone can automatically adjust the time when you enter a new time zone. A new toggle in Android 16 QPR2 allows you to disable Failed Authentication Lock.
A hacker could easily use the “Android system permissions” to fetch the account credentials in order to do so. Users can also be tricked into granting additional permissions to the malicious apps, which later enable them to perform various nefarious activities, including intercepting texts or calls and stealing banking credentials. Android smartphones have the ability to report the location of Wi-Fi access points, encountered as phone users move around, to build databases containing the physical locations of hundreds of millions of such access points. For example, Samsung has worked with General Dynamics through their Open Kernel Labs acquisition to rebuild Jelly Bean on top of their hardened microvisor for the “Knox” project.

How do I install the Google Play Store APK on my Android device?

This new profile is intended for companion apps to medical devices, granting permissions for posting notifications, managing Bluetooth connections, and sending alerts at precise times. Tapping the “recording saved” notification opens a new screen with a simple video player that includes a seekbar, a play/pause button, and a mute button. The expanded bubble bar shows only the five most recently opened bubbles, though the bubble overflow menu lists other previously opened bubbles. Once activated, the launcher adds a “bubble” button to the context menu that appears when you kudosbet press and hold on any app on the home screen. More importantly, the “Microphone, Camera & Location” dialog now correctly lists the specific apps accessing your location. Android 16 QPR2 introduces a built-in Parental Controls menu that provides a centralized location for managing device-specific restrictions.

Customizable keyboard shortcuts

Following news of Google’s monthly schedule, some manufacturers, including Samsung and LG, promised to issue monthly security updates, but, as noted by Jerry Hildenbrand in Android Central in February 2016, “instead we got a few updates on specific versions of a small handful of models. And a bunch of broken promises”. In 2020, David Wang under his company Corellium released Project Sandcastle which made Android run on the iPhone 7. As a result, technical obstacles including locked bootloaders and restricted access to root permissions are common in many devices. Moreover, modified firmware such as CyanogenMod sometimes offer features, such as tethering, for which carriers would otherwise charge a premium. Android’s standard C library, Bionic, was developed by Google specifically for Android, as a derivation of the BSD’s standard C library code. Development of the Linux kernel continues independently of Android’s other source code projects.

Desktop Mode and related changes

• Vulkan allows developers to leverage the performance of modern smartphone GPUs to unlock features such as ray tracing in games and multithreading.
• This presumably lets you record video from the front-facing camera while capturing your screen.
• Android smartphones have the ability to report the location of Wi-Fi access points, encountered as phone users move around, to build databases containing the physical locations of hundreds of millions of such access points.
• Thus, forks of Android that make major changes to the operating system itself do not include any of Google’s non-free components, stay incompatible with applications that require them, and must ship with an alternative software marketplace in lieu of Google Play Store.
• Moreover, modified firmware such as CyanogenMod sometimes offer features, such as tethering, for which carriers would otherwise charge a premium.
• More importantly, the “Microphone, Camera & Location” dialog now correctly lists the specific apps accessing your location.

Android 16 QPR1 Beta 1 introduced subtle background blur (as mentioned above) to specific parts of the Android UI, namely the notification shade, Quick Settings panel, and Recents screen. These changes were spotted and enabled in Android 16 Beta 4 and are widely available in Android 16 QPR1 Beta 1, but they are unlikely to be available in the Android 16 stable release. With Android 16 Beta 3, Google is giving app developers a chance to test if their apps are affected by this upcoming change. Local Network Protection will eventually require apps to request specific permission to access the local network. Later QPR betas give us even more features that can be chalked up to the next platform release, unless they are completely Pixel-exclusive.

{With Android 17, this change is now mandatory, and developers will no longer be able to opt out. This feature is similar to features that OEMs have added to such devices, allowing users to run apps at any window size and aspect ratio. Screen magnification options in Android 16 QPR1 Beta 2Screen magnification options in July Android Canary/QPR1 Beta 3 build Unlike the solid green background used for camera and microphone alerts, the location indicator uses a solid blue background (though the system reverts to green if multiple permissions are in use).}