Now in Android #119
Android 16, Desktop Experiences, Adaptive Apps, Testing Videos, AndroidX and more!
Welcome to Now in Android, your ongoing guide to what’s new and notable in the world of Android development. In this edition we will cover Android 16, Desktop Experiences, Adaptive Apps, Testing Videos, AndroidX and more!
Most of the content of this post is available in the form of a video or podcast, so feel free to watch or listen rather than read on. (Or do all three to help you remember! There won’t be a quiz.)
Android 16 is here 🤖
Android 16 is released and available on supported Pixel devices, with new devices to follow. The source code is available at the Android Open Source Project.
Key updates include:
- Enhanced camera and media APIs for pro users, with night mode scene detection, hybrid auto exposure and precise color temperature adjustments. Improved UltraHDR image support with HEIC encoding and an embedded photo picker.
- Apps targeting Android 16 can no longer opt-out of going edge-to-edge
- Changes to how the system manages orientation, resizability, and aspect ratio restrictions.
- System animations for back-to-home, cross-task, and cross-activity by default. In addition, this release extends predictive back navigation to three-button navigation, meaning that users long-pressing the back button will see a glimpse of the previous screen before navigating back.
- Progress style notifications which lets you create progress-centric notifications that can denote states and milestones in a user journey using points and segments.
- RuntimeColorFilter and RuntimeXfermode, allowing you to author complex effects like Threshold, Sepia, and Hue Saturation in AGSL and apply them to draw calls.
Top 3 updates for building excellent, adaptive apps at Google I/O ’25 🤖
At Google I/O 2025, several advancements were announced for Android, including the rollout of Android 16, a Developer Preview for enhanced Android desktop experiences, and updates for Android users across Google apps.
Key announcements for developers:
- Adaptive apps: Build a single, adaptive application that functions across various form factors using Jetpack Compose Adaptive Libraries, Navigation 3 library, and updates to the Window Manager Library in AndroidX.window 1.5.
- Performance Optimization: Use the redesigned UiAutomator API for benchmarking, macrobenchmarks and App Startup Insights to improve app performance, and leverage R8 for troubleshooting and performance optimization.
- Enhanced Media Experiences: Use CameraX and Media3Effects for capturing high-quality video and Google Low-Light Boost for real-time camera brightness adjustment in low light. Explore new camera and media samples.
Developer preview: Enhanced Android desktop experiences with connected displays 🖥️
With the Android 16 QPR1 Beta 2 release, you can now access connected displays support on compatible Android devices. By connecting an external display to your Android device, you can transform it into a workstation. This gives users the ability to move apps beyond a single screen to unlock Android’s full productivity potential on external displays.
Desktop windowing is now stable as well. We’ve made improvements in the stability and performance of desktop windowing in Android 16 and added some new features:
- Flexible window tiling: Users can more easily arrange multiple app windows side by side or in various configurations, making it simpler to work across different applications simultaneously on a large screen.
- Multiple desktops: Users can set up multiple desktop sessions to match their distinct productivity requirements and switch between the desktops using keyboard shortcuts, trackpad gestures, and Overview.
- Enhanced app compatibility treatments: New compatibility treatments ensure that even legacy apps behave more predictably and look better on external displays by default.
- Multi-instance management: Users can manage multiple instances of supporting applications (for example, Chrome or, Keep) through the app header button or taskbar context menu.
- Desktop persistence: Android can now better maintain window sizes, positions, and states across different desktops.
You can try out these features today on your connected display with the Android 16 QPR1 Beta 2 on select Pixel devices.
A product manager’s guide to adapting Android apps across devices 📱
In Android 16, adaptive apps are essential to provide a consistent user experience across various devices. Product managers should prioritize adaptive design for your apps to meet user expectations on foldables, tablets, Chromebooks, and other form factors.
By building adaptive apps, you can improve user engagement, increase app discoverability on Google Play, and ensure accessibility for users with disabilities. You can start by checking how your app currently looks on large screens, addressing common UI issues, and incrementally optimizing your app screen by screen.
Videos
We have a few new testing videos for you to check out!
Android Testing Strategies
Automated testing is crucial for scalable and efficient quality assurance as apps grow in complexity. However, the traditional testing pyramid might not be the best approach. Learn more about using a strategy that considers both the scope (test size) and the size (code executed) of different test categories: release candidate, application, feature, component, and unit tests. This helps ensure reliable results and faster execution times.
Goodbye manual testing, hello automated testing
Android app developers should embrace automated testing (unit, smoke, hermetic, screenshot) to replace time-consuming and error-prone manual testing. Learn more about how automation improves app quality, provides fast feedback, catches bugs, and prevents feature regressions, ultimately increasing developer productivity and freeing up time for critical tasks.
Tools and patterns for scalable Android app testing
Android app developers should be aware of the tools and patterns used in scalable app testing: Learn more about using screenshot tests, robolectric, device emulation, management for flaky tests, and gradle managed devices in this video.
AndroidX Releases 🚀
Here’s a summary of the AndroidX changes, prioritized for app developers:
- New PhotoPicker Library: This is a major addition, providing a straightforward way to integrate with the system’s embedded photo picker. It includes both View-based and Compose-based components, along with utilities for state management and testing. This simplifies image selection for users and improves the user experience.
- Lifecycle ViewModel Navigation3 Integration: This new library offers better integration between ViewModels and the Navigation3 library. The key component is
ViewModelStoreNavEntryDecorator, which ensures eachNavEntryhas its ownViewModelStoreOwner. This helps to properly scope and manage ViewModels within your navigation graph, especially when using config changes. - Emoji2 Library Update: The update to emoji2 includes updates to emoji 16.0 and uses JSpecify nullness annotations which require Kotlin developers to use specific compiler arguments to enforce correct usage:
-Xjspecify-annotations=strict,-Xtype-enhancement-improvements-strict-mode.
Now then… 👋
That’s it for this week’s episode, with Android 16, Desktop Experiences, Adaptive Apps, Testing, AndroidX and more!
Check back soon for your next update from the Android developer universe!