2nd Android 14 Developer Preview Adds More App Customization
Developers get a sneak peek at personalization controls, more ways to adapt apps to large screens, and more.
Google on Wednesday released the second Android 14 Developer Preview, giving app developers a sneak peek at changes coming to Android software.
The second developer preview adds new ways for developers to adapt apps to large screens on tablets and foldables, including adding stylus support. There's also a new way to set regional preferences throughout apps, letting users choose to have their temperatures in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit and their weeks start on Monday instead of Sunday if they prefer.
Users now have control over which photos are shared with apps via Photo Picker, which lets them choose select photos to give the app access to, in addition to sharing access to all images or none of them. There are also more ways for developers to notify users and limit how active other applications are in the background, along with tweaks to privacy and security controls.
Google launched the first Android 14 developer preview in early February, with a handful of incremental changes across the operating system, including smarter font scaling for better accessibility, passkey authentication support, the ability to set different languages on different apps, and tweaks to ensure apps are downloading files on Wi-Fi only instead of using mobile data.
The second developer preview can be used only on Google Pixel phones -- specifically, the Pixel 4a 5G or newer -- but later developer previews may be open to other Android handsets. Google will continue getting feedback until closing developer previews in late March, with plans to release an Android 14 beta in April.