Posted by Matthew McCullough, VP of Product Management, Android Developer

if ((Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.BAKLAVA) && (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT_FULL >= Build.VERSION_CODES_FULL.BAKLAVA_1)) {
    // Call new APIs from the Android 16 QPR2 release
}

Expanded Dark Theme

To create a more consistent user experience for users who have low vision, photosensitivity, or simply those who prefer a dark system-wide appearance, QPR2 introduced an expanded option under dark theme.

The old Fitbit app showing the impact of expanded dark theme; the new Fitbit app directly supports a dark theme

When the expanded dark theme setting is enabled by a user, the system uses your app’s isLightTheme theme attribute to determine whether to apply inversion. If your app inherits from one of the standard DayNight themes, this is done automatically for you. If it does not, make sure to declare isLightTheme=”false” in your dark theme to ensure your app is not inadvertently inverted. Standard Android Views, Composables, and WebViews will be inverted, while custom rendering engines like Flutter will not.

This is largely intended as an accessibility feature. We strongly recommend implementing a native dark theme, which gives you full control over your app’s appearance; you can protect your brand’s identity, ensure text is readable, and prevent visual glitches from happening when your UI is automatically inverted, guaranteeing a polished, reliable experience for your users.

Custom Icon Shapes & Auto-Theming

In QPR2, users can select specific shapes for their app icons, which apply to all icons and folder previews. Additionally, if your app does not provide a dedicated themed icon, the system can now automatically generate one by applying a color filtering algorithm to your existing launcher icon.

Custom Icon Shapes
Test Icon Shape & Color in Android Studio	Automatic system icon color filtering

Interactive Chooser Sessions

The sharing experience is now more dynamic. Apps can keep the UI interactive even when the system sharesheet is open, allowing for real-time content updates within the Chooser.

Boosting Your Productivity and App Performance

We are introducing tools and updates designed to streamline your workflow and improve app performance.

Linux Development Environment with GUI Applications

The Linux development environment feature has been expanded to support running Linux GUI applications directly within the terminal environment.

Wilber, the GIMP mascot, designed by Aryeom Han, is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. The screenshot of the GIMP interface is used with courtesy.

Generational Garbage Collection

The Android Runtime (ART) now includes a Generational Concurrent Mark-Compact (CMC) Garbage Collector. This focuses collection on newly allocated objects, resulting in reduced CPU usage and improved battery efficiency.

Widget Engagement Metrics

You can now query user interaction events—such as clicks, scrolls, and impressions—to better understand how users engage with your widgets.

16KB Page Size Readiness

To help prepare for future architecture requirements, we have added early warning dialogs for debuggable apps that are not 16KB page-aligned.

Media, Connectivity, and Health

QPR2 brings robust updates to media standards and device connectivity.

IAMF and Audio Sharing

We have added software decoding support for Immersive Audio Model and Formats (IAMF), an open-source spatial audio format. Additionally, Personal Audio Sharing for Bluetooth LE Audio is now integrated directly into the system Output Switcher.

Health Connect Updates

Health Connect now automatically tracks steps using the device’s sensors. If your app has the READ_STEPS permission, this data will be available from the “android” package. Not only does this simplify the code needed to do step tracking, it’s also more power efficient. It also can now track weight, set index, and Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) in exercise segments.

Smoother Migrations

A new 3rd-party Data Transfer API enables more reliable data migration between Android and iOS devices.

Strengthening Privacy and Security

Security remains a top priority with new features designed to protect user data and device integrity.

Developer Verification

We introduced APIs to support developer verification during app installation along with new ADB commands to simulate verification outcomes. As a developer, you are free to install apps without verification by using ADB, so you can continue to test apps that are not intended or not yet ready to distribute to the wider consumer population.

SMS OTP Protection

The delivery of messages containing an SMS retriever hash will be delayed for most apps for three hours to help prevent OTP hijacking. The RECEIVE_SMS broadcast will be withheld and sms provider database queries will be filtered. The SMS will be available to these apps after the three hour delay.

Secure Lock Device

A new system-level security state, Secure Lock Device, is being introduced. When enabled (e.g., remotely via “Find My Device”), the device locks immediately and requires the primary PIN, pattern, or password to unlock, heightening security. When active, notifications and quick affordances on the lock screen will be hidden, and biometric unlock may be temporarily disabled.

Get Started

If you’re not in the Beta or Canary programs, your Pixel device should get the Android 16 QPR2 release shortly. If you don’t have a Pixel device, you can use the 64-bit system images with the Android Emulator in Android Studio. If you are currently on the Android 16 QPR2 Beta and have not yet installed the Android 16 QPR3 beta, you can opt out of the program and you will then be offered the release version of Android 16 QPR2 over the air.
For the best development experience with Android 16 QPR2, we recommend that you use the latest Canary build of Android Studio Otter.
Thank you again to everyone who participated in our Android beta program. We’re looking forward to seeing how your apps take advantage of the updates in Android 16 QPR2.

For complete information on Android 16 QPR2 please visit the Android 16 developer site.

Posted by Matthew McCullough, VP of Product Management, Android Developer

Android 16 QPR2 has released Platform Stability today with Beta 2! That means that the API surface is locked, and the app-facing behaviors are final, so you can incorporate them into your apps and take advantage of our latest platform innovations.

New in the QPR2 Beta

At this later stage in the development cycle, we’re focused on the critical work of readying the platform for release. Here are the few impactful changes we want to highlight:

Testing developer verification

To better protect Android users from repeat offenders, Android is introducing developer verification, a new requirement to make app installation safer by preventing the spread of malware and scams. Starting in September 2026 and in specific regions, Android will require apps to be registered by verified developers to be installed on certified Android devices, with an exception made for installs made through the Android Debug Bridge (ADB).

As a developer, you are free to install apps without verification by using ADB, so you can continue to test apps that are not intended or not yet ready to distribute to the wider consumer population.

For apps that enable user-initiated installation of app packages, Android 16 QPR2 Beta 2 contains new APIs that support developer verification during installation, along with a new adb command to let you force a verification outcome for testing purposes.

adb shell pm set-developer-verification-result

By using this command, (see adb shell pm help for full details)  you can now simulate verification failures. This allows you to understand the end-to-end user experience for both successful and unsuccessful verification, so you can prepare accordingly before enforcement begins.

We encourage all developers who distribute apps on certified Android devices to sign up for early access to get ready and stay updated.

SMS OTP Protection

The delivery of messages containing an SMS retriever hash will be delayed for most apps for three hours to help prevent OTP hijacking. The RECEIVE_SMS broadcast will be withheld and sms provider database queries will be filtered. The SMS will be available to these apps after the three hour delay.

Certain apps such as the default SMS, assistant, and dialer apps, along with connected device companion, system apps, etc will be exempt from this delay, and apps can continue to use the SMS retriever API to access messages intended for them in a timely manner.

Custom app icon shapes

Android 16 QPR2 allows users to select from a list of icon shapes that apply to all app icons and folder previews. Check to make sure that your adaptive icon works well with any shape the user selects.

More efficient garbage collection

The Android Runtime (ART) now includes a Generational Concurrent Mark-Compact (CMC) Garbage Collector in Android 16 QPR2 that focuses collection efforts on newly allocated objects, which are more likely to be garbage. You can expect reduced CPU usage from garbage collection, a smoother user experience with less jank, and improved battery efficiency.

Native step tracking and expanded exercise data in Health Connect

Health Connect now automatically tracks steps using the device’s sensors. If your app has the READ_STEPS permission, this data will be available from the “android” package. Not only does this simplify the code needed to do step tracking, it’s more power efficient as well.

Also, the ExerciseSegment and ExerciseSession data types have been updated. You can now record and read weight, set index, and Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) for exercise segments. Since Health Connect is updated independently of the platform, checking for feature availability before writing the data will ensure compatibility with the current local version of Health Connect.

// Check if the expanded exercise features are available
val newFieldsAvailable = healthConnectClient.features.getFeatureStatus(
    HealthConnectFeatures.FEATURE_EXPANDED_EXERCISE_RECORD
) == HealthConnectFeatures.FEATURE_STATUS_AVAILABLE

val segment = ExerciseSegment(
    //...
    // Conditionally add the new data fields
    weight = if (newFieldsAvailable) Mass.fromKilograms(50.0) else null,
    setIndex = if (newFieldsAvailable) 1 else null,
    rateOfPerceivedExertion = if (newFieldsAvailable) 7.0f else null
)

A minor SDK version

QPR2 marks the first Android release with a minor SDK version allowing us to more rapidly innovate with new platform APIs provided outside of our usual once-yearly timeline. Unlike the major platform release (Android 16) in 2025-Q2 that included behavior changes that impact app compatibility, the changes in this release are largely additive and designed to minimize the need for additional app testing.

Your app can safely call the new APIs on devices where they are available by using SDK_INT_FULL and the respective value from the VERSION_CODES_FULL enumeration.

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT_FULL >= Build.VERSION_CODES_FULL.BAKLAVA_1) {
    // Call new APIs from the Android 16 QPR2 release
}

You can also use the Build.getMinorSdkVersion() method to get just the minor SDK version number.

val minorSdkVersion = Build.getMinorSdkVersion(VERSION_CODES_FULL.BAKLAVA)

The original VERSION_CODES enumeration can still be used to compare against the SDK_INT enumeration for APIs declared in non minor releases.

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.BAKLAVA) {
    // Call new APIs from the Android 16 release
}

Since minor releases aren’t intended to have breaking behavior changes, they cannot be used in the uses-sdk manifest attributes.

Get started with the Android 16 QPR2 beta

You can enroll any supported Pixel device to get this and future Android Beta updates over-the-air. If you don’t have a Pixel device, you can use the 64-bit system images with the Android Emulator in Android Studio.  If you are already in the Android Beta program, you will be offered an over-the-air update to Beta 2. We’ll update the system images and SDK regularly throughout the Android 16 QPR2 release cycle.

If you are in the Canary program and would like to enter the Beta program, you will need to wipe your device and manually flash it to the beta release.

For the best development experience with Android 16 QPR2, we recommend that you use the latest Canary version of Android Studio Narwhal Feature Drop.

We’re looking for your feedback so please report issues and submit feature requests on the feedback page. The earlier we get your feedback, the more we can include in our work on the final release. Thank you for helping to shape the future of the Android platform.

Posted by Matthew McCullough – VP of Product Management, Android Developer

Today, Android is launching a few updates across the platform! This includes the start of Android 16’s rollout with details for both developers and users, a Developer Preview for enhanced Android desktop experiences with connected displays, updates for Android users across Google apps and more, plus the June Pixel Drop. We’re also recapping all the Google I/O updates for Android developers focused on building excellent, adaptive Android apps.

Today we’re releasing Android 16 and making it available on most supported Pixel devices. Look for new devices running Android 16 in the coming months.

This also marks the availability of the source code at the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). You can examine the source code for a deeper understanding of how Android works, and our focus on compatibility means that you can leverage your app development skills in Android Studio with Jetpack Compose to create applications that thrive across the entire ecosystem.

Major and minor SDK releases

With Android 16, we’ve added the concept of a minor SDK release to allow us to iterate our APIs more quickly, reflecting the rapid pace of the innovation Android is bringing to apps and devices.

We plan to have another release in Q4 of 2025 which also will include new developer APIs. Today’s major release will be the only release in 2025 to include planned app-impacting behavior changes.
In addition to new developer APIs, the Q4 minor release will pick up feature updates, optimizations, and bug fixes.

We’ll continue to have quarterly Android releases. The Q3 update in-between the API releases is providing much of the new visual polish associated with Material Expressive, and you can get the Q3 beta today on your supported Pixel device.

Camera and media APIs to empower creators

Android 16 enhances support for professional camera users, allowing for night mode scene detection, hybrid auto exposure, and precise color temperature adjustments. It’s easier than ever to capture motion photos with new Intent actions, and we’re continuing to improve UltraHDR images, with support for HEIC encoding and new parameters from the ISO 21496-1 draft standard. Support for the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec improves Android’s place in professional recording and post-production workflows, with perceptually lossless video quality that survives multiple decodings/re-encodings without severe visual quality degradation.

Also, Android’s photo picker can now be embedded in your view hierarchy, and users will appreciate the ability to search cloud media.

More consistent, beautiful apps

Android 16 introduces changes to improve the consistency and visual appearance of apps, laying the foundation for the upcoming Material 3 Expressive changes. Apps targeting Android 16 can no longer opt-out of going edge-to-edge, and ignores the elegantTextHeight attribute to ensure proper spacing in Arabic, Lao, Myanmar, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Telugu or Thai.

Adaptive Android apps

With Android apps now running on a variety of devices and more windowing modes on large screens, developers should build Android apps that adapt to any screen and window size, regardless of device orientation. For apps targeting Android 16 (API level 36), Android 16 includes changes to how the system manages orientation, resizability, and aspect ratio restrictions. On displays with smallest width >= 600dp, the restrictions no longer apply and apps will fill the entire display window. You should check your apps to ensure your existing UIs scale seamlessly, working well across portrait and landscape aspect ratios. We’re providing frameworks, tools, and libraries to help.

You can test these overrides without targeting using the app compatibility framework by enabling the UNIVERSAL_RESIZABLE_BY_DEFAULT flag. Read more about changes to orientation and resizability APIs in Android 16.

Predictive back by default and more

Apps targeting Android 16 will have system animations for back-to-home, cross-task, and cross-activity by default. In addition, Android 16 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.

To make it easier to get the back-to-home animation, Android 16 adds support for the onBackInvokedCallback with the new PRIORITY_SYSTEM_NAVIGATION_OBSERVER. Android 16 additionally adds the finishAndRemoveTaskCallback and moveTaskToBackCallback for custom back stack behavior with predictive back.

Consistent progress notifications

Android 16 introduces Notification.ProgressStyle, which lets you create progress-centric notifications that can denote states and milestones in a user journey using points and segments. Key use cases include rideshare, delivery, and navigation. It’s the basis for Live Updates, which will be fully realized in an upcoming Android 16 update.

Custom AGSL graphical effects

Android 16 adds RuntimeColorFilter and RuntimeXfermode, allowing you to author complex effects like Threshold, Sepia, and Hue Saturation in AGSL and apply them to draw calls.

Help to create better performing, more efficient apps and games

From APIs to help you understand app performance, to platform changes designed to increase efficiency, Android 16 is focused on making sure your apps perform well. Android 16 introduces system-triggered profiling to ProfilingManager, ensures at most one missed execution of scheduleAtFixedRate is immediately executed when the app returns to a valid lifecycle for better efficiency, introduces hasArrSupport and getSuggestedFrameRate(int) to make it easier for your apps to take advantage of adaptive display refresh rates, and introduces the getCpuHeadroom and getGpuHeadroom APIs along with CpuHeadroomParams and GpuHeadroomParams in SystemHealthManager to provide games and resource-intensive apps estimates of available GPU and CPU resources on supported devices.

JobScheduler updates

JobScheduler.getPendingJobReasons in Android 16 returns multiple reasons why a job is pending, due to both explicit constraints you set and implicit constraints set by the system. The new JobScheduler.getPendingJobReasonsHistory returns the list of the most recent pending job reason changes, allowing you to better tune the way your app works in the background.

Android 16 is making adjustments for regular and expedited job runtime quota based on which apps standby bucket the app is in, whether the job starts execution while the app is in a top state, and whether the job is executing while the app is running a Foreground Service.

To detect (and then reduce) abandoned jobs, apps should use the new STOP_REASON_TIMEOUT_ABANDONED job stop reason that the system assigns for abandoned jobs, instead of STOP_REASON_TIMEOUT.

16KB page sizes

Android 15 introduced support for 16KB page sizes to improve the performance of app launches, system boot-ups, and camera starts, while reducing battery usage. Android 16 adds a 16 KB page size compatibility mode, which, combined with new Google Play technical requirements, brings Android closer to having devices shipping with this important change. You can validate if your app needs updating using the 16KB page size checks & APK Analyzer in the latest version of Android Studio.

ART internal changes

Android 16 includes the latest updates to the Android Runtime (ART) that improve the Android Runtime’s (ART’s) performance and provide support for additional language features. These improvements are also available to over a billion devices running Android 12 (API level 31) and higher through Google Play System updates. Apps and libraries that rely on internal non-SDK ART structures may not continue to work correctly with these changes.

Privacy and security

Android 16 continues our mission to improve security and ensure user privacy. It includes Improved security against Intent redirection attacks, makes MediaStore.getVersion unique to each app, adds an API that allows apps to share Android Keystore keys, incorporates the latest version of the Privacy Sandbox on Android, introduces a new behavior during the companion device pairing flow to protect the user’s location privacy, and allows a user to easily select from and limit access to app-owned shared media in the photo picker.

Local network permission testing

Android 16 allows your app to test the upcoming local network permission feature, which will require your app to be granted NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES permission. This change will be enforced in a future Android major release.

An Android built for everyone

Android 16 adds features such as Auracast broadcast audio with compatible LE Audio hearing aids, Accessibility changes such as extending TtsSpan with TYPE_DURATION, a new list-based API within AccessibilityNodeInfo, improved support for expandable elements using setExpandedState, RANGE_TYPE_INDETERMINATE for indeterminate ProgressBar widgets, AccessibilityNodeInfo getChecked and setChecked(int) methods that support a “partially checked” state, setSupplementalDescription so you can provide text for a ViewGroup without overriding information from its children, and setFieldRequired so apps can tell an accessibility service that input to a form field is required.

Outline text for maximum text contrast

Android 16 introduces outline text, replacing high contrast text, which draws a larger contrasting area around text to greatly improve legibility, along with new AccessibilityManager APIs to allow your apps to check or register a listener to see if this mode is enabled.

Get your apps, libraries, tools, and game engines ready!

If you develop an SDK, library, tool, or game engine, it’s even more important to prepare any necessary updates now to prevent your downstream app and game developers from being blocked by compatibility issues and allow them to target the latest SDK features. Please let your developers know if updates to your SDK are needed to fully support Android 16.

Testing involves installing your production app or a test app making use of your library or engine using Google Play or other means onto a device or emulator running Android 16. Work through all your app’s flows and look for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing. Each release of Android contains platform changes that improve privacy, security, and overall user experience, and these changes can affect your apps. Here are several changes to focus on that apply, even if you aren’t yet targeting Android 16:

• JobScheduler: JobScheduler quotas are enforced more strictly in Android 16; enforcement will occur if a job executes while the app is on top, when a foreground service is running, or in the active standby bucket. setImportantWhileForeground is now a no-op. The new stop reason STOP_REASON_TIMEOUT_ABANDONED occurs when we detect that the app can no longer stop the job.
• Broadcasts: Ordered broadcasts using priorities only work within the same process. Use another IPC if you need cross-process ordering.
• ART: If you use reflection, JNI, or any other means to access Android internals, your app might break. This is never a best practice. Test thoroughly.
• Intents: Android 16 has stronger security against Intent redirection attacks. Test your Intent handling, and only opt-out of the protections if absolutely necessary.
• 16KB Page Size: If your app isn’t 16KB-page-size ready, you can use the new compatibility mode flag, but we recommend migrating to 16KB for best performance.
• Accessibility: announceForAccessibility is deprecated; use the recommended alternatives. Make sure to test with the new outline text feature.
• Bluetooth: Android 16 improves Bluetooth bond loss handling that impacts the way re-pairing occurs.

Other changes that will be impactful once your app targets Android 16:

• User Experience: Changes include the removal of edge-to-edge opt-out, required migration or opt-out for predictive back, and the disabling of elegant font APIs.
• Core Functionality: Optimizations have been made to fixed-rate work scheduling.
• Large Screen Devices: Orientation, resizability, and aspect ratio restrictions will be ignored. Ensure your layouts support all orientations across a variety of aspect ratios to adapt to different surfaces.
• Health and Fitness: Changes have been implemented for health and fitness permissions.

Get your app ready for the future:

• Local network protection: Consider testing your app with the upcoming Local Network Protection feature. It will give users more control over which apps can access devices on their local network in a future Android major release.

Remember to thoroughly exercise libraries and SDKs that your app is using during your compatibility testing. You may need to update to current SDK versions or reach out to the developer for help if you encounter any issues.

Once you’ve published the Android 16-compatible version of your app, you can start the process to update your app’s targetSdkVersion. Review the behavior changes that apply when your app targets Android 16 and use the compatibility framework to help quickly detect issues.

Get started with Android 16

Your Pixel device should get Android 16 shortly if you haven’t already been on the Android Beta. If you don’t have a Pixel device, you can use the 64-bit system images with the Android Emulator in Android Studio. If you are currently on Android 16 Beta 4.1 and have not yet taken an Android 16 QPR1 beta, you can opt out of the program and you will then be offered the release version of Android 16 over the air.

For the best development experience with Android 16, we recommend that you use the latest Canary build of Android Studio Narwhal. Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:

• Test your current app for compatibility, learn whether your app is affected by changes in Android 16, and install your app onto a device or Android Emulator running Android 16 and extensively test it.

Thank you again to everyone who participated in our Android developer preview and beta program. We’re looking forward to seeing how your apps take advantage of the updates in Android 16, and have plans to bring you updates in a fast-paced release cadence going forward.

For complete information on Android 16 please visit the Android 16 developer site.