Android 12 has reached the next significant milestone. Google has now made the third beta available to the general public, giving us access to a brand new version of the operating system. You can install this build on your Pixel 3 or newer device now if you’re willing to cope with potential bugs and performance issues.
In beta 3, Google is introducing a number of new features to the operating system. Scrolling screenshot support (yeah! ), an on-device search feature that allows you to search for things within apps much faster, faster auto-rotate, and more are all coming soon.
Android 12 Availability
To use the Android 12 beta on one of Google’s phones, you’ll need a Pixel 3 or later. Furthermore, several other phone manufacturers, including OnePlus and TCL, have smartphones that will function with Android 12. The final version will work on a wide range of Android phones, but the speed with which it appears will vary depending on the phone maker and model.
Android 12 Features
Color extraction and a visual update
Google revealed at Google I/O 2021 that the design of Android 12 would be its most significant aesthetic redesign in years. The redesign is part of Material You, the company’s latest design language. The idea behind Material You is that the users should have a say in the design.
With Android 12, the operating system will extract design elements from your installed wallpaper using a color extraction mechanism. This means that the colors on your entire system will change depending on the background of your home/lock screen. So, if your wallpaper contains purple, the system will extract it and apply it to the entire interface. This will allow you to personalize your phone in a simple and automatic method.
There are various new design modifications, animations, space changes, and so on, in addition to color extraction.
Notification Shade – Quick Tiles
You’re undoubtedly used to seeing round icons at the top of the panel when you pull down the notification shade. Those spherical icons are no longer available in Android 12. They have been replaced with rounded rectangles. These work in the same way as earlier Quick Tiles (a tap turns them on or off; a long-press takes you to the settings page). However, they are now larger and can hold more information.
Naturally, the larger size means that fewer tiles can be viewed at the same time. On your first pull of the notification shade, you’ll only see four tiles instead of the customary six.
Improved Privacy and Security
When Google announced its new Android 12 privacy features at its I/O 2021 developer conference, it aimed to make the data collection by apps more transparent. In addition, the new tools give users greater control over app permissions, allowing them to better control how and when apps access their data.
A privacy dashboard in Android 12 gives users a detailed view of how apps access their personal data. There is a summary dashboard that shows how many apps have used your location, camera, and microphone in the past 24 hours.
Within Android 12’s new Privacy Dashboard, users will be able to adjust app permissions. On the timeline view page, you’ll see a Manage Permissions setting, from which you can revoke particular permission from an app. In addition to the dashboard, there are a number of other changes in the works.
Scrolling Screenshot Support
A feature that has been touted by third-party Android phone manufacturers is coming to Google’s Android operating system — scrolling screenshots. Scrolling screenshots are now natively supported in Android 12 Beta 3, allowing you to show more content in a single image. With the new “capture more” button that appears when taking a screenshot, you can now capture a long Twitter thread, for example.
AppSearch allows you to search on your device
It’s about to get a lot more powerful when it comes to searching on Android devices. You can now search for content inside applications even when your device is offline, thanks to AppSearch, which Google is introducing in Android 12 beta 3.
For example, if you have a music app that manages all of your favorite songs? As soon as you search for a song title within the app, AppSearch will be notified and retrieve all matching songs. As a result, you’ll be presented with a list of search results. You should receive your results much faster, while also using fewer resources, by using AppSearch.
More information on the feature may be found here.
One-Handed Mode
This feature first debuted as a secret item in the first DP, but it wasn’t revealed until the second DP. It works in a similar way to iOS’s one-handed mode. To use the function, go to Android settings and turn it on, then swipe down anywhere at the bottom of the screen. This lowers the top half-or-so of the screen, allowing you to reach any buttons, icons, or other things there more easily.
This appears to be highly likely to make it to the stable launch, given how readily it can be discovered within Settings. However, it is still early, and Google may change its mind.
New Widgets
So far, Google has confirmed the arrival of at least one new widget: the weather widget shown above. There could, however, be more.
Mockups of the suspected Conversation widget in Android 12 appeared weeks before the Developer Preview. Now, it appears that the feature is built into Android 12 and that it works. XDA verifies that the widget is working, albeit not yet available on the Pixel Launcher, thanks to some reverse engineering. Another issue is that the widget currently only works with Google’s suite of apps.
Given that the functionality is at least existing in the OS, it’s possible that Google will release it later in the development cycle of Android 12.
New Emojis
Over 389 new Emoji designs will be added to Android 12 in the future. Many of the emoji changes in Android 12 are minor tweaks aimed at improving usability or adding depth. The syringe no longer contains a blood-red liquid (like Apple’s emoji), presumably to encourage immunization. Others are more quirky, such as the stylized dawn and the cheerful snowman.
Conclusion
Android 12 is the most significant redesign of the operating system since Lollipop in 2014. The new design language, dubbed Material You, looks and feels fantastic, and we’re looking forward to seeing it in action.
