Android 15 will make it easier to deal with notification clutter by hiding unused notification channels by default!

With this change, the Settings app now only shows me 3 channels from Instagram instead of 25.

More details in my latest article for Android Authority.

Android 15 Beta 1.1 is rolling out now with a fix for NFC! Contactless payments and other features that rely on NFC should now work. The update does NOT revert the NFC Mainline changes that I mentioned previously, but it fixes the botched migration.

Do you often forget to turn off extra dim in the morning?

Android 15 is preparing a new "even dimmer" display option that'll let adaptive brightness automatically go even dimmer, basically extra dim but adaptive to ambient lighting!

More details can be found in my latest article for Android Authority.

Android 15 is preparing to add built-in screen share protections that could help protect users from oversharing sensitive content while screen recording/sharing.

More details in my latest article for Android Police.

Android 15 may make it even harder for sideloaded apps to get sensitive permissions

Google is finally preparing to close a loophole in a security feature they introduced in Android 13. Before you get upset at the noscript, read the whole article I wrote over on Android Authority.

I'm back with yet another early first look at an upcoming Android 15 feature: audio sharing.

Audio sharing utilizes Auracast, a feature of the Bluetooth LE Audio standard, to stream audio from your phone to two or more nearby devices!

Full details are available in my hands-on article for Android Authority.

Google has just published the I/O 2024 schedule!

Though I think I've done an amazing job at documenting Android 15 this year, Google always seems to pull an announcement or two out of their hat that surprises me.

Looking forward to finding out what that is! I've heard some stuff about Wear OS 5 and future Android TV versions that I'm not super confident about reporting yet, so I've held off for now. I hope this information gets confirmed at I/O, though!

Android 15 is preparing to add a new feature that makes all apps go dark, even if they don't have a dark theme. This feature can even force apps like Fitbit to go dark!

For more details plus a BUNCH of screenshots, read my latest article over on Android Authority.

If you're bothered by the Pixel Launcher truncating app names in the apps list and in search results, then you may appreciate this upcoming change: a new toggle to "show long app names" is coming!

Details + screenshots can be found in my article over on Android Authority.

Android 15's new notification cooldown feature can not only lower the volume when you get successive notifications from the same app, but it'll soon also stop those same notifications from vibrating your phone like crazy!

More details are available in my latest article on Android Authority.

For some reason, you can't use Circle to Search while in split-screen mode on Pixel phones, even though you can on Samsung phones.

Google is looking to fix that limitation, though. More details can be found in this article I wrote for Android Authority.

By the way, in case you were wondering why you have to set the Google App as the default digital assistant in order for Circle to Search work, this article also explains that.

Google is testing a lock screen change in Android 15 that has me thinking of Live Activities in iOS: Moving the At a Glance widget to the bottom!

More details plus screenshots can be found in this article I wrote.

Here's a new feature in Android 15 that'll delight Wear OS users:

Android 15 is adding support for letting your smartwatch control your phone's media output!

Read my article for more details.

Is Google killing RISC-V support in Android? Not quite, but they are, at least for now, dropping support for RISC-V in Android's Linux kernel fork in what seems to be a setback for RISC-V hardware launching with Android anytime soon.

More details can be found in this article I wrote.

Here's Android 15's new volume panel UI on a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra!

If you want to try this new UI out on your own device, it's available in the Precise Volume app from developer Phascinate. The app provides a replicated version of Android 15's volume UI.

More details on what this app can do in this article I wrote.

Android 15 could finally optimize the lock screen and notifications panel for landscape mode on phones!

Here's an early look at the landscape-optimized UI for both. Screenshots can be found in the article I wrote here.

Surprise, surprise! The Rabbit R1 runs Android under-the-hood, and its entire interface is powered by an Android app.

I managed to get that app up and running on a Pixel 6a.

More details are available in this article I wrote.

The Rabbit R1 specifically runs Android 13, according to the metadata for the OTA from v0.8.67 to v0.8.77 of RabbitOS.

The security patch level (SPL) of v0.8.77 of RabbitOS is May 2023.

(In case you're wondering, the build fingerprint post-OTA is alps/vnd_k65v1_64_bsp/k65v1_64_bsp:13/TP1A.220624.014/eng.jenkin.20240430.101004:user/release-keys.)

And the preloaded keyboard app on the Rabbit R1 is a fork of the open-source Android app "AnySoftKeyboard" with a custom theme. Isn't FOSS great?

Circle to Search is finally starting to roll out to some Pixel Tablet users!

If you have a Pixel Tablet, let me know if you've gotten CtS on your device.