What is new in Android 12

Android 12 is very close to launch. Google  is finalizing the changes for the new Android  version, so we have a better sense of what to  expect when the final version arrives toward the  end of summer. In fact, Google has teased that  Android 12 will launch in "the coming weeks."  Android 12 is undoubtedly the biggest  refresh to the operating system in years  and - now that we're onto the fifth public  beta - that means we're getting an even more clear in-hand picture of what the final software  will end up like. In fact, this is the last beta version. Before we start please do not forget  to like and subscribe. It will help us a lot. Android 12: Refreshed UI Android 12 now automatically chooses a set of  correlative color palettes across the system UI  based on the colors used in  the phone current wallpaper.  The colors will apply uniformly across  elements such as the lock screen,  quick settings, notifications panel, and even the newly added adaptive widgets. Google says the color extraction system uses a clustering algorithm with Material color targets  to determine the dominant and less dominant colors  and then applies hues that match your wallpaper. A rich palette of 5 colors — 2 neutral and 3 accent  colors ” and 12 shades of Material color can be  used to determine the closest hues to the user  wallpaper. Apps can then grab Android system  color from an index into the color palette and  use it in many different, subtle ways. Widgets can  even use the color extraction feature to harmonize  with the user theme on the home screen. Notifications Notifications have  undergone something of a design overhaul too. The style of notification windows has changed,  and they're automatically grouped per app, or  separated out if they're not conversational.  Also, there's an easy new snooze control that  you simply tap to snooze, rather than having  to swipe on the notification. Then you can snooze  specific notifications for a set amount of time. Lock Screen Clock The first thing you'll likely notice the first time you power up a phone running Android 12 is  the new lock screen clock. With your phone clear  of notifications, a large digital clock takes up pride of place right in the center of the screen. Quick settings shade When you drop down quick settings and  notifications from the top of the screen you'll  no longer see those little round toggles. Instead,  they've been replaced by much larger rectangle  controls, similar to those we saw in Android 11's  Power menu for controlling smart home devices. What's interesting here is the color scheme.  With beta 2 Google enabled the feature that allows it to pick a color automatically based  on whatever wallpaper you have. So if your  wallpaper is predominantly pink/purple, the quick settings shade will be too. Or green, if your wallpaper is green. And so on. Customization and theming Theming is a major part of Android 12's new feature list.  In the customization window, you can choose  to have the colors of your wallpaper determine  the accent and background colors of the entire feature. It also allows you to toggle on a  "themed icons" feature which transforms your  app icons to color-matched ones as well.  Android 12: Privacy and security Privacy dashboard  One of the major new official changes is the  Privacy Dashboard. It'll give you easy access to see what apps have accessed certain permissions.  Whether that be your camera and mic or location.  What's more, when you first launch an app and it wants access to your location  you can decide to have it only get access to  an approximate location rather than precise.   For apps that require location data, Android 12  will also offer a new setting that will let you  share your approximate location with the app  instead of your precise location. This setting  will show up within the location permission pop-up you are probably already familiar with.   Android 12 will include new toggles in  the Quick Settings to help you quickly  disable camera and microphone access for all  apps with a simple tap. These toggles will  initially be limited to Pixel devices, but  they will make their way to other phones soon  App Hibernation Android 12 also introduces a new feature  called App Hibernation. App hibernation allows you  to put apps into a hibernation state if they are  not actively being used. Apps that are put into  a hibernated status will optimize their storage  usage, and their permissions will be revoked. Apps that are not used for several months will  be put into this hibernation state, although  users can quickly toggle this feature on and off  if they do not want their unused apps to go into  hibernation. To get an app out of hibernation,  you just need to run it normally. PIN code keys  When you swipe to unlock the phone you'll notice a fresh design for the PIN code keypad.  The 'buttons' are round, large, and minimal will  pastel shades. We suspect this same design will  eventually feature on the phone dialler too. Enhanced screenshots  Take a screenshot and head to the edit/markup  function and you can now type text onto your  screenshots in a number of different font colors.  Plus you can stick some emojis on there if you  want by pressing the little sticker icon. You can  resize them easily too by just pinching to zoom.  As a side note to that, you can now easily dismiss screenshot thumbnails  by swiping them off the screen. Simple. Google is adding native scrolling screenshot  support to Android 12. First introduced in  beta 3, the new scrolling screenshot feature  lets you capture larger images  of the current page you are on  Just take a screenshot like you normally would and  tap the new capture more button to screenshot more of your screen. Afterward, you can edit and crop the screenshot to your heart content. Nearby Share for Wifi passwords This is a potentially handy feature that lets you quickly share your WiFi network details with people in the same room as you. So while you could  share your Wi-Fi using a QR code scanner before,  if you look beneath that in Android 12 you now  get the option that says 'Nearby'. Tap on it, turn on Nearby sharing, and then it'll look for devices near you to share the details with.  Widgets Widgets have been completely redesigned  to offer a more adjustable window and one that's  designed to fit in with the rest of the rounded,  friendly interface. The conversation widget  shows recent conversations, and Photos has  a memories widget that can surface memories  from Google Photos right on your home screen. One-handed mode It wasn't included in the first preview,  but there's now a new one-handed mode that  you can enable. It made its first appearance  in the 2nd developer preview and could make using larger-screened phones a lot easier in the future.  When it's active, all you have to do is  drag down from the bottom edge of the phone  and it brings the app you're viewing down  halfway, to make the top of it easier to reach.  New picture-in-picture controls PiP has been around in Android for a while and  means you can have a small floating video playing  on-screen even when you're not in the video app.  The new controls make it possible to enlarge the window without going full-screen. A new way to launch Google Assistant:  In the build-up to Android 12's release,  we had heard Google was planning to  add other methods for activating its digital assistant beyond just saying,  "Hey, Google." Google confirmed that a  long press of the home button now launches  Google Assistant. And it looks like Google  has removed the old swipe from the corner  gesture to trigger Assistant in Beta 3. On-device search with AppSearch Searching for things on your Android device  is about to get much more powerful. In Android  12 beta 5, Google is introducing AppSearch,  an on-device search engine that will let you  perform searches for content inside applications,  even when your device is offline. Take, for example, a music app that  manages your favorite songs. When you  search for a song title in that app,  the application will then pass the request to  AppSearch to quickly retrieve the matching songs.  You will then be presented with the search results,  and you can start playing your music from there.  By offloading the request to AppSearch, you should  receive your results much quicker than before, while also using fewer resources. Of course, these are only a few improvements made on Android 12. . Android 12 is very close to launch. Google  is finalizing the changes for the new Android  version, so we have a better sense of what to  expect when the final version arrives toward the  end of summer. In fact, Google has teased that  Android 12 will launch in "the coming weeks."  Android 12 is undoubtedly the biggest  refresh to the operating system in years  and - now that we're onto the fifth public  beta - that means we're getting an even more  clear in-hand picture of what the final software  will end up like. In fact, this is the last beta  version. Before we start please do not forget  to like and subscribe. It will help us a lot. Android 12: Refreshed UI Android 12 now automatically chooses a set of correlative color palettes across the system UI  based on the colors used in  the phone current wallpaper.  The colors will apply uniformly across elements such as the lock screen,  quick settings, notifications panel, and  even the newly added adaptive widgets, Google says the color extraction system uses a clustering algorithm with Material color targets  to determine the dominant and less dominant colors  and then applies hues that match your wallpaper. A  rich palette of 5 colors — 2 neutral and 3 accent  colors ” and 12 shades of Material color can be  used to determine the closest hues to the user  wallpaper. Apps can then grab Android system color from an index into the color palette and  use it in many different, subtle ways. Widgets can  even use the color extraction feature to harmonize  with the user theme on the home screen. Notifications Notifications have  undergone something of a design overhaul too. The style of notification windows has changed,  and they're automatically grouped per app, or separated out if they're not conversational.  Also, there's an easy new snooze control that  you simply tap to snooze, rather than having  to swipe on the notification. Then you can snooze  specific notifications for a set amount of time. Lock Screen Clock The first thing you'll likely notice the first  time you power up a phone running Android 12 is  the new lock screen clock. With your phone clear  of notifications, a large digital clock takes up  pride of place right in the center of the screen. Quick settings shade When you drop down quick settings and  notifications from the top of the screen you'll no longer see those little round toggles. Instead,  they've been replaced by much larger rectangle  controls, similar to those we saw in Android 11's  Power menu for controlling smart home devices. What's interesting here is the color scheme.  With beta 2 Google enabled the feature that  allows it to pick a color automatically based  on whatever wallpaper you have. So if your  wallpaper is predominantly pink/purple,  the quick settings shade will be too. Or  green, if your wallpaper is green. And so on. Customization and theming Theming is a major part of  Android 12's new feature list.  In the customization window, you can choose  to have the colors of your wallpaper determine the accent and background colors of the entire  feature. It also allows you to toggle on a "themed icons" feature which transforms your app icons to color-matched ones as well.  Android 12: Privacy and security Privacy dashboard One of the major new official changes is the  Privacy Dashboard. It'll give you easy access to  see what apps have accessed certain permissions.  Whether that be your camera and mic or location.  What's more, when you first launch an  app and it wants access to your location  you can decide to have it only get access to  an approximate location rather than precise.   For apps that require location data, Android 12  will also offer a new setting that will let you  share your approximate location with the app  instead of your precise location. This setting  will show up within the location permission  pop-up you are probably already familiar with.   Android 12 will include new toggles in  the Quick Settings to help you quickly  disable camera and microphone access for all  apps with a simple tap. These toggles will  initially be limited to Pixel devices, but they will make their way to other phones soon  App Hibernation Android 12 also introduces a new feature  called App Hibernation. App hibernation allows you  to put apps into a hibernation state if they are  not actively being used. Apps that are put into a hibernated status will optimize their storage  usage, and their permissions will be revoked. Apps that are used for several months will  be put into this hibernation state, although users can quickly toggle this feature on and off  if they do not want their unused apps to go into hibernation. To get an app out of hibernation,  you just need to run it normally. PIN code keys  When you swipe to unlock the phone you'll  notice a fresh design for the PIN code keypad.  The 'buttons' are round, large, and minimal will  pastel shades. We suspect this same design will  eventually feature on the phone dialler too. Enhanced screenshots Take a screenshot and head to the edit/mark function and you can now type text onto your  screenshots in a number of different font colors.  Plus you can stick some emojis on there if you  want by pressing the little sticker icon. You can  resize them easily too by just pinching to zoom.  As a side note to that, you can now  easily dismiss screenshot thumbnails by swiping them off the screen. Simple. Google is adding native scrolling screenshot  support to Android 12. First introduced in  beta 3, the new scrolling screenshot feature  lets you capture larger images of the current page you are on.  Just take a screenshot like you normally would and  tap the new capture more button to screenshot  more of your screen. Afterward, you can edit  and crop the screenshot to your heart content. Nearby Share for Wifi passwords This is a potentially handy feature that lets  you quickly share your WiFi network details with  people in the same room as you. So while you could  share your Wi-Fi using a QR code scanner before,  if you look beneath that in Android 12 you now  get the option that says 'Nearby'. Tap on it,  turn on Nearby sharing, and then it'll looK  for devices near you to share the details with.  Widgets Widgets have been completely redesigned  to offer a more adjustable window and one that's designed to fit in with the rest of the rounded,  friendly interface. The conversation widget shows recent conversations, and Photos has  a memories widget that can surface memories  from Google Photos right on your home screen. One-handed mode It wasn't included in the first preview, but there's now a new one-handed mode that  you can enable. It made its first appearance  in the 2nd developer preview and could make using  larger-screened phones a lot easier in the future.  When it's active, all you have to do is  drag down from the bottom edge of the phone  and it brings the app you're viewing down  halfway, to make the top of it easier to reach.  New picture-in-picture controls PiP has been around in Android for a while and  means you can have a small floating video playing  on-screen even when you're not in the video app.  The new controls make it possible to enlarge  the window without going full-screen. A new way to launch Google Assistant:  In the build-up to Android 12's release,  we had heard Google was planning to  add other methods for activating its  digital assistant beyond just saying  "Hey, Google." Google confirmed that a long press of the home button now launches  Google Assistant. And it looks like Google  has removed the old swipe from the corner  gesture to trigger Assistant in Beta 3. On-device search with AppSearch Searching for things on your Android device  is about to get much more powerful. In Android  12 beta 5, Google is introducing App Search,  an on-device search engine that will let you  perform searches for content inside applications,  even when your device is offline. Take, for example, a music app that  manages your favorite songs. When you  search for a song title in that app,  the application will then pass the request to  App Search to quickly retrieve the matching songs.  You will then be presented with the search results,  and you can start playing your music from there.  By offloading the request to App Search, you should  receive your results much quicker than before,  while also using fewer resources. Of course, these are only a few improvements  made on Android 12.