After many months of developer previews and beta releases, Android 15 is now formally obtainable.
It’s going to begin rolling out to supported Pixel gadgets within the subsequent few weeks, and within the subsequent few months, gadgets from Samsung, Honor, iQOO, Lenovo, Motorola, Nothing, OnePlus, Oppo, realme, Sharp, Sony, Tecno, vivo and Xiaomi will get it.
It affords a number of updates that customers will be capable to make the most of, comparable to the truth that the TalkBack display screen reader is now powered by Gemini, Chrome can now learn net pages aloud, and the Earthquake Alerts System — which makes use of crowdsourced earthquake detection expertise to inform of earthquakes earlier than they begin — is rolling out to all U.S. states and 6 territories.
As with each Android replace, there are numerous modifications builders will want to concentrate on. This time, the primary updates for builders could be divided into 4 classes: typography and internationalization, digicam and media experiences, consumer expertise, and privateness and safety.
“Android 15 continues our mission of constructing a non-public and safe platform that helps enhance your productiveness whereas providing you with new capabilities to supply lovely apps, superior media and digicam experiences, and an intuitive consumer expertise, notably on tablets and foldables,” Matthew McCullough, VP of product for Android Developer, wrote in a weblog publish.
Typography and internationalization
FontFamily cases can now be created from variable fonts with out having to specify the wght and ital axes, and the textual content renderer will robotically alter these values to match the airing textual content.
NotoSansCJK, which is the font file for Chinese language, Japanese, and Korean, can be now a variable font, which the Android crew says creates new alternatives for artistic typography.
The Japanese Hiragana, or Hentaigana, font is now bundled by default, helpful for art work and design, but additionally in sharing and preserving historic Japanese paperwork.
And at last, there’s improved justification for languages which use white area to phase characters, like Chinese language and Japanese.
Digicam and media
For screens that assist each HDR and SDR, setDesiredHdrHeadroom can be utilized to set the HDR headroom, which may forestall SDR content material from displaying as washed out.
Android 15 additionally helps clever adjustment of audio quantity and dynamic vary compression for apps with AAC audio content material and loudness metadata. This enables quantity to be adjusted based mostly on consumer gadgets and environment, the Android crew defined.
Different updates on this space embrace Low Mild Increase to regulate the publicity of the Preview stream in low-light circumstances, better management of flash depth in SINGLE and TORCH modes, and assist for digital MIDI 2.0 gadgets as in the event that they have been a USB MIDI 2.0 system.
Person expertise
To enhance multitasking, customers can now save their split-screen app combos and likewise pin the taskbar.
Moreover, apps that concentrate on SDK 35 will show edge-to-edge by default. System bars will likely be clear or translucent, and content material is drawn behind.
Privateness and safety
Customers can now create a non-public area the place they will cover sure apps, requiring authentication to entry them.
Android 15 additionally provides assist for utilizing passkeys to sign-on and helps autofilling saved credentials into related enter fields.
Additionally, apps can now detect if they’re being recorded, which permits apps to inform the consumer if that is taking place whereas they’re performing a delicate activity.
Moreover, the brand new allowCrossUidActivitySwiftFromBelow attribute prevents activity hijacking assaults by blocking apps from launching actions in the event that they don’t match the highest UID on the stack.
And at last, PendingIntent creators now block background exercise launches by default, which prevents apps from by accident creating ones that may very well be utilized by malicious actors
Different developer expertise updates throughout Android Studio, Jetpack Compose, and Android Jetpack libraries
The ApplicationStartInfo API supplies perception into the rationale an app is beginning, time spent in launch phases, begin temperature, and extra.
The profiling class in Android Jetpack lets apps request heap profiles, heap dumps, stack samples, or system traces.
StorageStats.getAppBytesByDataType([type]) API provides insights into how an app is utilizing storage.
Different developer expertise updates embrace new PdfRenderer API capabilities, new OpenJDK APIs, new SQLite APIs, and new Canvas drawing capabilities.
