The latest Android 16 beta has arrived, and it marks Platform Stability. That means the APIs and app-facing behaviors are finalized. We’re very close to the final version that will be released in just a few months.
What’s New in Android 16 Beta 3?
While this beta is all about stability, there are still a handful of notable changes to talk about.
Broadcast Audio Support
If you’re rocking a Pixel 9 device, you’ll be happy to know that Android 16 Beta now supports Auracast broadcast audio with compatible LE Audio hearing aids. This is part of Android’s ongoing efforts to enhance audio accessibility. Auracast allows compatible hearing aids and earbuds to receive direct audio streams from public venues like airports, concert halls, and classrooms.
Outline Text for Maximum Text Contrast
Android 16 Beta 3 also introduces outline text, which replaces high-contrast text, to help people with vision impairments. This feature improves readability by drawing a larger contrasting area around the text. New Accessibility Manager APIs are also included, allowing apps and UI toolkits to check if this mode is enabled.
The screenshots below show text without any contrast added, the previous high-contrast text, and the new outline text.
Test Your App with Local Network Protection
A new Local Network Protection (LNP) feature is available for testing in Android 16 Beta 3. This feature (planned for a future Android release) gives people more control over which apps can access devices on their local network. Currently, any app with the INTERNET permission can communicate with devices on your local network. With LNP, apps will eventually need specific permission to access the local network. For now, LNP is an opt-in feature.
Get Your Apps Ready
If you’re developing an SDK, library, tool, or game engine, Google says it’s crucial to prepare any updates now. This will help prevent compatibility issues for app and game developers and allow them to target the latest SDK features.
Here are some key changes that Google highlighted:
- 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 other 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.
- 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, requiring migration or opt-out for predictive back, and disabling 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.
- Health and Fitness: Changes have been implemented for health and fitness permissions.
What’s Coming in 2025?
Looking ahead, Google has plans for two Android API releases in 2025. We’re currently looking at the preview for Android 16, which is scheduled for release in Q2 2025. A minor release in Q4 2025 will focus on feature updates, optimizations, and bug fixes.
Get Started with Android 16 Beta
Make sure you’re enrolled in the Android Beta program if you’re interested in trying Android 16 Beta 3. After signing up your device, head to its settings, tap “System,” then “System Update,” and check for updates. While the Platform Stability releases are generally pretty, well, stable, we still don’t recommend using them on your daily driver phone.
Source: Google
