Android 16 Inches Toward a Launch With Accessibility-Focused Third Beta Release

This release brings the next version of Google’s mobile operating system to ‘platform stability.’

​This release brings the next version of Google’s mobile operating system to ‘platform stability.’  Read More Technology

Google’s newest mobile operating system took another step forward with Thursday’s release of the third beta of Android 16. This brings it to a “platform stability” milestone, meaning its app-facing behaviors won’t change, and its APIs are set.

However, it doesn’t offer many new features. Google’s release notes only outline two changes to improve accessibility—one for your ears and the other for your eyes—plus a first look at a future security enhancement.

Android 16 now supports Bluetooth Auracast, a wireless audio standard that lets one or more devices tune into a nearby sound source as if it were a Wi-Fi hotspot. Google’s post about this feature describes it as a way to help you tune hearing aids into audio broadcasts, but the technology has wider applications. 

When we demoed an early version of Auracast at MWC 2023, the use cases included picking one channel to listen to among all the games being shown on TVs at a sports bar and sharing a movie’s audio among multiple listeners.  

Android 16’s other accessibility upgrade addresses users with impaired vision: an outline-text option you can invoke to display text in dialog boxes and other controls inside contrasting boxes. 

Meanwhile, developers anxious to test security features now have a chance to try Local Network Protection, which “gives users more control over which apps can access devices on their local network.” (Today, granting an app permission to access the internet also lets it talk to devices on your local network.) Google plans to ship it in “a future Android major release.”

The release notes also advise developers to check how their apps work with other Android 16 features rolled out in earlier releases, such as new health and fitness permissions and expanded support for larger-screen devices.

This third beta follows a second beta in February, a first beta in January, and developer previews in December and November. This release calendar suggests a final release or at least a public showcase of Android 16 at Google I/O, which happens May 20-21 in Mountain View, California.

That would be almost five months earlier in the year than Android 15’s release last October; Google says it’s moving up this schedule to coordinate better with smartphone vendors’ new hardware introductions.

Thursday’s release is available via Google’s Android beta program and open to Google Pixel devices ranging from 2021’s Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro to the current Pixel 9 series. That allows individual users of those phones, as opposed to developers, to try this beta now. As we said the last time, If you do that and it makes a mess of your device, please don’t @ us.