Android 13 preview blocks notifications, adds more to tablet taskbar

Android 13 Developer Preview 2 is out, and with it comes a lot of changes for the next version of Android. Preview 2 is still a very early look at Android 13, and most of the important features revealed for these Android Previews come during Google I/O. The good news is that Google has just set a date for this event: May 11-12.

First, if you’re disappointed by the relatively modest tablet changes brought about by Android 12L, know that Google is still working on tablet features. The latest Android 13 preview added an app drawer button to the taskbar, allowing you to easily access all your apps from any screen. It’s a great addition and hopefully a sign that Android 12L has a new taskbar added.

Next, it would be great if the Android taskbar worked like a Windows or Mac taskbar. The Android taskbar displays the bottom row of icons on the home screen, and that’s it. Instead, it should display pinned apps on one side and recently opened apps on the other. Other operating systems work this way because it makes sense. Google officially calls this the “Taskbar”, so shouldn’t it show current tasks?

As usual, there’s a lot going on with the notification bar. Subscription notifications are enabled, so every app will now ask for notification permissions the first time it launches. As someone who never wants to hear notifications from 90 percent of apps, it’s nice to disable most notifications in advance.

Foreground Services (FGS) Task Manager

The dedicated multimedia notification introduced in Android 11 has been completely redesigned. Instead of showing the album art in thumbnail, it now covers the entire background of the notification. The media notification can no longer be collapsed, and it’s not always the height of the two notifications. Removing the double-height notification and thumbnail leaves a lot more room for controls, and you’ll now see a lot more text, a search bar, and “previous”and “next”buttons.

One issue with the media player is that some music apps don’t pass high resolution images to the multimedia notification. Applications expect the image to be displayed as a tiny thumbnail, so it has a low resolution. Expanding the file to a full size background image looks terrible.

One of the coolest new features for split screen lovers is the ability to drag an app from the notifications drawer to split screen view. Just press and hold the notification and start moving your finger. The notification panel will hide and split screen mode will be activated. The only problem is that you can’t perform this action with the media player yet, because it creates weird custom system notifications.

Google has something wild planned for Android, mostly ignored screen saver functionality. Amazon Fire tablets can connect to a charging dock and turn into an Alexa smart display, and it looks like Google wants to do something similar with Google Assistant. This feature hasn’t launched yet, but Esper’s Mishaal Rahman has discovered code for “complications”that can run in screen saver mode. You will be able to display information such as weather, air quality, date and time, which is very similar to the smart display feature.

Android 13 has already made some visible improvements to the screensaver settings, such as new options for displaying rainbow animations or photos from Google Photos. Elsewhere in settings, Google made the smart decision to combine the “display size”and “font size”screens, as they both affect the size of everything. Now you can manage everything from one screen, and there’s a big Reset button at the bottom if you mess up.

Finally, we have two new quick settings buttons: a QR code reader that finally eliminates the need for a third-party app, and a new Security & Privacy tile that bundles the microphone, camera access, and location lock toggle. in one button. Google displays these three tiny buttons in a giant full-screen popup, which is hopefully just an indication of some of the clunkiness of the early alpha.