The latest version of Android brings both new lock-screen widgets and a new set of locks for some of your data. And like previous updates, most users of Google’s mobile operating system will have to wait to see what these features look like on their own devices.
Android 14, released Wednesday, looks to follow the pattern of last year’s Android 13 in bringing a grab-bag of updated bits. The headline description on Google’s post by engineering VP Dave Burke: “??More customization, control and accessibility features.”
The most visible customization options—a major part of Google’s pitch for Android 14 at its I/O developer conference this May—govern how lock screens look and work. For example, you’ll be able to redo yours by picking one of Google’s new templates, then tweaking its layout to add custom shortcuts to whatever apps you might want to jump into after unlocking the phone.
Burke’s post also notes that the new templates can use AI routines to respond to changing conditions: “For example, if the weather is suddenly taking a turn for the worse, your lock screen weather widget will become more prominent.”
Health and medical apps, meanwhile, will be able to stash your data in a new Health Connect enclave that Google says keeps it “securely encrypted on your phone, which ensures Google or anyone else can't see or use it for any other purpose.”
Two other privacy features will give you additional oversight of how much of your info gets exposed to individual apps. The location-tracking controls that Google has tightened notably in recent years will now include notifications if an app’s developer has reported to Google that it can share location data with third parties. And a separate post for developers notes that Android 14 will let you respond to an app’s request for access to your photos and videos by limiting that reach to the pics and clips you select.
But despite recent changes, Android still doesn’t have a privacy defense as comprehensive as Apple’s strict App Tracking Transparency, which requires apps to get your permission before seeing what you’re up to in other companies’ apps and sites.
That developer post also highlights an Android 14 feature that users of third-party password managers have been waiting for: the ability to save passkeys for sites that offer this more secure upgrade from passwords.
And as Google advertised when it first delivered a developer preview of Android 14 in February, this release adds new assistance for people with limited visibility or hearing, such as quicker ways to magnify text without making headings awkwardly large as well as the option to replace audio notifications by having the front screen or the back camera light up with “flash notifications.”
In keeping with the history of Android updates, Google’s own Pixel phones—which ship without the software add-ons and often outright bloat of third-party Android phones—should see this upgrade available starting today. Google’s post says “more of your favorite devices from Samsung Galaxy, iQOO, Nothing, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, Sony, Tecno, vivo and Xiaomi” should get Android 14 later this year.
In the bargain, Pixel devices get a few new extra features exclusive to that line of phones and tablets. The camera app not only gets Android 14’s support for “Ultra HDR,” a mode with deeper colors than plain old HDR (High Dynamic Range), but also comes with a revised interface that eases switching between photo and video modes.
On the Pixel Fold, Android 14 will deliver a dual-screen “interpreter mode” that leverages that foldable phone’s extra displays. For example, you can have the exterior screen show the translated version of the text you entered on the inner screen.
Another recent addition to the Pixel lineup, the Pixel Tablet, gets updates to Google Kids Space—the “hand your device to a kid” mode that remains annoyingly incomplete on Apple’s mobile devices—to simplify switching between whatever apps you’ve allowed your little one to use. And when you dock this tablet in its Hub Mode, you’ll be able to ask Google Assistant to play podcasts and news stations.
Finally, AI will have a more prominent presence on Google’s new Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro phones. There, you’ll be able to order up generative-AI wallpaper by telling the phone what kind of art you want to appear below your app icons and widgets—such as, perhaps, this prompt that we’ve seen yield good AI-generated results: “a lion using a laptop, in the style of an old tapestry."