Android 14 Developer Preview 1, many other hidden news discovered

As we saw just yesterday, Google has begun the public phase of the Android 14 development cycle. Close to the release of the first Developer Preview, as has become tradition, all the main experts and geeks of the scene went wild in search of something new hidden, not officially announced. We list those that have emerged in the past few hours:

It looks like a feature clearly aimed at tablets and devices with large displays (or in any case larger than those of a traditional smartphone, and of course the reference is to foldables such as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold or the future Pixel Fold by Google itself).

Specifically, Android 14 guarantees greater prominence to the Settings page dedicated to the physical keyboard, making it a first-level item (Settings > Keyboardto understand), and then a whole series of options and sections are added that manage for example the modifier keys, the possibility of remapping some keys and much more.

As for the touchpad / trackpad, however, the news are not yet visible on a practical level, but lines of code have been found that suggest the existence of various gestures:

• Back: swipe right or left with three fingers
• Home: swipe up with three fingers
• Recent apps/multitasking: Swipe up with three fingers without letting go
• Notification curtain: swipe down with three fingers
• Previous/next app: swipe left or right with four fingers

Those who have used Chrome OS will be definitely familiar with these commands – let’s just say they are perfectly identical. Among other things, the Settings page dedicated to the trackpad will include several other classic options seen on other operating systems, such as the possibility of inverting the direction of scrolling, adjusting the movement of the cursor and activating/deactivating pressure to register a click (and use simple tap instead)

It seems that the new version of the operating system will implement a new page dedicated to hearing aids in the section Accessibility of the Settings. As you can see below at the moment it is not very populated, but everything you need is there. Among other things, it does not appear by default: a dedicated flag must be activated.

We had already talked about it in recent months, and now we have a first idea of ​​how it will work. Quite simply, it will be possible to view in which page or app you will end up once the gesture is completed.

Android 13 introduced the Photo Picker, a system that allows users to specify which photos and videos an application can access. With Android 14 this privacy feature is extended to all applicationswhether they use/are compatible with Photo Picker or not.

It is a rather widespread practice: it allows you to have two different instances of the same software, for example it is very useful if you want to have active two accounts of the same service and the app doesn’t support multi-account easily enough. However, so far there has never been a native Android solution: we had to hope for the individual manufacturers, with ups and downs. In DP1 the functionality is present but it is still rather incomplete and full of bugs. Of course it is not even said that it will be ready with the official release.

The platform developed in collaboration between Samsung and Google is naturally supported via an app downloadable from the Play Store. Apparently the DP1 already contains a version, even if the package looks different from the one available for download. It will probably be part of Project Mainline and will be updated directly by components such as Play Services.

Even this novelty had been talked about in the past, and it seems that it will come true. The idea is to avoid that an expired certificate or one issued by an entity whose trust is compromised makes it difficult for slightly older devices to operate normally online. Up to now, to correct this kind of problems it was necessary to resort to system updates.

Your operating system may be capable of monitor background app installation activities (technique often used by manufacturers or carriers in branded variants of phones, especially in the US) and show them on a specific Settings page. In DP1 this is all very experimental – you have to turn on not only a special flag for the specific page, but also a kind of incomplete version of the Settings app itself.

It is basically the implementation of the support of a hardware feature introduced in the most recent ARM chips, those based on the ARMv9 architecture (Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and more recent, to understand) and called MTE (Memory Tagging Extension). It aims to reduce the risk that a bug can cause security holes, at the cost of a performance impact that can be described as negligible. It seems that at least initially Google wants to make MTE support optional and label it as Beta.

An initiative similar but not identical to what we have seen with Chrome OS in recent days. Here we talk about gestures in the trackpad and the possibility of remapping modifier keys (such as CTRL, ALT and SHIFT).

Google is preparing an API that will allow apps to pull directly from the operating system preferences such as date and calendar format, first day of the week, type of calendar (Roman, Chinese…), unit of measurement for temperature, etc. All of this should be specifiable in a new section of the Settings in System > Languages ​​and inputs.

Android 14 will introduce a new API called “Gentle Updates”: it will basically allow third-party app stores to figure out when are the best times to send updates in the background to apps installed through them (for example, it doesn’t update an app that’s currently in use). This is a further step by Google to bring third-party stores on par with the Play Store. Two other features will be the ability to make app updates exclusive (let’s assume that an app is available on multiple stores present on the device at the same time, only the store from which it was installed will be able to update it) and the ability to request approval from part of the user to install an update.

The current data security initiative requires the user to go through the Play Store to see what information an app can access. In Android 14 this information could be included directly in the Settings page of the operating system, right in the page/section dedicated to apps.

Note: article updated with new information and previews.