Google recently released the first developer preview of Android 16. Developers testing the operating system have begun to reveal many new features that will enrich the user experience.

Features coming with the first developer preview of Android 16

Although Google’s first announcement did not include details, the pre-release is full of surprises. The most striking innovation is the expansion of the Privacy Dashboard. Users will now be able to review the 7-day activity history of applications instead of the last 24 hours.

In this way, which applications access sensitive data such as camera, microphone or location will become more transparent. There is also a significant improvement in the audio experience. Bluetooth Auracast support is coming with Android 16 and the “Audio Sharing” feature is activated.

Thanks to this feature, users will be able to stream audio from a single source to multiple Bluetooth devices at the same time. For example, two people will be able to listen to the same music with wireless headphones at the same time.

In addition, new tools to prevent notification clutter were included in the developer pre-release. Although the details of this feature are not yet fully clear, the fact that it was seen and disabled in the codes of Android 15 shows that Google has been working on this issue for a long time.

With Android 16, users are expected to be able to manage notifications more effectively. In Android 16, this feature is expected to be called Rich Persistent Notifications.

Google confirmed that the second developer preview will be released in December 2024 while the beta version will be released to everyone in January 2025 when it released Android 16 DP1.