Android O Wrap-Up: Everything There Is To Know So far

In a surprising reveal today Google officially announced Android O and there are a number of new changes that have been introduced. Some of these changes are consumer-facing, meaning they'll be changes that users will be able to interact with directly, while some of them are changes that will for the most part only affect developers as they're tools for the development process of apps and software compatibility. It's important to note that although there were a decent amount of new things to discover in Android O's first developer preview, things can always be changed again before the final release of the software, which is expected to be launching sometime in Q3 of this year. Google is also planning on launching three more developer previews leading up to that point, so there is bound to be some new and exciting discoveries with Android O throughout the remainder of the year.

One of the bigger adjustments that Google is making to the Android software is with the notifications. Google is giving users much more control here. For starters, notifications can now be snoozed for 15 minutes at a time, 30 minutes at a time, or for an hour. Once a notification is snoozed, just like when you hit snooze on an alarm the notification will regress and pop back up at a later point after the designated amount of time has passed. The notification will also dismiss itself until that time. For developers, they'll have the opportunity to place notifications for their apps into specific categories that Google is calling notification channels, which should keep the notification tray more organized. Developers will also be able to set notifications for their apps to dismiss automatically after it has be a certain amount of time without any interaction from the user.

Another exciting change coming with Android O is the picture-in-picture mode which is going to more or less enable a functionality that will act just like it sounds. If you've got an Android TV device then you likely already know what this looks like. You'll be able to watch a video on an app like YouTube while scrolling over the map in Google Maps if you're looking for a place to eat. Picture-in-picture will have other features too, like interactive pause and play controls to manage video playback while the mode is active, and resizable windows as users will be able to adjust the aspect ratio for apps with this feature. Ambient Display has also gotten at least one change so far and now seems to show colors for notifications instead of just the standard white and black. If you're not flashing Android O to your own device there are quite a few changes to look through, and you can find them all here in the links below if you're interested in learning more about what Android O offer so far.