Google has released the first beta of the Android 15 mobile OS for developers and early adopters. This version of the Android operating system emphasizes productivity, user privacy and security, and making apps more widely visible and accessible.
The beta was released on April 11 and a final release is expected sometime in August. Apps targeting Android 15 are displayed edge-to-edge by default, so they no longer need to explicitly call Window.setDecorFitsSystemWindows (false) or enableEdgetoEdge to show content behind system bars. Android builders recommend still calling enableEdgetoEdge() to get the edge-to-edge experience on earlier Android operating systems.
The Android 15 operating system also aims to make tap-to-pay more seamless and reliable while continuing to support Android’s Near Field Communications (NFC) app ecosystem. Apps can register a fingerprint on supported devices so they will be notified of polling loop activity, allowing for smooth operation with multiple NFC-aware applications.
For inter-character justification, text can be justified utilizing letter spacing by using JUSTIFICATION_MODE_INTER_CHARACTER. Inter-word justification first was introduced in Android 0, but inter-character solves for languages that use white space for segmentation, such as Chinese.
Security is an important focus of Android 15. In the key management space, Android 15 introduces E2eeContactKeysManager, facilitating end-to-end encryption in Android apps. An OS-level API is provided for storing cryptographic public keys. Version 15 also brings additional changes to prevent malicious background apps from bringing other apps to the foreground, elevating their privileges, and abusing user interactions. This is intended to protect users from malicious apps and offer more control over devices.
Android also now includes OS-level support for app archiving and unarchiving, thus making implementation easier for app stores. In the app-managed profiling realm, Android 15 includes a ProfilingManager class, which supports creating a collection of profiling information from within an app. Android’s builders plan to wrap this within an Android Jetpack API that simplifies the construction of profiling requests, but the core API will allow connection of heap dumps, heap profiles, stack sampling, and more.