Google Releases Android 14 [Video]

Google has announced the official release of Android 14 with updates that help you customize your device experience, give you more control over your health and safety, and improve accessibility.

Whether it's the color of your phone, your choice of phone case, the hardware of your device or the choices you've made to customize its software, your devices are an extension of your personality. Android has always helped you express yourself in both practical and artistic ways–from the wallpaper, style and color palette theme to buttons and backgrounds. Now, we're introducing more ways to tailor your phone to your personal preferences.





Here's a look at the new features announced by Google...

Express Yourself

Android 14's updated customization picker makes it easier to switch between wallpapers and update what you want to see at a glance. You can now set custom lock screen shortcuts, like QR reader or the Google Home app, so you have quick, one-tap access to your most used controls directly from your Android lock screen.

Choose from a set of new, curated lock screen templates for fonts, widgets, colors and formats that best match your style. These options also use AI to adjust your screen based on your situation. For example, if the weather is suddenly taking a turn for the worse, your lock screen weather widget will become more prominent.




Android 14 also lets you show off your most creative and artistic self — no art skills required. Coming first to Pixel 8/8 Pro, generative AI wallpapers use AI-generated text-to-image diffusion models to help you create wallpapers that match your vision. You can choose from pre-set suggestions to create never-before-seen wallpapers in just a few taps.



If you prefer a less colorful phone aesthetic that is easy on the eyes, Android 14 includes a monochromatic theme that makes minimal colors look sleek and beautiful across your entire device.



Android is also helping to improve your photo and camera quality. Building on Android 13's support for high dynamic range (HDR) video, Android 14 supports HDR images with Ultra HDR. Ultra HDR helps your photos look their best by bringing out vibrant colors, brighter highlights and darker shadows. Plus, thanks to the great HDR screens available on many of today's phones, Ultra HDR takes and displays high-definition photos without altering the original quality of the image.

Control Over Health, Security and Data

Apps help people track their fitness, health and wellness levels. But the data that's collected is often isolated within each particular app, limiting your visibility and control over your data. Health Connect is now built into your Android 14 settings as a central way to store all your data in one place and stay in control of your privacy. And your data is securely encrypted on your phone, which ensures Google or anyone else can't see or use it for any other purpose. Just connect and sync your favorite health and fitness apps — like Oura, Peloton and Whoop — to get started.



You'll also have more visibility into how your data is being used by apps that request access to your data. With new data sharing updates on Android 14, when you're asked to grant apps permission to information like your location you'll be notified when an app is sharing location data with third parties and can make a more informed decision on whether or not to grant access.



Digital protection on Android 14 also extends to your most sensitive information: your device's personal identification numbers (PIN). Android 14 enhances PIN security by encouraging you to set a six-digit PIN. After typing in the correct 6-digit or longer PIN, you won't need to hit enter anymore as your device will automatically unlock.

Features for Low-vision and Hard-of-hearing Users

Android 14 comes with many vision-and hearing-inclusive features. For low-vision users, the improved magnifier on Android 14 is more intuitive, with the ability to pinch to zoom in and out from 100%. You can also change the magnifier size in a new Magnifier Settings panel or customize how much of the screen you'd like magnified. And to prevent your magnifier from turning off when you go from app to app, you can set your magnification to "Keep on when switching apps" in Android's accessibility settings.



Also, you can improve readability and quickly change the font size of the text on your device with Android 14's font size Quick Settings tile and enjoy better readability with nonlinear font scaling, which enlarges larger font size at a slower rate than smaller font size. This prevents text that is already large enough from getting bigger than necessary — that way you can read your screen without text getting cut off, text wrapping to multiple lines or text breaking the page layout.




We've also updated our approach to hearing accessibility. Android 14 has more intuitive ways to connect and interact with your hearing aids, such as a dedicated hearing-aid setup flow from Accessibility settings, an easy way to route audio to different outputs and the ability to quickly access hearing aids controls from a shortcut.

Similarly, notification sounds, rings or alerts aren't effective to all our users all the time. On Android 14, you can turn on "Flash notifications" from the Accessibility and Notifications settings and get visual light flashes when you have incoming notifications.

Availability

Android 14 is starting to roll out to supported Pixel devices today, and later this year will be available on more devices from Samsung Galaxy, iQOO, Nothing, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, Sony, Tecno, vivo and Xiaomi.

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