Google released the first developer preview of Android 16 yesterday (November 19). While the announcement didn’t mention many new features, users who have installed the software have already encountered several upgrades.
It’s important to emphasize that the software is still in its early stages, and these features could disappear just as suddenly as they appeared. However, for now, they are there, and we’ll be keeping an eye on them as Android 16 development progresses.
First, as spotted by 9to5Google, the privacy dashboard (available through the Security & Privacy menu in Settings) now lets you see a full seven days of history, instead of the 24 hours currently available.
This means you can go further back in time to find apps that may not have worked properly, for example, if they were unable to access your phone’s camera, microphone, or location.
Next up is the Audio Sharing feature previously spotted in Android 15 (but now disabled). As Android Authority reports, it will let you share audio between multiple Bluetooth devices at the same time (for example, to two headphones).However, since it is based on the Bluetooth Auracast standard, you will need an Auracast-compatible smartphone for Audio Sharing to work. This is a Pixel 8 or Pixel 9 smartphone, excluding the Google Pixel 8a.
The last of our mini-roundup of new features in Android 16 is a new way to manage notification overload. Like Audio Sharing, this feature appeared in the code for Android 15 but was not yet enabled, but now it is.This is called a “notification cooldown” and it means that the amount of multiple notifications from the same app, one after the other, will gradually decrease in a short period of time. It’s a small change, but it should make multiple notifications less annoying.
