Image Credits:<\/strong> Google<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Maybe the most important new privacy feature worth calling out here \u2014 and one that will be user-facing \u2014 is that the new Android photo picker will now ask users if they only want to give an app access to select photos instead of always having to allow access to every photo and video on a given device. Google is asking developers to test this new behavior with their apps to ensure that they can handle this new permission and selection flow.<\/p>\n

Android 14 will also feature a new screenshot detection API \u201cto prevent unnecessary access to a user\u2019s data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Android 14 is also adding a credential manager as a platform API \u2014 and through a Jetpack Library with a Google Play Services implementation, it will support this back to Android 4.4 (that was the KitKat release from 2013). It\u2019ll support passwords and passkeys. And while this was already available in the first preview, Google notes that it has now improved the user interface and made some API changes, too.<\/p>\n

With this release, Google is also introducing new optimizations to Android\u2019s memory management system, which will now more quickly disallow background processes from apps that have gone into a cached state.<\/p>\n

On the user-facing side, Google will now make it easier for users to more granularly personalize some of Android settings like temperature units, first day of the week and numbering systems. \u201d A European living in the United States might prefer temperature units to be in Celsius rather than Fahrenheit and for apps to treat Monday as the beginning of the week instead of the US default of Sunday,\u201d Google explains, perfectly describing my own personal preferences as a European living in the United States.<\/p>\n