Android 13 Beta 1: Pixel 6 may get audio function similar to Apple's iPhones Spatial Audio

The Pixel 6 may get audio function similar to Apple's iPhones  Spatial Audio

Android 13 Beta 1 is here, and while it's chock-full of new features and improvements coming to all devices later this year, it's also tailor-made for Pixels. Based on some code found in today's update, Google's latest smartphones are getting a fancy new audio feature that could help it compete against Apple's recent efforts.

As spotted by Esper.io's Mishaal Rahman, Beta 1 ships with a spatializer effect in tow, ready for the Pixel 6 Pro. Rahman also found a shared library file for spatial audio in the "soundfx" folder included in today's update. Both of these discoveries seem to confirm spatial audio support coming to Google's newest devices, possibly with the arrival of Android 13 later this year.

It's just the latest noise surrounding Google and spatial audio. A year ago, we heard our first rumors about upcoming Pixel Buds that could potentially support the feature, giving all of your favorite songs some added immersion. In March, a new report summarized all of the company's recent audio-related acquisitions, all of which seem to point towards some sort of advanced audio hardware.

It's not completely clear whether this upgrade would require certain headphones — like, say, that rumored Pixel Buds revision — or if it'll work with any gear you have laying around. This isn't the first time the Pixel 6 has received a major audio upgrade post-launch, either. Adaptive Sound arrived just a couple of weeks after the phones hit store shelves.

Although today's Android 13 beta might not bring spatial audio support just yet, there are plenty of other features worth checking out. If you're curious, enrolling in Google's beta program takes just a few steps.

 Android 13 Beta 1 adds a handy clipboard overlay that lets you edit what you copy

 

Android 13 has so far given us a number of big-ticket features like more granular permissions for notifications and media controls, improvements to the Material You color-picking system, and further improvements to Android's tablet interface. And with the release of Android 13 Beta 1, there are a few other minor features to rave about — particularly if you're into squiggles.

The first public beta also debuts a new clipboard overlay that the company teased, but didn't release in the second Android 13 developer preview. At its core, it's an expansion of the screenshot editing overlay Google introduced in Android 11, providing more context about what you copied and allowing you, if desired, to edit it. For text, that means a straightforward text-editing box to correct any errors

before following through with the copy itself — including URLs. For images, however, tapping the edit button opens up the markup box that lets you crop, highlight, or add text to whatever you're copying.

It's a simple addition that, in practice, makes a lot of sense to the core Android experience, especially given how often one is copying text without inspecting its content. The overlay doesn't add any extra steps to the process — you can ignore it completely and nothing changes in your existing workflow — but if you do spot an error, you now have around five seconds to fix it because the bottom-left pop-up disappears.

It's pretty easy to install Android 13 Beta 1 if you have a Pixel — and even if you don't — and we're tracking all the other new features, including new Material You theming options and lock screen smart home controls.

 

Google just made it easier to try Android 13 on your non-Pixel phone 

Google is offering Generic System Images of its Android 13 beta build, opening up the possibility for many non-Pixel devices as well as Pixels out of support to test the beta for themselves. You might be raring to get at it for your own phone, but you'll need to make sure it's eligible to get started.

Four experimental builds are available supporting either x86_64 or ARM64 architectures and the option to include or exclude Google Mobile Services apps. You can retrieve them from the Android Developers website and load them onto an Android 9 (API level 28) or later device that is fully Treble-compliant. Do note that you'll need an unlocked bootloader to load these images on, so be careful about that manufacturer's warranty.

Google says it's aware of three major issues:

These images are almost if not entirely identical to the ones designated for the Pixels currently supported with the company citing use of the same AOSP and GMS sources. Developers should note that this release is not Compatibility Test Suite approved, even though these images have been validated on Pixel 4 and later devices with similar CTS results to the dedicated images. Other OEMs including Samsung have offered GSIs featuring Android builds in development along with their UX attached. Google has offered GSIs since at least the Android 10 development cycle when Project Treble optimizations were beginning to become established.

If you're cheeky enough to give one of these GSIs a go, but don't know where to start, follow the guidance posted on the Android Developers site and check out our tutorial on how to manually load any image.

 Android 13 fixes one of the worst things about controlling your smart home 

Android 11 added some super handy smart home controls to the power button menu, so naturally, last year's update did away with them altogether. While toggles for your lights, cameras, and more were still accessible from a new lock screen shortcut, it required you to unlock your device to do anything, making the entire experience feel slow and clunky. Thankfully, a new change in today's Android 13 Beta 1 release sets the stage for some big improvements.

A new toggle in the lock screen settings menu allows you to bypass the need to unlock your phone or tablet to control any of your smart home gadgets. Once this toggle is enabled, you won't need to enter a PIN or use your fingerprint just to turn on a light. Instead, everything will be accessible right from the jump.

As it stands, this feature is disabled by default, so users will have to opt in to prevent security concerns. It'll also have to be supported by the device controls app itself — for example, Google Home. Right now, it doesn't seem like any app supports it just yet, as I'm still required to authenticate myself before controlling any of my gadgets. With any luck, things will look much different by the time Android 13 launches later this year.

We're still digging through all of the changes available in today's Android 13 update, but if you want to try it out for yourself, downloading it to your Pixel phone is super easy.

 Android 13 Beta 1 is whipping its big screen taskbar mode into shape

 

 

Android 13 Beta 1 has finally landed—we almost thought it wouldn't make the cut ahead of Google I/O 2022 given that the company was a bit behind schedule. While Google hasn't announced too much for this release, there are many new things hidden in this version. Among them is a change for big screen devices that brings their app drawer up to par with the standard launcher, with it finally receiving the familiar old intelligent suggestions at the top.

Regular app launcher vs the new big screen app launcher in Android 13

To understand what is happening here, we need to back up just a little bit. Android 12L introduced a new layout for big screen devices like tablets and foldables that includes a taskbar at the bottom. You can even activate this interface on a regular Pixel phone by lowering its DPI, which is what you can see in the screenshot on the right above. However, this big screen app drawer was lacking a top row of intelligent, context-based app suggestions that has long become standard on Pixel phones. As spotted by Esper.io's Mishaal Rahman, the app drawer in Android 13 Beta 1 fixes that and finally adds the familiar context-based suggestions to the top row of the big screen launcher.

While this doesn't necessarily have to mean anything, Google's interest in bringing this big screen launcher up to par with the regular Pixel one could mean that the company has some big screen device of its own in the works that will take advantage of the interface—maybe the rumored Pixel Fold or the mysterious Nest Hub tablet crossover. After all, this addition isn't any good for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 and more devices from other manufactures since they all use their own launchers and skins.

If you want to dig deeper yourself, you can install the Android 13 beta on your supported Pixel phone, but if that's too adventurous for you, be sure to check out everything new we've found in Android 13 so far.

 Android 13 Beta 1 backtracks on changes to Do Not Disturb

 

The Android 13 Beta 1 just arrived, and it has seen Google drop plans to rebrand the Do Not Disturb mode on its software. Android 13 Developer Preview 2 saw the company change its Do Not Disturb features to a new name under the title of Priority mode. In this latest update, Google has reverted to the original name (spotted by Mishaal Rahman).

Android 13 Beta 1 includes the same branding that most are used to in Android 12 software, and it seems Google may have retired its plans to rename the software. Either that, or it will return later under a future update. So far, it doesn’t seem likely like this name change will debut in the final release of Android 13.

From my limited time with Android 13 Beta 1 so far, it doesn’t seem like there are many further changes to the Do Not Disturb mode. Schedules used to have their own section within Android 12, but now it sits under the General sub-menu in this latest update. Otherwise, there aren't any significant changes. The changes in DP2 were just to the new branding of Priority, and we didn’t spot any feature changes then either.

Android 13 is expected to land in full later this year, but if you want to get an early play with the software, you can download Beta 1 now. Here’s our guide on how to download Android 13 Beta 1 to your phone.

 Android 13's squiggly media player dances to the music with you 

Android 13 Beta 1 is out today, and while it looks like this year's OS update won't be the same sort of all-out reinvention that Android received last year, there's a whole host of minor UI changes coming our way. Google's already made some tweaks to the built-in media player in recent developer previews, and today's release adds a fun splash of motion to the playback bar.

In Beta 1, the media player found in the notification tray now sports a squiggly animation as the dot makes its way across the track. The unplayed portion of a file remains a straight line, but once the current playback dot makes its way across the bar, the line flows up and down like an audio waveform. Unfortunately, it doesn't match the tempo of whatever you're listening to, though it does stop moving if you pause the track. It also shows up on the lock screen player UI.

It's a small change, but one that every user is bound to see once they've upgraded to Android 13's stable release later this year. If you're unwilling to wait, you can opt into the Android Beta Program to check out the latest features for yourself.

 On-device search is broken in Android 13 Beta 1, but it could mean bigger changes down the road 

Android 13's first beta has finally arrived, bringing this year's upgrade to anyone brave enough to sign up for Google's beta program. No piece of unreleased software is without its fair share of bugs, and Android 13 is no different. Pixel users likely noticed their search bar reverted to the old-school Google variant, but it might be part of a more significant change in the works since Android 12L.

Left: On-device search on Android 12. Right: Basic Google search on Android 13 Beta 1.

If you install today's beta on a Pixel device, you'll notice the universal search bar that first rolled out with Android 12 has been replaced by the classic Google search bar, incapable of completing on-device requests (via 9to5Google). While apps can still show up in your results, settings and other actions usually found here are nowhere to be seen. It also adopts the old Google search bar look at the top of the app drawer rather than the newer "Search your phone and more" bar seen in Android 12 and later.

At first glance, this seems like a fairly basic bug, an accidental rollback to an older version of the search bar pulled from the days of Android 11. However, an unreleased feature from the Android 12L beta in December might hold the answer to what's going on here. Months ago, Mishaal Rahman from Esper.io tweeted about a new launcher flag meant to transform the launcher search box into the same "AllApps" UI that is accessible from the app drawer on Android 12. With this tweak, the search experience would be the same no matter whether you tapped the home screen box or the one at the top of your app drawer.

This change didn't launch with Android 12L, but considering today's bug in Android 13, it seems like it might finally be in the works. As Rahman notes on Twitter, it's easy to re-enable the newer search bar through ADB commands. This method even includes that combined "one search" experience, providing more evidence that this bug is just early stages of a full transition.

We'll have to wait for future beta releases to see what changes — although it's always possible a server-side brings the newer search box back for everyone. It would represent a massive change in Google's search experience on Android, one we hopefully won't have to wait too long to see come to fruition.