Google

The Android update treadmill continues with the merchandise of Android 13. It's 1 of the smallest Android releases successful caller memory, with hardly immoderate user-facing features to constituent to. Keep successful mind, though, that this update follows the monster Android 12 merchandise from past year. This is besides the second Android OS merchandise this year, the erstwhile 1 being the tablet-focused Android 12L update that was rushed retired the doorway successful March.

We would person a spot much nutrient to enactment with if Android 12L was portion of this release, but arsenic it is, we're near with a drawback container of features for Android 13. It includes galore foundational features for Android tablets and astute displays, but there's not overmuch present for phones.

Even so, determination are things to discuss, truthful let's dive in.

The notification panel

Enlarge / Apps present request to beg for support to amusement notifications.

Ron Amadeo

One of the nicest changes to Android 13 is the summation of the runtime notification permission. You've been capable to artifact apps from showing notifications for years, but apps present request to explicitly inquire for support to beep astatine you and volition popular up an "allow/deny" container astatine startup. As idiosyncratic who seldom wants to beryllium bothered by my phone, I've recovered my support complaint is precise low. It feels similar 95 percent of apps inquire for notification permissions, and I o.k. possibly 10 percent of them. It's precise satisfying to preemptively swat down annoying notifications.

As acold arsenic I tin tell, this support pop-up lone appears if you commencement from a caller install. For upgraders, everything already has notification permissions, and the OS won't ask.

Google really made a task manager

Another caller notification diagnostic is Google's "Foreground Services (FGS) Task Manager," which is simply a user-facing task manager that sits astatine the bottommost of the speedy settings panel. Google and Apple effort precise hard to not fto consumers person arsenic overmuch power implicit smartphones arsenic they bash PCs, but Google has yet fixed users a database of moving apps they tin kill. It's not a database of each app similar a accepted task manager; it's conscionable a database of foreground services. Foreground services are Android apps that are presently doing progressive work, adjacent if they aren't showing an interface to the user—things similar a euphony player, fittingness tracking, automation, oregon a sync service.

The task manager lives astatine the bottommost of the speedy settings sheet arsenic a long, circular barroom that reads, "X apps are active." Tapping connected it volition amusement a database of moving apps, with a "stop" fastener adjacent to each one. This isn't Android's archetypal task manager—there person been assorted running-app interfaces disposable successful the developer settings implicit the years—but it's the archetypal 1 meant for consumers.

In Android 8.0, Google brought the hammer down connected inheritance processing, saying that if apps didn't privation to beryllium automatically unopen down by the system, they needed to amusement the idiosyncratic erstwhile they were running. In erstwhile versions of Android, an app would spawn a notification saying it was running. While it's adjuvant to cognize what apps are running, putting this accusation successful the notification sheet and showing an eye-catching presumption barroom icon was annoying. The notification sheet should beryllium for caller and impermanent items, not a 24/7 reminder saying, "Tasker is running."

In Android 13, the task manager takes implicit the notification duties, and present the imperishable notification is nary longer required. The notification volition inactive popular up, but it tin present beryllium dismissed, dissimilar successful erstwhile versions of Android. Swipe distant the notification, and the lone denotation that an point is moving volition beryllium successful a neatly minimized fig astatine the bottommost of the speedy settings panel. This is simply a overmuch nicer mode to grip running-app notifications.