Google Releases Android 13, Rolls It Out to Pixel Devices
Android 13, the newest version of Google's mobile OS, is finally here following a public beta.
Google started distributing(Opens in a new window) Android 13 today through the Android Open Source Project, opening the door for smartphone makers to begin porting the software to their products. The company is also making Android 13 available to Pixel device owners starting today.
According to Google, many of the major smartphone vendors—including Samsung, Motorola, OnePlus, Sony, and HMD—will begin rolling out their flavors of Android 13 to their own products later this year.
One of the biggest changes to the OS involves "Material You," a design language Google introduced in Android 12. Through Material You, the OS can adopt a color scheme that matches your phone's wallpaper.
With Android 13, the Material You dynamic coloring can be extended to all app icons, giving users the ability to customize how their favorite apps look. This also covers third-party app icons, so long as the developer builds in the support by supplying a monochromatic app icon(Opens in a new window).
Android 13 also adds “pre-app language preferences,” so you can boot up an app in a different language than your current system's default. The feature promises to make Android a lot friendlier for multi-language users or if you’re studying a new language and want to practice it.
A few other features focus on privacy and security. For example, Android 13 adopts a new “Photo picker” system, which can allow you to share images or video, but without giving the app permission to view all the media files on your smartphone. Photo Picker is also coming to devices with Android 11 or higher.
Another privacy-related change involves notifications. “Apps now need to
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