It's that time of the year. Android 11 is here — or, at least, the first early developer previews are. We're continually combing through these new versions looking for changes, willing canaries in the Android coal mines so that you, our readers, can see what's new without having to actually risk installing it on your own phone (if you don't want to). Now that we've had some time to look around, here's everything new we've spotted.

Google posted a full timeline of its preview releases, which will include three Developer Previews and three Betas at a cadence of around one a month until the final version lands sometime in Q3:

Before we dive in, we'd like to thank you, our tipsters and readers. Our job would be so much harder if it weren't for you guys, and AP ❤️s you.

The Android 11 feature list

Entirely new Android 11 features

  • Power menu stuff
  • New refresh rate overlay developer option looks like Fraps: On Android 11, you can trigger an overlay that shows your current refresh rate — useful for things like debugging issues with the new super-smooth high refresh rate displays. Also, it looks kind of like Fraps.
  • Built-in screen recording: It's still a bit buggy, but the built-in screen recording first revealed (then disabled) back with Android 10 is back as of the first Android 11 release.
  • Context-aware Bluetooth airplane mode: If you're playing music over Bluetooth headphones and you toggle airplane mode, then — gasp — Bluetooth won't turn off, and your headphones will continue to get tunes. That's one of the biggest travel frustrations eliminated. (Technically, this is a modification to an existing feature, but it's a big enough deal that I do not care.)
  • Pause gesture for Pixel 4's Motion Sense: A new "dip" gesture that lets you play/pause media was added in Android 11 for the Pixel 4, though the app that delivers the update may end up being distributed outside of the Android 11 previews.
  • Bubble notifications are back: Teased back in Android 10, chat head-style "bubble" notifications are in Android 11, giving you big icon-like non-transparent obstructions to deliver immediate notice of messages and other content. Yay Ew.
  • "Battery share" hints at reverse charging for Pixel 5: A hidden detail in the first Android 11 release shows a new "battery share" feature for reverse charging other devices using your phone — probably wirelessly, like with Samsung's Wireless Powershare. If they're adding it now, there's a decent chance we'll see it debut with a future Pixel.
  • Shows you your headphones' Bluetooth codec support: Rather than trusting spec sheets or sniffing around with Wireshark, Android 11 simply shows you which audio codecs your headphones support (via a developer options codec selection menu).
  • Notification History: Google's working on a new way to view past notifications as part of the overall notification revamp in Android 11.
  • Rear double-tap gesture for Pixel phones: Android 11 has a hidden feature that creates a new double-tap gesture, customizable for a handful of features, giving Pixels (and perhaps other Android phones) a brand new gesture/trigger for actions.

Visual tweaks

Privacy and security changes

  • Temporary/one-time app permissions: Android 11 adds the option to grant some permissions "Only this time," so you can continue to decide on a case-by-case basis.
  • Scoped Storage is back: Introduced in Android Q, we got a one-year reprieve before Scoped Storage goes into effect, and it will debut with Android 11. It may be slower, and it will interfere with some legacy operations, but Google champions the effect it will have on user privacy, better sandboxing app storage. Some apps may also be able to secure exemptions, like file managers and backup apps.
  • Repeatedly denying permission requests will block them: If an application requests a permission twice, and it's denied by the user both times, the app will be blocked from requesting the permission again.
  • Extra tap to grant overlay permissions: Overlay-based attacks are a serious concern for the Android platform. Starting in Android 11, apps that need you to grant it can't simply take you to the toggle, they can only dump you to the level before it, where you have to then navigate to the option and turn it on yourself. It's just one extra tap, but it might make a difference for those blindly granting permissions to malware.
  • No more background location access: Although apps can request an exemption, Google is pressuring developers to stop letting apps request continuous location access, so they can't gather that information in the background, only while they're running and you are aware of them. All new apps must meet this requirement by August, and in November, any that don't meet the requirement will be booted from the Play Store.

Modifications to existing features

Under the hood/developer/API changes

  • Developers will get a bit more time to fix things for Android 11: Google is giving us an extra "platform stability milestone" with final SDK/NDK APIs changes, so developers rushing to build for Android 11 have until June before things are finalized. Apps on the Play Store also don't have to be updated to support the changes until the end of 2021.
  • Better support for "waterfall" curved-edge displays: A new API augmenting the existing display cutout API will help developers better build apps for phones with curved screens, letting them exclude certain elements from hitting those curved, prone-to-accidental-touch sides when required.
  • More restricted and undocumented APIs getting the boot: Developers using non-public APIs for stuff will need to make sure their apps keep working with new restrictions in Android 11.
  • "Overscan" ADB command doesn't work in Android 11: We aren't sure if it's an intentional change or not (Google hasn't answered our inquiry), but Android 11 has killed the ADB overscan command, used by many third-party apps that modify the navigation bar.
  • Support for "soft" reboots: It doesn't save that much time right now, but a slightly faster way to restart userspace software while keeping lower-level systems running has been added in Android 11.
  • Generic System Image/DSU installer: It doesn't seem to work right now, but a built-in installer for GSIs is present in Android 11.
  • Built-in app compatibility tester: Android 11 has tools to better help developers test platform changes, individually enabling and disabling them to see how they might interact with apps.