Android 11 may not have rolled out to your phone just yet, but that doesn't change the fact that we're going to hear a lot more about Android 12 starting next month. If previous years are any indicator, February will see the announcement of the first developer preview. We recently learned about the upcoming app hibernation feature, and today we've heard about yet another one.

Spotted by XDA Developer's Mishaal Rahman, the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) Gerrit entries describe the new Restricted  Networking Mode. Once enabled, it will allow only a handful of apps with the CONNECTIVITY_USE_RESTRICTED_NETWORKS permission to access the network. No other apps on the phone will be able to send or receive data.

According to Mishaal, this permission can only be granted to privileged system apps and/or apps signed by the OEM. Enabling this feature will disable the network for all third-party apps unless users are allowed to create their own customs allowlists. At the moment, it's not clear as to how Restricted Networking mode will be implemented. But given that the developer preview is about to drop soon, we may not have to wait too long to see how it functions if Google decides to ship this feature with Android 12.