Random Musings on the Android 12 Beta 3

Android 12 Beta 3 is out! And, as one would expect from a late beta, not much has changed.

The good news is that we can use 31 for compileSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion. That means that we should have reached API stability.

Of the stuff that was announced:

• App Search: you saw it here first!

• The permission group lookup APIs are nice, but I seem to recall Google getting rather testy about apps trying to determine the relationship between permissions and groups. I wonder what changed… 🤔

Beyond that:

• We lost some things from previous editions of Android 12, such as setShowForegroundImmediately() on Notification.Builder.

• getAllNetworks() on ConnectivityManager is deprecated. There is an alternative involving registerNetworkCallback() and the awkwardly-named setIncludeOtherUidNetworks().

• REQUEST_COMPANION_START_FOREGROUND_SERVICES_FROM_BACKGROUND is why we need auto-complete.

Strangely, TranslationManager and the rest of android.view.translation remain unannounced. They showed up in Beta 1, and Google hasn’t said anything about them AFAICT. More stuff to 🤔

This should wrap up the 2021 edition of the “Random Musings” posts — if we have reached API stability, there should be nothing more for me to muse about.