Android 16’s first public beta adds Google’s more limited take on live lockscreen notifications

Android 16’s first public beta will start rolling out later today, bringing with it dynamic lockscreen notifications for ride-sharing and food delivery, following yesterday’s reveal of a similar feature in Samsung’s Galaxy S25 phones. The new beta also forces apps to be resizable, a move to make sure they run full-screen on tablets and foldables. This is expected to be the first of four public beta releases before Android 16’s full release in Q2.

Live Updates are dynamic notifications that “help users monitor and quickly access important ongoing activities” and are updated in real time. They’re Android’s take on the Live Activities that Apple added to its iPhones in 2022.

Samsung also added a similar feature in One UI 7, shown off in its Galaxy S25 phones at yesterday’s Unpacked event, which it calls the Now Bar. However, while Apple and Samsung’s versions support a range of app and notification types, including live sports scores, the Android 16 implementation is so far limited to progress trackers, and Google suggests it should only be used for ride-sharing, food delivery, and navigation apps.

While Samsung’s Now Bar appears as a floating notification at the bottom of the lockscreen, and Apple’s are designed around its Dynamic Island camera cutout, Android 16’s Live Updates seem to instead be pinned to the top of the regular notification stack.

Image: Google

The other major change in the public beta release is a restriction on developers’ ability to lock the size and orientation of their app windows. The change is intended to make sure that apps “work seamlessly” on devices “regardless of display size and form factor.” In short: this is to make sure apps open full-screen on larger devices like tablets and foldables, and can be resized freely for multi-tasking. Games are exempt, and app developers are able to opt out for this release, but won’t have that option by the time Android 17 rolls around in 2026.

Other additions to the public beta include support for the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec, scene detection to enable night mode in camera apps, and better support for vertical text rendering. These join features already revealed in Android 16’s two developer betas including improvements to Android’s photo picker menu, richer haptic controls, and a Health Connect app for sharing medical information.

Google has also confirmed that it’s working on adding more Gemini Extensions, after yesterday launching the ability for its AI assistant to act across multiple apps in a single prompt. So far Gemini only works with Google’s own apps, a few of Samsung’s, and a handful of third-party options including Spotify and WhatsApp, but Google promises support for “more apps with more OEMs on more devices across more form factors.”

The Android 16 beta is rolling out today to any Google Pixel phone since the Pixel 6, plus the Pixel Tablet. This is the wider public’s first chance to try out the new Android version, but you won’t have long to wait if you’d rather not risk beta software. Google is changing its update cadence this year, with Android 16 expected to be released fully sometime in Q2, following a final beta release in April, much earlier than its usual Q3 release window.