Android 16 Launches Today, But The Cool Stuff Comes Later

Finally, the day has come. Today is Android 16 launch day.

Now, unfortunately, the biggest feature of Android 16 is not coming in today’s update. Which is Material 3 Expressive. That will be available in the QPR1 update, which we’re expecting to launch in August to go along with the Google Pixel 10 Release.

But that doesn’t mean that Android 16 is empty when it comes to features. There’s a handful of features coming to your devices soon, thanks to Android 16.

Perhaps the biggest part of this update is going to be Live Updates. Think of Apple’s Live Activities, but now on Android without the huge dynamic island. If you’ve ordered some food from Uber Eats, you can now watch the progress from your lock screen or in the status bar. Google says that they are also working with their partners to include it in Samsung’s Now Bar and OPPO and OnePlus’ Live Alerts.

Google is also grouping notifications from the same app into a single notification. This isn’t new, per se, but this is now being forced on apps. So every app will only show one notification, even when there are multiple notifications. This should help clear up the notification shade.

Google’s new Desktop Windowing feature arrives

Google has worked with Samsung to develop desktop windowing, which is a new way to interact with your apps and content on large-screen devices, like the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold. You can now open, move, and resize multiple app windows in a single screen, just like on your Windows or Mac desktop.

Custom keyboard shortcuts will be coming later this year, where you can create your own combination of hotkeys and taskbar overflow.

This is just a few of the new features coming to Android 16. You can check out our full Android 16 Features list, as well as our list of Google Pixel Feature Drop features. Since Google likes to bundle a feature drop with new versions of Android.