With the release of the first public beta of Android 13, anyone with a compatible Pixel smartphone can download the next version of Android and test it themselves.
Scheduled for release later this summer, Android 13 is built around Google’s core themes of privacy and security, developer productivity, and tablet and big-screen support, according to a new blog post from the company’s VP of engineering Dave Burke.
There have already been two developer previews of Android 13, which showed new features including Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) Audio support, a new photo selector, new app-ion theme options and a new permission designed to reduce the amount of messaging displayed on Android smartphones.
Following feedback from Android 13’s first public beta, we’ll likely learn more about Google’s full plans for the update at the company’s annual Google I / O Developer Conference in May.
To help protect against apps accessing images, audio files and other media on your smartphone for no good reason, Google is introducing more detailed media file access permissions in Android 13.
When an app previously wanted to read shared media files in your device’s local repository, it requested the READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission, which gave it access to all types of media files. Now in the Android 13 public beta, Google is introducing a new set of permissions with more detailed scope for accessing shared media files, according to Burke’s blog post.
Going forward, apps will now use READ_MEDIA_IMAGES for photos and photos, READ_MEDIA_VIDEO for videos, and READ_MEDIA_AUDIO for audio files. When a user grants one of these permissions to an app, the app will only have read access to the respective media file types.
But to simplify the experience for end users, if an app requests permissions to access a device’s photos and videos at the same time, Android 13 displays a single dialog box to grant both permissions.
Restricting media file access this way can help protect your privacy by preventing apps from accessing additional files that they do not necessarily need to work.
Via The Verge