Android 17 Beta 2 arrives with a cloned Apple feature and “Bubbles” multitasking
The first beta of Android 17 is only a week old, but Google has already released a second beta update, giving us a better look at what’s coming to phones and tablets later this year. This time around, there are some impressive multitasking improvements.
The second beta of Android 17 is now available for the Android SDK and select Google Pixel devices, after the first beta arrived on February 18. The most interesting change might be the addition of “Bubbles,” a new windowing mode aimed at phones, foldables, and tablets. It lets you create app bubbles by long-pressing an app in the launcher, which can be dragged around the screen like desktop windows.
Bubbles are primarily useful for foldables and tablets with the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. The taskbar has a new hold area designed specifically for bubbles, where you can organize and switch between different bubbles. It’s a bit like the menu bar utilities on macOS or the taskbar status icons on Windows, but the entire application is bundled into the pop-up window.
It’s important to note that this mode is separate from the message bubble view which has been around for some time. This works for any app (provided it already supports multi-window mode to a reasonable extent) and you get the entire app in the pop-up window.
Android 17 Beta 2 also has a new Handoff API, which allows you to take over the state of an app on another device with the same app (or web version of the app). Transfer suggestions appear in the launcher for your other devices. For example, if you have an email open in Gmail on your phone and then switch to a tablet, you might see a suggestion to open that email on the tablet’s Home screen or taskbar.
This feature is almost exactly like Apple’s Handoff feature, which lets you move tasks between Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. It’s great to see Android getting the same cross-device workflow improvements, but we’ll have to wait to find out how many apps will support it.
Google explained in a blog post: “This feature is designed to provide seamless task continuity, allowing users to pick up exactly where they left off in their workflow across their Android ecosystem. Critically, Handoff supports both native app-to-app transitions and app-to-web fallback, providing maximum flexibility and ensuring a complete experience even if the native app is not installed on the receiving device.
The beta has a few other features and APIs, including a dropper that apps can use without requesting access to the entire screen, better support for touchpads, support for Unicode 17, and a new permission for local network access. There is also a new system-level contact picker, which apps can use to request a specific contact without using the contacts permission.
You can enroll a supported Google Pixel device in the beta program to try Android 17, or upload the device image to the Android SDK emulator. The final release is still planned for the second quarter of 2026.
Source: Android Developer Blog
