Google is now detailing Android O changes for developers with a new overview video that they’ve posted up to YouTube, because after all Developer Previews are designed for developers and even though they have already given a breakdown of what’s new with this first release on the Android Developers website since it launched, the video highlights things in a slightly different way that may help those developers who would prefer to see things in a video as opposed to reading about it.
In the video Google goes over just a few of the changes that are part of the first preview, one of these things being the notification channels. A big part of this is going to be the ability for notifications to be organized into different categories and Google explains that these categories will be defined on a per app basis. They also highlight that notification channels will be user controlled on a variety of levels from allowing users to change importance of specific notifications to changing the lock screen privacy and even blocking notifications altogether if they see fit to do so.
Another change highlighted in the video has to do with the background services in Android O which are going to receive some new limitations. For instance Google notes that background services will only run for a short time with applications that are targeting Android O. Additionally Google also goes over the Picture-In-Picture mode that is now transitioning from Android TV over to Android. Google doesn’t give a whole lot of detail on the specifics of this feature but they do briefly explain what apps will need to do to implement this, and they even show briefly what it would look like by displaying a small video window in the bottom right-hand corner of a phone screen layered on top of the Google app. If you’re still having trouble picturing what this looks like, it’s essentially the same as the way YouTube videos look in the YouTube app after having been minimized so you can keep browsing through YouTube and looking at new videos. Whether you’re a developer or just a regular user who is generally interested in Android O’s changes, you can catch the overview video below.