On January 10, 2022, the maximum number of user_identifers set in a UserData object will be reduced from 100,000 to 20. This is to clarify that each set should represent a single user.
The table below illustrates uploading UserData for two users (John Doe and Max Mustermann), each of whom has two email addresses.
UserData is used for Customer Match and store sales uploads. In a given create/remove UserData operation, each set of user_identifiersshould be for a single user.
Note that the same total amount of data can be sent in a single request, but each set of user_identifiers must represent a single person.
If the number of user_identifiers for a single set exceeds the new limit of 20, a TOO_MANY_USER_IDENTIFIERS error will be generated.
This will be applied to the two Google Ads API methods that provide UserData uploads:
Today we’re pushing the source to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and officially releasing the latest version of Android. Keep an eye out for Android 12 coming to a device near you starting with Pixel in the next few weeks and Samsung Galaxy, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Tecno, Vivo, and Xiaomi devices later this year.
As always, thank you for your feedback during Android 12 Beta! More than 225,000 of you tested our early releases on Pixel and devices from our partners, and you sent us nearly 50,000 issue reports to help improve the quality of the release. We also appreciate the many articles, discussions, surveys, and in-person meetings where you voiced your thoughts, as well as the work you’ve done to make your apps compatible in time for today’s release. Your support and contributions are what make Android such a great platform for everyone.
We’ll also be talking about Android 12 in more detail at this year’s Android Dev Summit, coming up on October 27-28. We’ve just released more information on the event, including a snapshot of the technical Android sessions; read on for more details later in the post.
What’s in Android 12 for developers?
Here’s a look at some of what’s new in Android 12 for developers. Make sure to check out the Android 12 developer site for details on all of the new features.
A new UI for Android
Material You - Android 12 introduces a new design language called Material You, helping you to build more personalized, beautiful apps. To bring all of the latest Material Design 3 updates into your apps, try an alpha version of Material Design Components and watch for support for Jetpack Compose coming soon.
Redesigned widgets - We refreshed app widgets to make them more useful, beautiful, and discoverable. Try them with new interactive controls, responsive layouts for any device, and dynamic colors to create a personalized but consistent look. More here.
Notification UI updates - We also refreshed notification designs to make them more modern and useful. Android 12 also decorates custom notifications with standard affordances to make them consistent with all other notifications. More here.
Stretch overscroll - To make scrolling your app’s content more smooth, Android 12 adds a new “stretch” overscroll effect to all scrolling containers. It’s a natural scroll-stop indicator that’s common across the system and apps. More here.
App launch splash screens - Android 12 also introduces splash screens for all apps. Apps can customize the splash screen in a number of ways to meet their unique branding needs. More here.
Performance
Faster, more efficient system performance - We reduced the CPU time used by core system services by 22% and the use of big cores by 15%. We’ve also improved app startup times and optimized I/O for faster app loading, and for database queries we’ve improved CursorWindow by as much as 49x for large windows.
Optimized foreground services - To provide a better experience for users, Android 12 prevents apps from starting foreground services while in the background. Apps can use a new expedited job in JobScheduler instead. More here.
More responsive notifications - Android 12’s restriction on notification trampolines helps reduce latency for apps started from a notification. For example, the Google Photos app now launches 34% faster after moving away from notification trampolines. More here.
Performance class - Performance Class is a set of device capabilities that together support demanding use-cases and higher quality content on Android 12 devices. Apps can check for a device’s performance class at runtime and take full advantage of the device’s performance. More here.
Faster machine learning - Android 12 helps you make the most of ML accelerators and always get the best possible performance through the Neural Networks API. ML accelerator drivers are also now updatable outside of platform releases, through Google Play services, so you can take advantage of the latest drivers on any compatible device.
Privacy
Privacy Dashboard - A new dashboard in Settings gives users better visibility over when your app accesses microphone, camera, and location data. More here.
Approximate location - Users have even more control over their location data, and they can grant your app access to approximate location even if it requests precise location. More here.
Microphone and camera indicators - Indicators in the status bar let users know when your app is using the device camera or microphone. More here.
Microphone and camera toggles - On supported devices, new toggles in Quick Settings make it easy for users to instantly disable app access to the microphone and camera. More here.
Nearby device permissions - Your app can use new permissions to scan for and pair with nearby devices without needing location permission. More here.
Better user experience tools
Rich content insertion - A new unified API lets you receive rich content in your UI from any source: clipboard, keyboard, or drag-and-drop. For back-compatibility, we’ve added the unified API to AndroidX. More here.
Support for rounded screen corners - Many modern devices use screens with rounded corners. To deliver a great UX on these devices, you can use new APIs to query for corner details and then manage your UI elements as needed. More here.
AVIF image support - Android 12 adds platform support for AV1 Image File Format (AVIF). AVIF takes advantage of the intra-frame encoded content from video compression to dramatically improve image quality for the same file size when compared to older image formats, such as JPEG.
Compatible media transcoding - For video, HEVC format offers significant improvements in quality and compression and we recommend that all apps support it. For apps that can’t, the compatible media transcoding feature lets your app request files in AVC and have the system handle the transcoding. More here.
Easier blurs, color filters and other effects - new APIs make it easier to apply common graphics effects to your Views and rendering hierarchies. You can use RenderEffect to apply blurs, color filters, and more to RenderNodes or Views. You can also create a frosted glass effect for your window background using a new Window.setBackgroundBlurRadius() API, or use blurBehindRadius to blur all of the content behind a window.
Enhanced haptic experiences - Android 12 expands the tools you can use to create informative haptic feedback for UI events, immersive and delightful effects for gaming, and attentional haptics for productivity. More here.
New camera effects and sensor capabilities - New vendor extensions let your apps take advantage of the custom camera effects built by device manufacturers—bokeh, HDR, night mode, and others. You can also use new APIs to take full advantage of ultra high-resolution camera sensors that use Quad / Nona Bayer patterns. More here.
Better debugging for native crashes - Android 12 gives you more actionable diagnostic information to make debugging NDK-related crashes easier. Apps can now access detailed crash dump files called tombstones through the App Exit Reasons API.
Android 12 for Games - With Game Mode APIs, you can react to the players' performance profile selection for your game - like better battery life for a long commute, or performance mode to get peak frame rates. Play as you download will allow game assets to be fetched in the background during install, getting your players into gameplay faster.
Get your apps ready for Android 12
Now with today’s public release of Android 12, we’re asking all Android developers to finish your compatibility testing and publish your updates as soon as possible, to give your users a smooth transition to Android 12.
To test your app for compatibility, just install it on a device running Android 12 and work through the app flows looking for any functional or UI issues. Review the Android 12 behavior changes for all apps to focus on areas where your app could be affected. Here are some of the top changes to test:
Privacy dashboard — Use this new dashboard in Settings to check your app’s accesses to microphone, location, and other sensitive data, and consider providing details to users on the reasons. More here.
Microphone & camera indicators — Android 12 shows an indicator in the status bar when an app is using the camera or microphone. Make sure this doesn’t affect your app’s UI. More here.
Microphone & camera toggles — Try using the new toggles in Quick Settings to disable microphone and camera access for apps and ensure that your app handles the change properly. More here.
Clipboard read notification — Watch for toast notifications when your app reads data from the clipboard unexpectedly. Remove unintended accesses. More here.
Stretch overscroll — Try your scrolling content with the new “stretch” overscroll effect and ensure that it displays as expected. More here.
App splash screens — Launch your app from various flows to test the new splash screen animation. If necessary, you can customize it. More here.
Keygen changes — Several deprecated BouncyCastle cryptographic algorithms are removed in favor of Conscrypt versions. If your app uses a 512-bit key with AES, you’ll need to use one of the standard sizes supported by Conscrypt. More here.
Remember to test the libraries and SDKs in your app for compatibility. If you find any SDK issues, try updating to the latest version of the SDK or reaching out to the developer for help.
Tune in to Android Dev Summit to learn about Android 12 and more!
The #AndroidDevSummit is back! Join us October 27-28 to hear about the latest updates in Android development, including Android 12. This year’s theme is excellent apps, across devices; tune in later this month to learn more about the development tools, APIs and technology to help you be more productive and create better apps that run across billions of devices, including tablets, foldables, wearables, and more.
We’ve just released more information on the event, including a snapshot of the 30+ technical Android sessions; you can take a look at some of those sessions here, and start planning which talks you want to check out. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be asking you to share your top #AskAndroid questions, to be answered live by the team during the event.
The show kicks off at 10 AM PT on October 27 with The Android Show, a 50-minute technical keynote where you’ll hear all the latest news and updates for Android developers. You can learn more and sign up for updates here.
With the updates listed below, we're improving the search term reports returned from both the Google Ads API and the AdWords API across all active versions.
Starting Sep 9, 2021, you'll be able to see more queries that meet our privacy standards in the search terms report for Search and Dynamic Search Ads campaigns. This new data will return for all searches on or after February 1st, 2021 when using the following reports and resources:
This update can help you identify more relevant keyword themes, making it easier to optimize your ads, landing pages, and more. Metric totals from search terms reports will now be consistent with other reports, such as campaign, ad group, and ad reports in Google Ads.
As part of our ongoing commitment to privacy, we’re working to make our privacy thresholds consistent across Google. Over the next few months, you’ll see more changes across our other tools–including how we handle historical data. In Google Ads, this means that historical query data in your account that was collected prior to September 1st, 2020 will be available until February 1st, 2022. At that point, any historical queries that no longer meet our current privacy thresholds will be removed from your search terms report.
If you have any questions about this change or any other API feature, please contact us via the forum.
We’re just a few weeks away from the official release of Android 12! As we put the finishing touches on the new version of Android, today we’re bringing you a final Beta update to help you with testing and development. For developers, now is the time to make sure your apps are ready!
You can get Beta 5 today on your Pixel device, including on the Pixel 5a with 5G, by enrolling here for over-the-air updates. If you’re already enrolled, you’ll automatically get the update. You can also try Android 12 Beta 5 on select devices from several of our partners like Sharp. Visit the Android 12 developer site for details.
Watch for more information on the official Android 12 release coming soon!
What’s in Beta 5?
Today’s update includes a release candidate build of Android 12 for Pixel and other devices and the Android Emulator. We reached Platform Stability at Beta 4, so all app-facing surfaces are final, including SDK and NDK APIs, app-facing system behaviors, and restrictions on non-SDK interfaces. With these and the latest fixes and optimizations, Beta 5 gives you everything you need to complete your testing.
Get your apps ready!
With the official Android 12 release coming next, we’re asking all app and game developers to complete your final compatibility testing and publish your compatibility updates ahead of the final release. For SDK, library, tools, and game engine developers, it’s important to release your compatible updates as soon as possible -- your downstream app and game developers may be blocked until they receive your updates.
To test your app for compatibility, just install it on a device running Android 12 Beta 5 and work through the app flows looking for any functional or UI issues. Review the Android 12 behavior changes for all apps to focus on areas where your app could be affected. Here are some of the top changes to test:
Privacy dashboard — A new dashboard in Settings lets users see which apps are accessing which type of data and when. Users can adjust permissions if needed, and they can request details from your app on the reason for access. More here.
Microphone & camera indicators — Android 12 shows an indicator in the status bar when an app is using the camera or microphone. More here.
Microphone & camera toggles — New toggles in Quick Settings let users instantly disable microphone and camera access for all apps. More here.
Clipboard read notification — A toast alerts users when an app reads data from the clipboard unexpectedly. More here.
Stretch overscroll — A new “stretch” overscroll effect replaces the previous “glow” overscroll effect systemwide. More here.
App splash screens — Android 12 launches apps with a new splash screen animation. More here.
Keygen changes — Several deprecated BouncyCastle cryptographic algorithms are removed in favor of Conscrypt versions. If your app uses a 512-bit key with AES, you’ll need to use one of the standard sizes supported by Conscrypt.More here.
Remember to test the libraries and SDKs in your app for compatibility. If you find any SDK issues, try updating to the latest version of the SDK or reaching out to the developer for help.
Android 12 has a ton of new features to help you build great experiences for users. Check out our Android 12 Beta 2 post for a recap and links to Android 12 talks at Google I/O. For complete details on all of the new features and APIs, visit the Android 12 developer site.
Also make sure to try Android Studio Arctic Fox with your Android 12 development and testing. We’ve added lint checks to help you catch where your code might be affected by Android 12 changes, such as for custom declarations of splash screens, coarse location permission for fine location usage, media formats, and high sensor sampling rate permission. You can give these a try by downloading and configuring the latest version of Android Studio.
You can also get Beta 5 on devices from several of our partners like Sharp. For even broader testing, you can try Beta 5 on Android GSI images, and if you don’t have a device, you can test on the Android Emulator. This update is also available for Android TV, so you can check out the latest TV features and test your apps on the all-new Google TV experience.
A huge thank you to our developer community for helping shape the Android 12 release! You’ve given us thousands of bug reports and shared insights that have helped us adjust APIs, improve features, fix significant bugs, and in general make the platform better for users and developers.
We’re looking forward to seeing your apps on Android 12!
At Google, safety is core to everything we do. We design our products to ensure that they are secure by default and private by design, and you’re in control of your information. We are privileged that hundreds of millions of Indians place their trust in Google products.
In India, we have been working towards making the internet helpful for over a billion people through a deeper understanding of our users’ needs under our Next Billion Users initiative, and launching many India-first features and products. After the outbreak of COVID-19, the internet's role in our everyday lives has become all the more central. With more and more Indians turning to the internet for their day-to-day needs, we recognise our responsibility to ensure that they’re protected from an evolving range of online risks — from phishing to financial fraud to misinformation. We also know that new users in particular are vulnerable to threats from bad actors.
Today, we are underlining our commitment to protect users against this multidimensional challenge — and make the internet safer for everyone.
Ramping up our trust & safety efforts in India
To protect our users and products at the scale at which we operate, everyday 24x7, we continuously invest in both people and technology to make the internet safer. With over 20,000 people spread across the world, our Trust and Safety teams are dedicated to identifying, fighting, and preventing online harms. This includes everything from researching emerging abuse trends, to developing policies and standards that make clear what is acceptable on our platforms, to building the technology that enables enforcement of those policies at scale, including compliance with local laws and regulations in every country we operate in. Just in the last year, we’ve invested over $1 billion on our content moderation systems and processes, and we continue to invest in this area.
In India, we have significantly increased the resources dedicated to these teams, adding product policy analysts, security specialists, and user trust experts, and expanded our efforts to provide coverage in more than 10 vernacular Indian languages, enabling our central teams to benefit from the local nuance and inputs. This increased focus will help us to tackle misinformation, fraud, threats to child safety, violent extremism, phishing attacks, and malware, among other abuse areas.
A collaborative approach for a safer internet
We recognise that the work of building a safer internet needs the leadership of the larger internet industry that is driving India’s digital economy. These challenges cannot be overcome by one or two players alone, and there is a need to step up our collective efforts as an industry. We are committed to sharing our tools and the institutional knowledge and capabilities we’ve developed over the years to contribute to this joint responsibility. We will be working with leading industry organisations to help train developers and startups in these capabilities, build communal solutions to shared safety challenges, and innovate on open-source tools so we can better protect Indians online.
Investing in user awareness and education in Indian languages
We also know that safety information helps people understand and avoid online harm. The Google Safety Centre serves as a single destination dedicated to educating and empowering our users on the importance of digital safety. As many people in India use the internet in their regional language, we are launching the new and updated Google Safety Centre in eight languages starting with Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, and Telugu, with three more Indian languages set to roll out by the end of the year.
On this platform, users can discover helpful resources and easy tips, and identify the digital habits that are right for them and their families, all in the language of their choice. With the ‘My Activity’ hub in the Safety Centre, they can review, control, or delete the activity saved to their Google accounts. This section received more than 1 billion visits by Indian users in the first half of 2021 alone, and we hope this refreshed Safety Center will help millions more.
As part of this effort, we’ve also launched a user education campaign in multiple languages, to bring attention to common threats like phishing, malware, and fraud.
Raising our commitment to ensure children’s safety online
While our policies don’t allow kids under 13 to create a standard Google account, we’ve worked hard to design enriching product experiences for them — as well as for older teens and their families. We are aware that kids and teens are spending more time online, and parents, educators, child safety and privacy experts, and policy makers are rightfully concerned about how to keep them safe. We share these concerns and we have announced a series of new policies in response.
We are also committed to matching these efforts with digital safety resources for parents and children. So starting today, we are excited to launch our global Be Internet Awesome program in India, a resource that is designed and crafted by digital safety experts to help children, families, and educators learn about staying safe online. Available in English and Hindi first, then soon in other Indian languages, Be Internet Awesome is a great resource for kids, parents, and teachers to learn about safe and healthy internet habits.
It includes a highly visual, interactive experience called ‘Interland’, where children can learn the fundamentals of online safety and participate in a series of fun, challenging games. They’ll learn how to safeguard valuable information, one-up cyber bullies, and spot what’s real and what’s fake. We’re also keen for children to explore Be Internet Awesome through avenues they’re already familiar with, and so we are delighted to announce our partnership with popular Indian comic book publishers, Amar Chitra Katha, who will help kids discover these critical internet safety lessons through their favourite characters, in eight Indian languages.
A safer and trusted app experience for our users
Affordable smartphones can unlock online opportunities for millions more Indians. But these devices have to be underpinned by a bedrock of privacy, security, and transparency. We have stepped up our efforts to deliver a privacy-first experience with Android 12 with a new privacy dashboard that gives people a clear timeline view of apps that have accessed their location, microphone, and camera in the last 24 hours — so they can better understand and control what data apps use.
At the same time, we’re taking steps to identify and respond to concerns around specific app categories more quickly. For example, we recently announced clarifications around the policies on personal loan apps, including new requirements that will help safeguard users, while enabling legitimate developers to operate and flourish. And we have significantly expanded our Google Play support teams in India, enabling us to gain a deeper understanding of the needs of our partners and users — including around online safety. The bottom line is this: when we solve for our users, we also solve for our developers.
We have no doubt that what we do in India will also shape the future of a Safer Internet for everyone.
Building a safer internet for everyone is not one more thing to do, it is the one thing to do — together.
Posted by Sanjay Gupta, Country Manager & Vice President, Google India, and Kristie Canegallo, Vice President, Trust & Safety, Google
Today we’re bringing you the fourth Beta of Android 12, and moving into the final phase of the release. We’ve built Android 12 with a new UI that adapts to you, performance improvements, privacy and security enhancements, and more. We’re now shifting our focus to polish, performance, and stability. Thanks for all the feedback you’ve shared to help us refine the release and get us to this point.
For developers, Beta 4 takes us to Platform Stability, which means that Android 12’s APIs and all app-facing behaviors are finalized. For apps, the focus is now on compatibility and quality. It’s time to start preparing your compatible app updates in time for the official release later in the year.
You can try Beta 4 today on your Pixel device by enrolling here for over-the-air updates, and if you previously enrolled, you’ll automatically get today’s update. You can also get Android 12 Beta 4 on select devices from several of our partners like ASUS, Oneplus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, and ZTE - learn more at android.com/beta. Visit the Android 12 developer site for details on how to get started.
Platform Stability
Android 12 Beta 4 has reached Platform Stability, a milestone that means all app-facing surfaces and behaviors are now final in Android 12. This includes not only the official SDK and NDK APIs, but also final app-facing system behaviors and restrictions on non-SDK interfaces that may affect apps. So from Beta 4, you can confidently release your compatibility updates knowing that the platform won’t change. More on the timeline is here.
We’re asking all app and game developers to start your final compatibility testing now and prepare to publish your compatibility updates as soon as possible ahead of the final release.
For all SDK, library, tools, and game engine developers, it’s even more important to start testing now and release your compatible updates as soon as possible -- your downstream app and game developers may be blocked until they receive your updates. When you’ve released a compatible update, be vocal and let developers know!
App compatibility
For Android, App compatibility means that your app runs as intended on a new version of the platform. You can check your app’s compatibility just by installing the production version of your app on a device or emulator and testing it - if the app looks good and runs properly, then you’re done, it’s compatible!
Testing your app for compatibility is important because with each release, we make integral changes to the platform that improve privacy and security and the overall user experience across the OS. These can affect your apps, so you should take a look at the behavior changes and test against them, then publish a compatible update to your users. It’s a basic but critical level of quality that ensures users have a good app experience.
As people update their devices to Android 12, they want to explore the latest version of Android, and experience it with their favorite apps. If those apps don’t work properly, it’s a major issue, ultimately resulting in uninstalls.
So while there are a ton of new APIs and capabilities to explore, start by testing your current app and releasing a compatible update first.
Get your apps ready
To test your app for compatibility with Android 12, just install your production app from Google Play or other source onto a device running Android 12 Beta 4. Work through all of the app’s flows and watch for functional or UI issues. Review the Android 12 behavior changes for all apps to focus your testing. Here are some changes to watch for:
Privacy dashboard - A new dashboard in Settings lets users see which apps are accessing which type of data and when. Users can adjust permissions if needed, and they can request details from your app on the reason for access. More here.
Microphone & camera indicators - Android 12 shows an indicator in the status bar when an app is using the camera or microphone. More here.
Microphone & camera toggles - New toggles in Quick Settings let users instantly disable microphone and camera access for all apps. More here.
Clipboard read notification - A toast alerts users when an app reads data from the clipboard unexpectedly. More here.
Stretch overscroll - A new “stretch” overscroll effect replaces the previous “glow” overscroll effect systemwide. More here.
App splash screens - Android 12 launches apps with a new splash screen animation. More here.
Keygen changes - Several deprecated BouncyCastle cryptographic algorithms are removed in favor of Conscrypt versions. If your app uses a 512-bit key with AES, you’ll need to use one of the standard sizes supported by Conscrypt. More here.
Remember to test the libraries and SDKs in your app for compatibility. If you find any SDK issues, try updating to the latest version of the SDK or reaching out to the developer for help.
Foreground service launch restriction - Apps can no longer launch foreground services from the background. For high-priority background tasks, use expedited jobs in WorkManager instead. More here.
Approximate location - When apps request permission for precise location, users can now choose to grant either precise or approximate location. More here.
New permission for exact alarms - Apps that want to use exact alarms must request a new normal permission, SCHEDULE_EXACT_ALARM. More here.
Modern SameSite cookie behaviors in WebView - If your app uses WebView, test your app with the new SameSite cookie behaviors. More here.
Safer exporting of components - your app must explicitly specify an android:exported attribute for any app components that use intent filters. More here.
Custom notifications - The system applies a standard notification template to fully custom notifications, with affordances for app name, app icon, and expand/collapse data. More here.
Notification trampolines restriction - Notifications can no longer launch your app using a “trampoline” - an intermediary broadcast receiver or service that starts the target Activity. More here.
During testing, also watch for uses of restricted non-SDK interfaces in your app and move those to public SDK equivalents instead. You can read about the restricted APIs here.
You can also get Android 12 Beta 4 on devices from some of our partners like ASUS, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, and ZTE. Visit android.com/beta to see the full list of partners participating in Android 12 Beta. For even broader testing, you can try Android 12 Beta 4 on Android GSI images, and if you don’t have a device, you can test on the Android Emulator.
Beta 4 is also available for Android TV, so you can check out the latest TV features and test your apps on the all-new Google TV experience. Try it out with the ADT-3 developer kit. More here.
Watch for one more Beta coming in the weeks ahead as a release candidate for your final testing.
Posted by Suzanne Frey, VP, Product, Android Security and Privacy
Today, we’re announcing additional details for the upcoming safety section in Google Play. At Google, we know that feeling safe online comes from using products that are secure by default, private by design, and give users control over their data. This new safety section will provide developers a simple way to showcase their app’s overall safety. Developers will be able to give users deeper insight into their privacy and security practices, as well as explain the data the app may collect and why — all before users install the app.
Ultimately, all Google Play store apps will be required to share information in the safety section. We want to give developers plenty of time to adapt to these changes, so we’re sharing more information about the data type definitions, user journey, and policy requirements of this new feature.
What the new safety section may look like:
Images are directional and subject to change
Users will see the new summary in an app’s store listing page. It’ll share the developer’s explanation of what data an app collects or shares and highlight safety details, such as whether:
The app has security practices, like data encryption
The app has been independently validated against a global security standard
Images are directional and subject to change
Users can tap into the summary to see details like:
What type of data is collected and shared, such as location, contacts, personal information (e.g., name, email address), financial information and more
How the data is used, such as for app functionality, personalization, and more
Whether data collection is optional or required in order to use an app
Images are directional and subject to change
In designing our labels, we learned developers appreciate when they can provide context about their data practices and more detail on whether their app automatically collects data versus if that collection is optional. We also learned that users care about whether their data is shared with other companies, and why.
The final design is subject to change as we continue working with developers and designing for the best blend of developer and user experiences.
Policy changes to support the safety section
Today we announced new user data policies designed to provide more user transparency and to help people make informed choices about how their data is collected, protected and used.
All developers must provide a privacy policy. Previously, only apps that collected personal and sensitive user data needed to share a privacy policy.
Developers are responsible for providing accurate and complete information in their safety section, including data used by the app’s third party libraries or SDKs.
This applies to all apps published on Google Play, including Google's own apps.
What you can expect
We want to provide developers with plenty of time and resources to get prepared.
Target Timeline. Dates subject to change.
Starting in October, developers can submit information in the Google Play Console for review. We encourage you to start early in case you have questions along the way. The new safety section will launch for apps in Google Play in Q1 2022.
We know that some developers will need more time to assess their apps and coordinate with multiple teams. So, you’ll have until April 2022 before your apps must have this section approved. Without an approved section, your new app submission or app update may be rejected.
Images are directional and subject to change
If your app’s information is not approved by the time we launch the safety section in Google Play to users in Q1 2022, then it will display “No information available.”
How to get prepared:
Visit the Play Console Help Center for more details about providing app privacy details in Play Console, including data type lists and examples.
Review how your app collects, protects and shares data. In particular, check your app’s declared permissions and the APIs and libraries that your app uses. These may require you to indicate that your app collects and shares specific types of data.
Join a policy webinar and send us your questions in advance. You can register for Global, India, Japan, or Korea sessions.
We’ll continue to share more guidance, including specific dates, over the next few months.
Thank you for your continued partnership in building this feature alongside us and in making Google Play a safe and trustworthy platform for everyone.
Each month we’re bringing Android 12 closer to its final form, with innovative features, a new UI that adapts to you, performance improvements, privacy enhancements, security benefits, and much more. Many of you are already developing and testing on Android 12 through our Beta program - thank you for all of the feedback you’ve shared so far!
There’s still a lot to do to land this release, though, and today we’re pushing out the third Beta of Android 12 for you to try. Along with updates like scrolling screenshots, privacy indicator APIs, and enhanced auto-rotate, Beta 3 also includes the final Android 12 APIs and the official SDK. WIth these, you can start testing and updating your app ahead of Platform Stability, coming up next at Beta 4. Now is the time to make sure your apps are ready!
You can get Beta 3 today on your Pixel device by enrolling here for over-the-air updates, and if you previously enrolled, you’ll automatically get today’s update. You can also get Android 12 Beta 3 on select devices from several of our device-maker partners like Sharp and TCL - learn more at android.com/beta. Visit the Android 12 developer site for details on how to get started.
What’s new in Beta 3?
Beta 3 includes a number of updates to improve functionality, user experience, and performance. Here are a few highlights.
Scrolling screenshots - To make it easier to capture and share scrolling content, we’re adding scrolling screenshots. Starting in Beta 3, when users capture a screenshot of content that’s scrollable, they’ll now see a “Capture more” button to extend the screenshot to the full content and they can then adjust the crop.
Capturing a scrolling screenshot in the Settings app
Scrolling screenshots work out-of-the-box for most apps -- if your app uses a standard View-based UI, no changes should be needed. For apps and UI toolkits that are not using View-based UI or that use highly customized UI, we’re introducing a new ScrollCapture API to support scrolling screenshots. With this API, the system notifies your app of scroll capture requests and provides a Surface for you to draw your UI into. We’re continuing to iterate on scrolling screenshots and in Beta 4 you’ll see improvements to the default support, such as for scrolling ListViews. We're also working to provide support for a wider variety of content (such as web content). Let us know what you think!
On-device search - With Beta 3 we’re highlighting platform support for AppSearch, a new high-performance on-device search engine. With AppSearch, apps can index structured data and search over it with built-in full-text search capabilities, and they can use native features like highly-efficient indexing and retrieval, multi-language support, and relevancy ranking.
AppSearch comes in two flavors: a local index for your app to use that’s backward-compatible through a new AppSearch Jetpack library, and a central index that’s maintained for the entire system in Android 12 (and later releases). When you participate in the central index, the system will be able to display your app’s data on System UI surfaces unless you choose to opt out. Additionally, you can securely share data with other apps, allowing them to search your app’s data as well as their own. More here.
Privacy indicator APIs in WindowInsets - In Beta 2 we added support for privacy indicators in the status bar that show when an app is using the device camera or microphone. Since the indicators can be displayed when an app is in immersive mode and could potentially cover controls or content, apps need to know where the indicators can be drawn and make any adjustments needed to prevent useful content from being covered. In Beta 3 we’ve added new privacy indicator APIs to WindowInsets that let you get the maximum bounds of the indicators and their relative placement on the screen, taking into account the current orientation and language settings. More here.
Camera and microphone toggles configurable for enterprises - In Beta 2 we also introduced new toggles that let users instantly turn off access to the device microphone and camera for all apps. We’ve now made these accessible to enterprise administrators who can set any restrictions needed on fully managed devices. More here.
New permission for CDM-paired apps starting foreground services - To better support companion apps carrying out core functionality while providing transparency to the system, apps paired with Companion Device Manager (CDM) can launch foreground services from the background by declaring a new normal permission. More here.
Better, faster auto-rotate - We’ve enhanced Android’s auto-rotate feature with face detection, using the front-facing camera to more accurately recognize when to rotate the screen. This is especially helpful for people who are using their devices while lying down on a couch or in bed, for example. For developers, this means that the auto-rotation behavior will provide a better user experience for users who have opted in through Settings. The enhanced auto-rotate feature lives within our recently announced Private Compute Core, so images are never stored or sent off the device. In Beta 3 this feature is available on Pixel 4 and later Pixel devices.
To make screen rotation as speedy as possible on all devices, we’ve also optimized the animation and redrawing and added an ML-driven gesture-detection algorithm. As a result, the latency for the base auto-rotate feature has been reduced by 25%, and the benefits of the face detection enhancement build on top of those improvements. Give the auto-rotate improvements a try and let us know what you think.
Android 12 for Games - With Game Mode APIs, you can react to the players' performance profile selection for your game - like better battery life for a long commute, or performance mode to get peak frame rates. These APIs will be tied to the upcoming game dashboard which provides an overlay experience with quick access to key utilities during gameplay. The game dashboard will be available on select devices later this year.
Play as you download on Android 12 with Touchgrind BMX
Meanwhile, play as you download will allow game assets to be fetched in the background during install, getting your players into gameplay faster.
Over the past several weeks we've been working to finalize the Android 12 APIs and today we're releasing them with Beta 3, along with the official API Level 31 SDK. We plan to reach full Platform Stability at Beta 4, when all app-facing system behaviors and non-SDK interface restrictions will also be final, in addition to the API surfaces.
If you’re compiling your app against the Android 12 APIs, we recommend using today’s release to update your environment and recompile your apps with the final SDK and latest tools.
App compatibility
With many early-adopter users and developers getting Android 12 Beta on Pixel and other devices, now is the time to make sure your apps are compatible and ready for them to use!
To test your app for compatibility with Beta 3, just install the published version from Google Play or other source onto a device or emulator running Android 12 Beta. Work through all of the app’s flows and watch for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing on areas where underlying changes may affect your app. There’s no need to change your app’s targetSdkVersion at this time, so once you’ve resolved any issues, we recommend publishing an update as soon as possible for your Android 12 Beta users.
As mentioned earlier, Android 12 will reach Platform Stability in the next release, Beta 4. With Platform Stability, all app-facing system behaviors, SDK/NDK APIs, and non-SDK restrictions will be finalized. At that time, you can begin your final compatibility testing and release a fully compatible version of your app, SDK, or library. More on the Android 12 timeline for developers is here.
You can also get Android 12 Beta 3 on devices from some of our top device-maker partners like Sharp and TCL. Visit android.com/beta to see the full list of partners participating in Android 12 Beta. For even broader testing, you can try Android 12 Beta on Android GSI images, and if you don’t have a device you can test on the Android Emulator.
Beta 3 is also available for Android TV, so you can check out the latest TV features and test your apps on the all-new Google TV experience. Try it out with the ADT-3 developer kit. More here.
Privacy and security is personal. It means different things to different people, but our commitment is the same to everyone who uses our products: we will keep your personal information private, safe, and secure. We think everyone should be in the know about what data is collected, how their information is used, and most importantly, how they control the data they share with us.
Here are some of the top questions that people commonly ask us:
Q. Is Google Assistant recording everything I say?
No, it isn’t.
Google Assistant is designed to wait in standby mode until it is activated, like when you say, "Hey Google" or "Ok Google". In standby mode, it processes short snippets of audio (a few seconds) to detect an activation (such as “Ok Google”). If no activation is detected, then those audio snippets won’t be sent or saved to Google. When an activation is detected, the Assistant comes out of standby mode to fulfill your request. The status indicator on your device lets you know when the Assistant is activated. And when it’s in standby mode, the Assistant won’t send what you are saying to Google or anyone else. To help keep you in control, we're constantly working to make the Assistant better at reducing unintended activations.
To better tailor Google Assistant to your environment, you can now adjust how sensitive your Assistant is to the activation phrase (like 'Hey Google') through the Google Home app for smart speakers and smart displays. We also provide controls to turn off cameras and mics, and when they’re active we’ll provide a clear visual indicator (like flashing dots on top of your device).
Deleting your Google Assistant activity is easy, by simply using your voice. Just say something like, “Hey Google, delete this week’s activity”, or “Hey Google, delete my last conversation”, and Google Assistant will delete your Assistant activity. This will reflect on your My Activity page, and you can also use this page to review and delete activity across the Google products you use. And if you have people coming over, you can also activate a “Guest Mode” on Google Assistant – Just say, “Hey Google, turn on Guest Mode,” and your Google Assistant interactions will not be saved to your account.
Q. How does Google decide what ads it shows me? How can I control this?
The Ads you see can be based on a number of things, such as your previous searches, the sites you visit, ads clicked, and more.
For example, you may discover that you are seeing a camera ad because you’ve searched for cameras, visited photography websites or clicked on ads for cameras before. The 'Why this ad?' feature helps you understand why you are seeing a given ad.
Data helps us personalise ads so that they're more useful to you, but we never use the content of your emails or documents, or sensitive information like health, race, religion or sexual orientation, to tailor ads to you.
It is also easy to personalize the kinds of ads that are shown to you, or even disable ads personalization completely. Visit your Ad Settings page.
Q. Are you building a profile of my personal information across your products, for targeting ads?
We do not sell your personal information — not to advertisers, not to anyone. And we don’t use information in apps where you primarily store personal content — such as Gmail, Drive, Calendar and Photos — for advertising purposes.
We use information to improve our products and services for you and for everyone. And we use anonymous, aggregated data to do so.
A small subset of information may be used to serve you relevant ads (for things you may actually want to hear about), but only with your consent. You can always turn these settings off.
It is also important to note that you can use most of Google’s products completely anonymously, without logging in -- you can Search in incognito mode, or clear your search history; you can watch YouTube videos and use Maps. However, when you share your data with us we can create a better experience with our products based on the information shared with us.
Q. Are you reading my emails to sell ads?
We do not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads.
In fact, we have a host of products like Gmail, Drive and Photos that are designed to store your personal content, and this content is never used to show ads. When you use your personal Google account and open the promotions or social tabs in Gmail, you'll see ads that were selected to be the most useful and relevant for you. The process of selecting and showing personalized ads in Gmail is fully automated. The ads you see in Gmail are based on data associated with your Google Account such as your activity in other Google services such as YouTube or Search, which could affect the types of ads that you see in Gmail. To remember which ads you've dismissed, avoid showing you the same ads, and show you ads you may like better, we save your past ad interactions, like which ads you've clicked or dismissed. Google does not use keywords or messages in your inbox to show you ads – nobody reads your email in order to show you ads.
Also, if you have a work or school account, you will never be shown ads in Gmail.
If you want to get from A to B, it’s quicker to have your phone tell us where you are, than to have you figure out your address or location. Location information helps in many other ways too, like helping us figure out how busy traffic is. If you choose to enable location sharing, your phone will send anonymous bits of information back to Google. This is combined with anonymous data from people around you to recognise traffic patterns.
This only happens for people who turn location history on. It is off by default. If you turn it on, but then change your mind, you can visit Your Data in Maps -- a single place for people to manage Google account location settings.
Q. What information does Google know about me? How do I control it?
You can see a summary of what Google services you use and the data saved in your account from your Google Dashboard. There are also powerful privacy controls like Activity Controls and Ad Settings, which allow you to switch the collection and use of data on or off to decide how all of Google can work better for you.
We’ve made it easier for you to make decisions about your data directly within the Google services you use every day. For example, without ever leaving Search, you can review and delete your recent search activity, get quick access to relevant privacy controls from your Google Account, and learn more about how Search works with your data. You can quickly access these controls in Search, Maps, and the Assistant.
Privacy features and controls have always been built into our services, and we’re continuously working to make it even easier to control and manage your privacy and security. But we know that the web is a constantly evolving space, where new threats and bad actors will unfortunately emerge. There will always be more work to be done, and safeguarding people who use our products and services every day will remain our focus.
For more on how we keep you and your information private, safe and secure visit the Google Safety Center.
Posted by Miguel Guevara, Product Manager, Privacy and Data Protection Office.
As developers, it’s our responsibility to help keep our users safe online and protect their data. This starts with building products that are secure by default, private by design, and put users in control. Everything we make at Google is underpinned by these principles, and we’re proud to be an industry leader in developing, deploying, and scaling new privacy-preserving technologies that make it possible to learn valuable insights and create helpful experiences while protecting our users’ privacy.
That’s why today, we are excited to announce that we’re open-sourcing a first-of-its-kind, general-purpose transpiler for Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), which will enable developers to compute on encrypted data without being able to access any personally identifiable information.
A deeper look at the technology
With FHE, encrypted data can travel across the Internet to a server, where it can be processed without being decrypted. Google’s transpiler will enable developers to write code for any type of basic computation such as simple string processing or math, and run it on encrypted data. The transpiler will transform that code into a version that can run on encrypted data. This then allows developers to create new programming applications that don’t need unencrypted data. FHE can also be used to train machine learning models on sensitive data in a private manner.
For example, imagine you’re building an application for people with diabetes. This app might collect sensitive information from its users, and you need a way to keep this data private and protected while also sharing it with medical experts to learn valuable insights that could lead to important medical advancements. With Google’s transpiler for FHE, you can encrypt the data you collect and share it with medical experts who, in turn, can analyze the data without decrypting it - providing helpful information to the medical community, all while ensuring that no one can access the data’s underlying information.
In the next 10 years, FHE could even help researchers find associations between specific gene mutations by analyzing genetic information across thousands of encrypted samples and testing different hypotheses to identify the genes most strongly associated with the diseases they’re studying.
Making more products private by design
Our principle to make our products private by design drives us to build ground-breaking computing technologies that enable personalized experiences while protecting your private information. Privacy-preserving technologies are on the cutting-edge of Google’s innovations, and they have already shown great potential to help shape a more private internet.
In 2016, Google researchers invented Federated Learning, a technique that helps preserve privacy by keeping as much personal information on your device as possible. And in 2019, Google made its differential privacy library freely available to any organization or developer, an advanced anonymization technology that enables developers to learn from their data privately. No one has scaled the use of Differential Privacy more than we have.
We’ve been thrilled to see these technologies put to use across the globe; in France, for example, a startup called Arkhn has been able to accelerate scientific discovery using differential privacy to share data across hospitals.
We still have a ways to go before most computations happen with FHE -- but much as it took some time for HTTPS to take off and be widely adopted, today’s announcement is an important step towards bringing users helpful products that preserve their privacy and keep their data safe.
At Google, we know that open-sourcing our technologies with the developer community for feedback and use helps make them better. We will continue to invest and lead the privacy-preserving technology field by publishing new work, and open-sourcing it for everyone to use at scale - and we're excited to continue this practice by sharing this latest advancement with developers everywhere. We can't wait to see what you’ll build, and we look forward to collaborating on the journey towards a safer Internet.
David Wihl, Google Ads API Team 
- Cory Liseno, Google Ads API Team
