Android

Google is cracking down on apps that prevent a device from going to sleep for a long period of time by performing activities in the background. Starting March 1st, 2026, Google will begin hiding some of these battery-draining apps from recommendations and may even display a warning label on their Play Store listings.

Android Authority spotted a new home screen toggle in an Android Canary build. Google shrunk the mandatory widget a little earlier this year, but users want the option to remove it entirely. Then again, Google tested this toggle in 2023 too, and never gave it a release.

Judge Donato is now ordering an evidentiary hearing in Epic v. Google, Law360’s Bonnie Eslinger reports from the courtroom. She writes Donato is “not sure the proposed deal will correct Google’s illegal conduct,” and was skeptical that Epic and Google “are suddenly BFFs.”

Just as it did with its Weather app for wearables in September, Google has announced that new Wear OS devices from other manufacturers will have to rely on something else. If you have a non-Pixel watch with the Clock app already, it will keep working, but without new updates.

Google is launching a bunch of new tools for developers, including a way to automatically localize apps into select languages. There’s also a new Prompt API that will allow developers to build and integrate custom AI features powered by Google’s on-device model, Gemini Nano, into their apps.

Android Authority has done its usual digging around and discovered code for home screen widgets in Android Auto. They’re clearly still a work-in-progress, but should eventually let you run one widget at a time on the left third of the screen.

The issue is caused by a font in the latest update to the app (version 10.x) that’s only available through Google Play Services. As a result, it’s crashing or simply failing to launch on phones running GrapheneOS and other “de-Googled” versions of Android, reports Android Authority.

After a ten-month investigation, the Competition and Markets Authority has designated Apple and Google’s mobile platforms with “strategic market status,” describing them as having “substantial, entrenched market power.” The companies now face extra anti-competition regulations in the UK, following a similar ruling for Google Search.

Google appears to have pulled the latest Android 16 QPR2 beta release just hours after it went out, amidst reports of it causing crashes linked to Android’s desktop mode.

Vivo is teasing OriginOS 6, its latest take on Android, and I can’t help but notice that it’s looking very... wet. And glassy. Funny that. It arrives along with the X300 phones next week, and for the first time it’s rolling out globally, killing off Vivo’s cursed international offering, Funtouch OS.

Google’s plans to verify the identity of developers releasing apps even outside the Play Store sparked fears Android was about to get a whole lot less open. Not so, says Google, insisting in a new blog post that sideloading apps “is fundamental to Android and it is not going away.”

Two of the best Pixel features are hitting more countries. Google phone owners in Australia, Canada, and Ireland now get Call Screen, with a Hindi beta coming to India soon. They’re all getting Scam Detection too, as are UK users, who got Call Screen last year.

This year’s Material 3 Expressive aesthetic looks great, but only if the heavy background blur doesn’t make things hard for you to read. If it does, a new Android test build includes a toggle to disable blur everywhere. No word yet on when it’s getting a stable release though.

Android users can finally (it only took them 17 years!!!) mark emails as read directly from the Gmail notification, clearing the alert at the same time. Meanwhile iPhone notifications now include the sender’s picture, another bafflingly basic feature Gmail hasn’t offered until now.

The company just dropped a teaser for its upcoming series 17 Pro and Pro Max models with a second display on the back. The flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 phones are launching this month in China.