Android 14 'Upside Down Cake

The most exciting thing about a big Android update is being able to follow a pattern to get a taste of all the new features. Google's Android 12 update marked the biggest visual redesign of the operating system since Android 5 Lollipop thanks to Material You. The new design philosophy, along with an exhaustive list of new features, made Android 12 look and feel radically different from previous iterations. Android 13 then came along and doubled down on many of the same aesthetic choices. Now we're moving on to Android 14, and there will likely be even more under-the-hood changes.

Android 14 arrived just recently, and we already have some hints about what to expect in the future. Each new release will add new features and smaller improvements to different elements of the Android system. We're now on our second developer preview, and we expect there to be at least one more before the betas start rolling in. If you want all there is to know about Android 14 in one place, then you've come to the right page.

Google ditched its dessert naming scheme for Android two years ago with Android 10's brand redesign. The use of dessert names, however, has continued for the company's internal development teams. Android 11, for instance, was called Red Velvet, while Android 12 is known as Snow Cone. Similarly, Android 13 is called Tiramisu. Google is no longer keeping Android 14's a secret since it was found in one of the AOSP Gerrit commits back in July last year.

For those of you who are curious, these have been the dessert names (internal or public) of all the Android versions so far:

Android 1.5: Cupcake

Android 1.6: Donut

Android 2.0: Éclair

Android 2.2: Froyo

Android 2.3: Gingerbread

Android 3.0: Honeycomb

Android 4.0: Ice Cream Sandwich

Android 4.1: Jelly Bean

Android 4.4: KitKat

Android 5.0: Lollipop

Android 6.0: Marshmallow

Android 7.0: Nougat

Android 8.0: Oreo

Android 9: Pie

Android 10: Quince Tart

Android 11: Red Velvet Cake

Android 12: Snow Cone

Android 13: Tiramisu

Android 14: Upside Down Cake

There is no known release date for Android 14 yet, but we suspect that it will follow the same release cadence as in previous years. Android 13 dropped in its developer preview form in February 2022, followed by another developer preview, then four more beta releases until the final release of Android 13. With the first Android 14 developer preview arriving on time and followed up quickly by the second and now a beta, too, it seems likely that we'll follow a similar release cadence to last year.

For developers, you can expect to see Android 14 hit "platform stability" sometime around the third beta if Google follows the same release timeline as last year. Platform stability refers to the finalization of APIs, and last year, it coincided with the ability for developers to submit apps targeting the new API level on the Google Play Store.If you have a recent Google Pixel smartphone, like the new Pixel 7 series, rest assured that you will be one of the first to get a taste of Android 14 when it drops. It will still only be in developer preview form (and thus, probably shouldn't be installed on your daily driver), but you'll still be able to try it out. We also expect other device manufacturers to join in on the fun, though it tends to be the case that devices from places like OnePlus and Xiaomi aren't updated as regularly. In other words, beware.

However, if you really want to try Android 14 when it comes out on your smartphone, and there's no official build, you can try out a Generic System Image (GSI).

What's new in Android 14 so far?

These are some of the undocumented changes that have been spotted in Android 14 so far.Android Beta 1 added a "transparent navigation bar" setting, which changes the background of the navigation bar to be transparent instead of black. This includes the gesture bar that you see at the bottom of the display. Since Android 5.0 Lollipop, app developers have been able to change the color of Android’s navigation bar, which by default is solid black. Some apps have never implemented it though, so you can end up with some inconsistencies across apps.

Interestingly, the app’s UI won’t be drawn underneath the navigation bar when this feature is enabled, meaning there won’t be any visual overlaps between the app and the nav bar. Here’s an example of what it will look like with or without the “transparent navigation bar” feature enabled: