In early February, Google announced the release of a preview of Android 14, its future operating system. This preview version, intended for developers (not end users), gave us a glimpse of some of the possible features that the OS will include in the future, such as the ability to scale font sizes up to 200% and an improved per-application language system.
Now, Google has released the second developer preview of Android 14, designed for professionals to test new features and designs in their apps, as well as to explore new ways to improve their apps using the tools that the operating system makes available to them.
This new preview version of Android 14 does not represent the features and design of the future OS for users. For example, Google has introduced some guidance for developers on the quality of apps on devices with large screens, a greater number of tools to help predict stylus movements and a gallery of designs that will serve as inspiration when creating apps for tablets and foldable mobiles.
In this new preview, Google has introduced Credential Manager, a credential manager that promises to simplify the login process using passwords or via Passkeys, a security feature announced by Google last year that is already available in Google Chrome and would also be part of the security suite of the future Android 14.
In addition, the second preview released by Google adds several options when granting permission to apps to access our photo gallery. In the screenshot shared by Google, you can see that when an app asks for permission to access the gallery, the user will have three options: allow access to all photos, do not allow access or choose the photos we want to share with the app.
Like the first Android 14 developer preview, this new version must also be installed manually, and is only recommended for installation by experts. On the other hand, these versions are only compatible with Google Pixel devices starting with Pixel 4a.
