Android 17 Beta 4 Arriving

Android 17 Beta 4 is rolling out for your Pixel device. This latest release follows a sizable Beta 3 build that finally gave us some new features and also brought us to platform stability. At this point forward, we should just be fine tuning Android 17 to get it to stable for a release later this quarter. Google tells us that this is the “last scheduled beta of this release cycle.”

To get Android 17 Beta 4 up and running on your Android device, the quickest way would be via the Android Beta, located here. Enroll your device, then await the OTA. If you are old school, you can go the old fashioned route of flashing a factory image or OTA file.

The latest build info is as follows:

Android 17 Beta 4 supports all Pixel devices dating back to the Pixel 6 lineup.

What’s new in Android 17 Beta 4 for developers?

App Memory Limits

Android 17 beta 4 introduces conservative, app memory limits to improve system stability. If your app is killed by these limits, ApplicationExitInfo.getDescription will contain “MemoryLimiter”. You can also use trigger-based profiling to capture heap dumps when limits are hit using TRIGGER_TYPE_ANOMALY.

Background audio hardening changes

Starting in Android 17, the audio framework enforces restrictions on background audio interactions including audio playback, audio focus requests, and volume change APIs. Based on your feedback, we’ve made some changes since beta 2,including targetSDK gating while-in-use FGS enforcement and exempting alarm audio. Full details available in the updated guidance.

And finally, here are all of the Android 17 Beta 4 bug fixes:

• An issue where webpage URLs were automatically included when sharing screenshots from the capture preview, causing unwanted links to be shared with image files. (Issue #444631269)
• An accessibility issue caused the device to become completely unresponsive and unusable. (Issue #484755628)
• An issue where the media control widget could disappear or fail to navigate between multiple active media sessions. (Issue #457008153, Issue #466760800, Issue #497131275, Issue #499041878)
• An issue where dream services failed to correctly process key events, trigger keyguard bouncer prompts, or execute service lifecycle callbacks. (Issue #485661973)
• An issue that prevented users from successfully downloading and applying cinematic or local weather wallpaper effects. (Issue #475924636)
• An issue where the device would freeze and spontaneously restart while typing in messaging applications. (Issue #478417840)
• A critical system instability issue that causes the device to hang and crash during normal usage. (Issue #427436873, Issue #428838049)
• An issue causing devices to experience significantly reduced charging speeds when approaching the 80% battery limit, resulting in long delays before the device reaches its target charge and enters bypass mode. (Issue #485148344, Issue #490178498)
• A rendering issue that caused multicolored horizontal lines to randomly obscure the device display. (Issue #478953060, Issue #478177624, Issue #483765859, Issue #487263076)
• Pulling down the notification drawer while a feedback report is in progress can cause a System UI crash and device freeze. (Issue #488920581)
• Critical system components including Pixel Launcher and navigation may crash or become unresponsive for several minutes after a device reboot. (Issue #317282987, Issue #316689583, Issue #316188779)
• An accessibility issue that prevents users from properly interacting with apps after minimizing and returning to a split-screen view. (Issue #490735259)
• An issue that prevented Bluetooth from being re-enabled after it was turned off via the system settings or quick settings panel. (Issue #498320401)
• Notifications marked with setSilent(true) may unexpectedly play alert sounds on Android 16 when multiple notifications are present in the shade. (Issue #467164528)
• Wi-Fi analyzer applications fail to detect any available Wi-Fi signals, preventing network scanning and signal monitoring.

We’ll update this post shortly with changes, bug fixes, and more.

// Google