#android-contacts-picker — Public Fediverse posts

Android 17 seems the least consequential OS update that I’ve seen in years

I installed a whole-number release of Google’s mobile operating system on my phone Wednesday, and about the only way I can tell that I’ve gone from Android 16 to Android 17 is when I clear my notifications.

Instead of the old “No notifications” confirmation, the new version of Android gives me a little pep talk: a “You’re all caught up” message below a trophy icon. Which is nice, even if being free of new app notifications is an exceedingly temporary condition for me.

I expected a little more out of Android 17 because I’d written as much in a series of posts for PCMag over the past six months chronicling this release’s progress through a series of developer preview and beta releases.

Google hadn’t been promising anything epic, but the reality of Android 17 as shipped is so much less that my PCMag colleague Flo Ion borrowed some journalistic lingo to convey how many advertised features have yet to ship: “Android TK.”

While I wait for Google to deliver Android 17capabilities like Gemini Intelligence and Pause Point, what do I get from this release?

Google’s post announcing 17 leads off with bubble multitasking, an option to open an app into a smaller window you can condense back into a floating app icon. But my Pixel 9 Pro’s screen isn’t big enough for a feature built for the larger displays of foldable phones and tablets.

With the second feature highlighted in that post, Screen Reactions, the problem isn’t my phone’s screen but the person using it. I almost never post video and have never even thought about posting a clip where I’m offering some value judgment about what’s on my phone’s screen. (Maybe I should now?)

Android 17’s security and privacy enhancements are less fun to talk about but matter more to me. I can now limit an app’s request for my location to only my current session with that app, the Advanced Protection option and default device-theft countermeasures offer additional defenses against somebody attempting to break into my phone after taking it from me, and this release features Google’s first Android support for post-quantum-computing cryptography.

But the privacy upgrade I was most looking forward to using–a new Contact Picker interface that will let you respond to an app’s request for your contacts by letting it see only the contacts of your choice–requires app developers to support that feature first. WhatsApp, which won’t even let me enable backup to my Google account without contacts access, desperately needs this… but I’m not exactly expecting Meta to drop everything to enable it in its messaging app.

I know the story is still being written with Android 17; Google plans to follow the pattern it set with Android 16, where a secondary update late in the year brings additional features. In the meantime, I suppose this unassuming release offers one other modest benefit: When so much of the tech universe is overrunning with drama, I don’t have to worry about that here.

Android 17 seems the least consequential OS update that I’ve seen in years

I installed a whole-number release of Google’s mobile operating system on my phone Wednesday, and about the only way I can tell that I’ve gone from Android 16 to Android 17 is when I clear my notifications.

Instead of the old “No notifications” confirmation, the new version of Android gives me a little pep talk: a “You’re all caught up” message below a trophy icon. Which is nice, even if being free of new app notifications is an exceedingly temporary condition for me.

I expected a little more out of Android 17 because I’d written as much in a series of posts for PCMag over the past six months chronicling this release’s progress through a series of developer preview and beta releases.

Google hadn’t been promising anything epic, but the reality of Android 17 as shipped is so much less that my PCMag colleague Flo Ion borrowed some journalistic lingo to convey how many advertised features have yet to ship: “Android TK.”

While I wait for Google to deliver Android 17capabilities like Gemini Intelligence and Pause Point, what do I get from this release?

Google’s post announcing 17 leads off with bubble multitasking, an option to open an app into a smaller window you can condense back into a floating app icon. But my Pixel 9 Pro’s screen isn’t big enough for a feature built for the larger displays of foldable phones and tablets.

With the second feature highlighted in that post, Screen Reactions, the problem isn’t my phone’s screen but the person using it. I almost never post video and have never even thought about posting a clip where I’m offering some value judgment about what’s on my phone’s screen. (Maybe I should now?)

Android 17’s security and privacy enhancements are less fun to talk about but matter more to me. I can now limit an app’s request for my location to only my current session with that app, the Advanced Protection option and default device-theft countermeasures offer additional defenses against somebody attempting to break into my phone after taking it from me, and this release features Google’s first Android support for post-quantum-computing cryptography.

But the privacy upgrade I was most looking forward to using–a new Contact Picker interface that will let you respond to an app’s request for your contacts by letting it see only the contacts of your choice–requires app developers to support that feature first. WhatsApp, which won’t even let me enable backup to my Google account without contacts access, desperately needs this… but I’m not exactly expecting Meta to drop everything to enable it in its messaging app.

I know the story is still being written with Android 17; Google plans to follow the pattern it set with Android 16, where a secondary update late in the year brings additional features. In the meantime, I suppose this unassuming release offers one other modest benefit: When so much of the tech universe is overrunning with drama, I don’t have to worry about that here.