The latest Android 16 beta is out and one of the smallest changes in this year’s cycle might be the most commonly used by fans of Google’s next mobile operating system.
9to5Google spotted the presence of a new “close” app button within the Android 16 menu displaying cards for recently-used apps on the best Android phones.
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When users tap the app icon within the recent screen a new option to close the app now appears below the options to pause the app, start a split screen or view the app information.
The new close option is helpful because previously a swipe gesture was required to close down the apps. This might be handy if you want to reduce the strain on your phone without being able to swipe to close the apps.
As the site reporting the tweak points out, it’s hardly an epochal change but it comes within a beta version that doesn’t offer much in the way of new features.
In previous betas we’ve learned that lock screen widgets are coming to Android phones and not just tablets, Live Updates for tools like Google Maps are going to provide concurrent information from apps without having to open them.
Pertaining to the camera there are also new exposure options and the ability to precisely control colour temperature and tint.
Small, but effective
Android 16 isn’t likely to be the biggest release in the history of Google’s mobile platform, but what we’ve seen so far suggest there’ll be several handy quality of life updates.
We’ll learn more at Google I/O in May, but I imagine those updates will be largely focused on new features for the company’s Gemini AI tool.
