Android 14 is Google’s newest operating system and it brings with it new features and improvements. This version of the operating system is known as Developer Preview 2.
With this update, Google is introducing a variety of privacy improvements for users and developers. Some of the most notable changes are related to Android’s Credential Manager API.
Credential Manager
Credential Manager is a feature that stores your saved credentials for signing in to websites, connected applications, and networks. It also allows you to edit, remove, backup & restore these credentials.
The Credential Manager is located in the Control Panel and is available on both Windows 10 and Windows 7. It contains two different categories of credentials – Web Credentials and Windows Credentials.
Web Credentials are used by Microsoft Edge and other products to sign in to websites. They store your username and password so that you don’t have to enter them again next time you log in.
The other category of credentials are Windows Credentials, which are used by Windows services and apps to automatically log you in. This includes your username and password for the Windows operating system itself, as well as any certificate-based credentials you use on network drives or Remote Desktop.
Safer Implicit Intents
Android 14 now offers Safer Implicit Intents, a new feature to help protect user data. It works by ensuring that intents are delivered to the right components, so malicious apps have more trouble intercepting intents sent from other applications.
When an implicit intent is received by a component, it must pass through the intent filter’s three tests: action, data, and category. If it does not pass all three, the system will not deliver it to the component.
For example, if you want to allow users to share photos from your app with other people, you would create an implicit intent that has its action set to ACTION_SEND and its data extra set to the URI of the photo.
Then, when an implicit intent is received, the Android system uses the intent filter’s actions, data, and category to match it against other components that are registered for those actions and data types. This process is called intent resolution.
Background Activity Limits
We’ve heard your requests for more streamlined background work. That’s why we’ve improved Android’s memory management system to improve resource utilisation.
The memory management system has been enhanced to allow background work to be disallowed much more quickly, seconds after an app enters the cached state outside of conventional Android app lifecycle APIs like foreground services, JobScheduler and WorkManager.
Adaptive Battery also uses a machine learning engine to prioritize which apps should be able to execute background tasks and which should not. This way, the system can better allocate resources and limit battery drain.
In addition to these new privacy features, Android 14 brings a few new features for the tablet and foldable experience. These include support for large screens and libraries that make it easy to build apps with low latency stylus and motion prediction.
App Permissions
Android’s app permissions let applications access a variety of data on your phone. They include your call log, text messages, photos, videos, recordings, microphones and more.
Fortunately, it’s easy to manage these permissions. Just head to Settings > Privacy and select the “Permission Manager” option to view a breakdown of your permissions for each category.
The permissions screen will also show you what an app is allowed to do and which it’s not. If you want to deny an app’s permission, just tap the toggle button and choose “Don’t Allow” to remove it.
You should always check that any app you download comes from a trusted source. You should never give an app permissions to access your location, private texts, camera or other sensitive information without checking that it’s safe first.