Android Q Beta 2 at your fingertips: bubbles, notification wizards, etc.

Android Q Beta 2 is out! Despite the plethora of Google bug warnings, I flashed on my daily driver and am back to report some things. The beta 2 gives us a brand new feature to play called "Bubbles", a lot of small changes and a frustrating and slow development of the Android gesture navigation system.

Of course, everything is a work in progress, and there are a lot of bugs and weird quirks. However, we will always draw attention to them in the hope that they will be cleaned up before their release. Let's dive in!

Bubbles: messaging application feature or foolish replacement of the notification panel?

The main feature of Android Q Beta 2 is "Bubbles", a multitasking user interface that has a striking resemblance to the old feature "Chat Heads" of Facebook. Applications appear in floating windows and can be reduced to a small floating circle. Android supports this at the operating system level, so any application can be a bubble. Google suggests using it for messaging apps, note apps, instructions and anything else you'll want to keep on hand when you move around your phone.

Bubble support does not automatically apply to applications – each developer must be updated by the developer specifically to support the bubbles. Since Android Q Beta 2 has just come out, no application supports bubbles. Scratch it …a application supports bubbles: example of Google Bubble application. It was briefly mentioned in the Google blog post, but you have it here on GitHub, compile it in Android Studio and send it to your Android phone Q. The result is the email application above that allows you to talk to animals.

The dog says "woof", the cat says "meow" and, overall, Bubbles is a standard messaging application. The magic comes from the button located in the upper right corner of the application, which allows you to create a bubble. Just like the old chat head feature, the bubble here contains a tiny version of an email application. You can drag the bubble on the screen and press it to open it or reduce the small applet. To close a bubble, simply drag it to the bottom of the screen.

The application example of Google will automatically reply to your messages after five seconds. The idea being that you can send a message from the user interface in full screen, access the home screen and, in five seconds, the application will create a new bubble. This could become annoying if the applications were abusing it, so that the use of the bubble is locked behind a permission. The first time an application creates a bubble, you get a permission "allow" or "deny" attached to the contextual user interface and, in the application settings, you can change the setting bubble on demand. In most cases, bubble apps stay outside of your notification panel. The first time a bubble appears, you get a duplicate notification in the panel, but if you interact with the bubble, the notification disappears.

Android Q is a beta version and there are some bugs. First, by default, bubbles appear at the bottom of the contextual user interface, down the screen. This is good for accessibility, but when you open the keyboard, the bubbles and the UI do not move up to make room for the keyboard, as do all other applications. For now, you can use a bypass command that forces the bubbles to open at the top of the screen and leaves room for typing. Second, the bubbles are supposed to show contact pictures, but this feature does not work in this beta yet. Google's blog specifically states that the icons are "disabled in beta 2" for some reason.

The third problem I 've noticed is that the open bubble UI appears below the notification panel but will capture a touch interaction. above the notification panel. You must close a balloon if you want to use the notification panel.