sGoogle has made the first beta build of Android 13 available to the public after two developer previews were released in February and March. It is much easier to install and use than Developer Preview builds, as always with Android betas.
Hopefully, there will not be any huge, horrible bugs by now, so that’s by design. Still, there are likely to be a lot of issues, since this is the first of four betas before the final release later this year.
You can enroll your Google Pixel smartphone on the Android Beta Program website here. If you’re interested in trying out Android 13 Beta 1 and have a supported device, you can do so here.
Within a few minutes (up to a few hours), you should receive Android 13 Beta 1. As with the previous beta builds, you’ll also get future beta builds over the air, just like normal software updates, as well as Android 13 once it’s fully baked and ready to go. You’ll receive the first beta (and the following ones) over the air if you already have the Developer Preview build of Android 13.
Features:
Among the new features of Android 13 Beta 1 is more granular access to media files and improved audio routing APIs. Applications that wish to access media on your phone now have three different permissions – one for images and photos, one for videos, and one for audio files. These permissions were previously incorporated into a single “media access” permission, which, if granted, allowed access to all types of media. But not anymore.
The app in question will have only read access to the related media file types after granting one of the new permissions. The permissions model for Android 13 will have to be migrated by developers when their apps target Android 13.
Besides audio routing, there are some minor improvements in error reporting for apps that generate keys. But they will likely only be relevant to app developers.
