Google has just introduced Android 13 Beta 1, which aims to improve privacy and security, as well as developer performance. In addition, developers can begin exploring Privacy Sandbox Preview, a collection of technologies that improve user privacy while allowing personalized advertising, Google says.
Android 13 Beta 1 introduces new, more detailed permissions to access media files. In particular, while the older version of Android discards all different types of media in the same category, Android 13 explicitly distinguishes between three types of media files: images and photos, videos and audio files.
When permissions are granted by the user, applications will have readable access to the appropriate media file types. To simplify the user experience, if an application requests READ_MEDIA_IMAGE and READ_MEDIA_VIDEO at the same time, the system displays a dialog box for granting both permissions.
Apps that have access to shared media files will need to migrate to the new permissions system if they want to continue running as expected on Android 13. For compatibility with previous versions of Android, apps will also need to include the old permissions READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE for Software Development Kits (SDKs) up to and including Version 32.
Android 13 Beta 1 also improves support for determining the best audio format to use for audio recording. In particular, the new getAudioDevicesForAttributes () allows developers to retrieve a list of devices that can be used to play a specific audio, and getDirectProfilesForAttributes () tells whether an audio stream can be played directly.
Other upcoming features in Android 13 that were already available through developer previews include a new notification permission, support for color vector fonts, a text-to-speech API, Bluetooth LE Audio, MIDI 2.0 over USB, and more.
Privacy Sandbox for Android is roughly equivalent to the transparency of Apple’s application tracking solution, a solution that allows users to prevent the application from tracking them using an ad ID.
Google’s approach focuses on preventing cross-tracking between different applications, while providing a single application with effective means of presenting customized ads. In particular, they include themes, attribution reporting and FLEDGE on Android.
Our goal with Android’s Sandbox Privacy is to develop effective and privacy-enhancing advertising solutions where users know their privacy is protected and developers and companies have the tools to succeed on mobile devices.
The Themes API supports so-called interest-based advertising (IBA), where users are shown ads based on their interests, as they can be derived from applications they have used in the past. This differs from contextualized advertising in that ads are displayed based on the content that the user is currently consuming.
Attribution reporting is similar to Apple’s ATT solution and aims to prevent the use of different country IDs such as device IDs, ad IDs, etc. that can be easily used to track users. Each ad publisher receives its own identifier, which is then used to provide aggregated click summaries and / or conversion tracking views.
FLEDGE is a specific approach to what is commonly called ‘remarketing’ and ‘personalized audience targeting’. For example, an app might want to show an ad to a user who has left some items in the shopping cart and remind them to complete the purchase. FLEDGE is implementing a bidding mechanism to make this possible without sharing user-related identifiers between providers. Instead, all user-related information is stored on the device itself and can be used by applications that accept FLEDGE to participate in the bidding process.
As implied above, none of the above approaches have met with significant acceptance, and it remains to be seen how well they will handle the advertising industry. For this reason, the current advertising ID will be maintained for at least two years, says Google.
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