Now that the first Developer Preview of the next version of Android has gone live, we can expect to see more and more reports of upcoming features pop up online. Though they may not all make it to the production version of Android 11, they give us an idea of what to expect from Google’s popular mobile operating system this year. After a root-about in the Pixel Launcher’s code, XDA Developers reports that there are three new features currently being tested in the famous launcher, each as useful as the next.
The first feature is a set of three new action buttons at the bottom of the recent apps screen: Select, Screenshot, and Share. According to the report, the Select button does absolutely nothing at the moment but is expected to highlight all the text and images within the app in focus. The Screenshot button reportedly takes a screenshot of the app in focus and then saves it to disk, while the Share button goes one step further by bringing up the share screen for sharing the screenshot with a contact.
The second feature is an option to hide a particular suggestion in the suggested apps section of the launcher’s app drawer. For example, you can long-press a suggested app such as Google Photos and tap ‘Don’t suggest app’ to remove it from the top row of the app drawer. At least this appears to be the function of this feature because XDA Developers reports it doesn’t do anything for the moment. If Google indeed enables this feature in Android 11, users should be able to get a slightly tighter control over their suggested apps.
The third and final feature comes in the form of home screen folders that name themselves automatically when icons of a similar category are grouped together. For example, grouping Facebook and Twitter icons together reportedly creates a new folder called ‘Social’. The newly created folder can of course be renamed but this automatic suggestion can prove to be a huge time-saver for users who just want to keep their home screen icons organised by category. Whether Google decides to bring all three features to the final release version of Android 11 is something only time will tell. In the meantime, you can check out the Pixel Launcher here.