Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
TL;DR Google is updating the Android Easter egg in Android 16 QPR2 to properly showcase the new Live Updates feature.
Live Updates allow apps to provide persistent progress updates in the status bar, on the always-on display, and at the top of the notification panel.
The feature wasn’t fully ready in Android 16’s initial release, which is why the Easter egg is only now being updated to support it.
One of the biggest new features in Android 16 is Live Updates. Live Updates are basically Android’s version of iOS’ Live Activities, and they allow you to quickly get progress updates from applications without stopping whatever you’re doing. For example, a navigation app could use Live Updates to show your next turn in a status bar chip, or a food delivery app could use it to tell you that your food is about to be dropped off.
There’s a lot of potential ways that apps can use the Live Updates feature, but unfortunately, developers had to wait a bit to actually use it. That’s because the Live Updates feature wasn’t ready until last month’s Android 16 QPR1 release, which added full support for it. The initial release of Android 16, in contrast, just added support for the new progress-centric notification style that’s used by Live Updates; it didn’t, however, elevate any notifications into a Live Update.
Apps using the Live Updates feature will have their notifications appear at the top of the notification panel, above nearly all other alerts save for the media player. Furthermore, their notifications are shown full expanded on the always-on display, so you don’t have to turn on the screen to see them. Lastly, as I alluded to before, apps can share short messages in status bar chips using the Live Updates feature, allowing users to quickly see updates while using other apps.
Google An example of Live Updates from the Uber Eats app on the AOD (left), lock screen (left middle), status bar (right middle), and heads-up notification (right).
Google updated the Android Easter egg in Android 16 to use the new progress-centric notification style, but even in QPR1, notifications from the Easter egg weren’t shown as Live Updates. This is because Google didn’t fully add support for the Live Updates feature, but that’s changing in the upcoming Android 16 QPR2 release.
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After installing Android 16 QPR2 Beta 3, we noticed that the Android Easter egg now properly supports the Live Updates feature. Its notification is now shown as a Live Update when you press and hold it in the notifications panel, and its current status is shown in a chip in the status bar. Curiously, the notification isn’t shown fully expanded on the always-on display in Beta 3, but that could just be a bug.
In any case, it’s nice to see Google update the Android Easter egg with Live Updates support. The Android Easter egg has traditionally served as a showcase of new major features, but the initial release of Android 16 didn’t really showcase Live Updates very well. That had more to do with the fact that the feature just wasn’t ready in the initial June stable release of Android 16, but now that the Live Updates feature has been finalized, the Android Easter egg can now make full use of it.
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