Like earlier releases, Android 13 includes behavior changes that may affect your app. The following behavior changes apply exclusively to apps that are targeting Android 13 or higher. If your app is targeting Android 13 or higher, you should modify your app to support these behaviors properly, where applicable.
Be sure to also review the list of behavior changes that affect all apps running on Android 13.
Privacy
Notification permission affects foreground service appearance
If the user denies the notification permission, they don't see notices related to foreground services in the notification drawer. However, users still see notices related to foreground services in the Task Manager, regardless of whether the notification permission is granted.
New runtime permission for nearby Wi-Fi devices
On previous versions of Android, the user needs to grant your app the
ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION
permission to complete several common Wi-Fi use cases.
Because it's difficult for users to associate location permissions with Wi-Fi
functionality, Android 13 (API level 33) introduces a runtime permission in the
NEARBY_DEVICES
permission group for apps that manage a device's connections to nearby access
points over Wi-Fi. This permission,
NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES
,
fulfills Wi-Fi use cases such as the following:
- Find or connect to nearby devices, such as printers or media casting devices.
This workflow allows your app to accomplish these sorts of tasks:
- Receive AP information out of band, such as through BLE.
- Discover and connect to devices over Wi-Fi Aware and connect using a local-only hotspot.
- Discover and connect to devices over Wi-Fi Direct.
- Initiate a connection to a known SSID, such as a car or smart home device.
- Start a local-only hotspot.
- Range to nearby Wi-Fi Aware devices.
As long as your app doesn't derive physical location information from the Wi-Fi
APIs, request NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES
instead of ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION
when you
target Android 13 or higher and use Wi-Fi APIs. When you declare
the NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES
permission, strongly assert that your app never
derives physical location information from Wi-Fi APIs. To do so, set the
android:usesPermissionFlags
attribute to neverForLocation
. This process is
similar to the one you do in Android 12 (API level 31) and higher when you
assert that Bluetooth device information is never used for
location.
Learn more about how to request permission to access nearby Wi-Fi devices.
Granular media permissions
READ_MEDIA_AUDIO
permission.If your app targets Android 13 or higher and needs to
access media files that other apps have
created, you must
request one or more of the following granular media permissions instead of the
READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE
permission:
Type of media | Permission to request |
---|---|
Images and photos | READ_MEDIA_IMAGES |
Videos | READ_MEDIA_VIDEO |
Audio files | READ_MEDIA_AUDIO |
Before you access another app's media files, verify that the user has granted the appropriate granular media permissions to your app.
Figure 1 shows an app that requests the READ_MEDIA_AUDIO
permission.
If you request both the READ_MEDIA_IMAGES
permission and the
READ_MEDIA_VIDEO
permission at the same time, only one system permission
dialog appears.
If your app was previously granted the
READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE
permission, then any requested READ_MEDIA_*
permissions are granted
automatically when upgrading. You can use the following ADB command to review
upgraded permissions:
adb shell cmd appops get --uid PACKAGE_NAME
Use of body sensors in the background requires new permission
Android 13 introduces the concept of "while in use" access for body sensors, such as heart rate, temperature, and blood oxygen percentage. This access model is very similar to the one that the system introduced for location in Android 10 (API level 29).
If your app targets Android 13 and requires access to body sensor
information while running in the background, you must declare the new
BODY_SENSORS_BACKGROUND
permission in addition to the existing
BODY_SENSORS
permission.
Performance and battery
Battery Resource Utilization
If the user places your app in the
"restricted" state for
background battery usage
while your app targets Android 13, the system doesn't deliver the
BOOT_COMPLETED
broadcast or the LOCKED_BOOT_COMPLETED
broadcast until the
app is started for other reasons.
User experience
Media controls derived from PlaybackState
For apps targeting Android 13 (API level 33) and higher, the system derives
media controls from
PlaybackState
actions. This
allows the system to show a richer set of controls that are technically
consistent between phones and tablet devices, and also align with how media
controls are rendered on other Android platforms such as Android Auto and
Android TV.
Figure 2 shows an example of how this looks on a phone and tablet device, respectively.
![Media controls in terms of how they appear on phone and tablets devices,
using an example of a sample track showing how the buttons may appear](/https/developer.android.com/static/images/about/versions/13/media-controls-phone-tablet.png)
Prior to Android 13, the system displayed up to five actions from the MediaStyle
notification in the order in which they were added.
In compact mode—for example, in the collapsed quick settings—up to
three actions specified with setShowActionsInCompactView()
were shown.
Starting with Android 13, the system displays up to five action buttons based
on the PlaybackState
as described in the following table. In compact mode, only the first three
action slots will be displayed. For apps that don't target Android 13 or those
that don't include a PlaybackState
, the system will display controls based on
the Action
list added to the MediaStyle
notification as described in the
previous paragraph.
Slot | Action | Criteria |
---|---|---|
1 | Play |
Current state of the PlaybackState is one of the following:
|
Loading spinner |
Current state of the PlaybackState is one of the following:
|
|
Pause | Current state of the PlaybackState is none of the above. |
|
2 | Previous | PlaybackState actions include ACTION_SKIP_TO_PREVIOUS . |
Custom | PlaybackState actions do not include ACTION_SKIP_TO_PREVIOUS and PlaybackState custom actions include a custom action that hasn't been placed yet. |
|
Empty | PlaybackState extras include a true boolean value for key SESSION_EXTRAS_KEY_SLOT_RESERVATION_SKIP_TO_PREV . |
|
3 | Next | PlaybackState actions include ACTION_SKIP_TO_NEXT . |
Custom | PlaybackState actions do not include ACTION_SKIP_TO_NEXT and PlaybackState custom actions include a custom action that hasn't been placed yet. |
|
Empty | PlaybackState extras include a true boolean value for key SESSION_EXTRAS_KEY_SLOT_RESERVATION_SKIP_TO_NEXT . |
|
4 | Custom | PlaybackState custom actions include a custom action that hasn't been placed yet. |
5 | Custom | PlaybackState custom actions include a custom action that hasn't been placed yet. |
Custom actions are placed in the order in which they were added to the
PlaybackState
.
App color theme applied automatically to WebView content
For apps targeting Android 13 (API level 33) or higher, the
setForceDark()
method is deprecated, resulting in a no-op if the method is called.
Instead, WebView now always sets
the media query prefers-color-scheme
according to the app's theme attribute,
isLightTheme
. In other
words, if isLightTheme
is true
or not specified, prefers-color-scheme
is
light
; otherwise, it is dark
. This behavior means that the web content's
light or dark style is applied automatically to match the app's theme if the
content supports it.
For most apps, the new behavior should apply the appropriate app styles automatically, however you should test your app to check for any cases where you might've been manually controlling dark mode settings.
If you still need to customize your app's color theme behavior, use the
setAlgorithmicDarkeningAllowed()
method instead. For backward compatibility with previous Android versions, we
recommend using the equivalent
setAlgorithmicDarkeningAllowed()
method in AndroidX.
See the documentation for that method to learn more about what behavior you can
expect in your app depending on your app's
targetSdkVersion
and theme
settings.
Connectivity
BluetoothAdapter#enable() and BluetoothAdapter#disable() deprecated
For apps targeting Android 13 (API level 33) or higher, the
BluetoothAdapter#enable()
and
BluetoothAdapter#disable()
methods are deprecated and always
return false
.
The following types of apps are exempt from these changes:
- Device Owner apps
- Profile Owner apps
- System apps
Google Play services
Permission required for advertising ID
Apps that use Google Play services advertising
ID and
target Android 13 (API level 33) and higher must
declare the AD_ID
normal permission in their app's
manifest file, as follows:
<manifest ...>
<!-- Required only if your app targets Android 13 or higher. -->
<uses-permission android:name="com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID"/>
<application ...>
...
</application>
</manifest>
If your app does not declare this permission when targeting Android 13 or higher, the advertising ID is automatically removed and replaced with a string of zeroes.
If your app uses SDKs that declare the AD_ID
permission in the library's
manifest, then the permission is merged with your app's manifest file by
default. In this case, you don't need to declare the permission in your app's
manfiest file.
To learn more, see Advertising ID in the Play Console Help.
Updated non-SDK restrictions
Android 13 includes updated lists of restricted non-SDK interfaces based on collaboration with Android developers and the latest internal testing. Whenever possible, we make sure that public alternatives are available before we restrict non-SDK interfaces.
If your app does not target Android 13, some of these changes might not immediately affect you. However, while you can currently use some non-SDK interfaces (depending on your app's target API level), using any non-SDK method or field always carries a high risk of breaking your app.
If you are unsure if your app uses non-SDK interfaces, you can test your app to find out. If your app relies on non-SDK interfaces, you should begin planning a migration to SDK alternatives. Nevertheless, we understand that some apps have valid use cases for using non-SDK interfaces. If you cannot find an alternative to using a non-SDK interface for a feature in your app, you should request a new public API.
To learn more about the changes in this release of Android, see Updates to non-SDK interface restrictions in Android 13. To learn more about non-SDK interfaces generally, see Restrictions on non-SDK interfaces.