Behavior changes: all apps

The Android 13 platform includes behavior changes that may affect your app. The following behavior changes apply to all apps when they run on Android 13, regardless of targetSdkVersion. You should test your app and then modify it as needed to support these properly, where applicable.

Make sure to also review the list of behavior changes that only affect apps targeting Android 13.

Performance and battery

Foreground Services (FGS) Task Manager

At the bottom of the notification drawer is a button that indicates the number of apps that are currently running in the background. When you press this button, a dialog appears that lists the names of different apps. The Stop button is to the right of each app
Figure 1. FGS Task Manager workflow on Android 13 devices.

Android 13 allows users to stop foreground services from the notification drawer, regardless of target SDK version. This new affordance, called the FGS Task Manager, shows a list of apps that are currently running a foreground service. This list is labeled Active apps. Next to each app is a Stop button. Figure 1 illustrates the FGS Task Manager workflow on a device that runs Android 13.

Learn more about the FGS Task Manager.

Improve prefetch job handling using JobScheduler

JobScheduler provides a way for apps to mark specific jobs as "prefetch" jobs (using JobInfo.Builder.setPrefetch()), meaning that they should ideally run close to, and before, the next app launch to improve user experience. Historically, JobScheduler has only used the signal to let prefetch jobs opportunistically use free or excess data.

In Android 13, the system now tries to determine the next time an app will be launched, and uses that estimation to run prefetch jobs. Apps should try to use prefetch jobs for any work that they want to be done prior to the next app launch.

Battery Resource Utilization

Android 13 introduces Battery Resource Utilization, which provides several ways for the system to better manage device battery life:

  • Updated rules on when the system places your app in the "restricted" App Standby Bucket.
  • New limitations on the work that your app can do when the user places your app in the "restricted" state for background battery usage.
  • New system notifications that warn users about long-running foreground services.

High Priority Firebase Cloud Message (FCM) Quotas

Android 13 updates Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) quotas to improve the reliability of high priority FCM delivery for apps that show notifications in response to high priority FCMs. The following has changed in Android 13:

  • App Standby Buckets no longer determine how many high priority FCMs an app can use.
  • High priority FCM quotas scale in proportion to the number of notifications shown to the user in response to High Priority FCMs.

As in previous versions of Android, high priority FCMs that go over the quota are downgraded to normal priority. When starting Foreground Services (FGS) in response to an FCM, we recommend checking the result of RemoteMessage.getPriority() and to confirm it is PRIORITY_HIGH and/or handling any potential ForegroundServiceStartNotAllowedException exceptions.

If your application doesn't always post notifications in response to High Priority FCMs, we recommend that you change the priority of these FCMs to normal so that the messages that result in a notification don't get downgraded.

Privacy

Runtime permission for notifications

Android 13 introduces a new runtime notification permission: POST_NOTIFICATIONS. This change helps users focus on the notifications that are most important to them.

We highly recommend that you target Android 13 as soon as possible to gain the effects of the additional control and flexibility of this feature.

Learn more about app permissions best practices.

User experience

In-app language pickers

Android 13 adds a centralized location in phone settings for setting per-app language preferences. If your app supports multiple languages, we strongly recommend that you declare the android:localeConfig attribute in your app's manifest so that users can change your app's language settings in the same place that they change language settings for other apps.

Additionally, apps that currently use custom in-app language pickers should use the new APIs for per-app language preferences instead. Using the new APIs helps you ensure that users see your app in their preferred language, regardless of whether they continue to select a language through your in-app language picker, or if they select a language through their phone settings.

Apps that don't support multiple languages are not impacted by these changes.

Core functionality

Legacy copy of speech service implementation removed

Android 13 removes the SpeechService implementation—including Voice IME, RecognitionService and an intent-based API—from the Google app.

In Android 12, the following changes occurred:

  • SpeechService functionalities were migrated to the Speech Services by Google app, which became the default SpeechService provider.
  • RecognitionService functionality was moved to the Android System Intelligence app to support on-device speech recognition.

Apps should use the device's default provider for SpeechService, rather than hard-coding a specific app. To help maintain app compatibility on Android 13, the Google app uses a trampoline to divert traffic to the Speech Services by Google app.