Google's Android 12 Public Beta Is Now Available On These Eligible Devices

Android 12 brings many new features to the table, including a new UI design philosophy called Material You. With Material You, Google provides Android 12 with a more personalized way of customizing their apps and UI in real-time based on "the user's unique Material palette" all in real-time.

Custom color palettes can be created based solely on your chosen wallpaper. And OS will then extract colors from your wallpaper to use throughout the UI for things like buttons and app text. This color extraction can be further tweaked and fine-tuned by the user if they wish. You can see Material You in action in the video embed below:

Other changes inherent with Android 12 include a new animation system, improved widgets, and tweaks to Quick Settings and notifications. The Google Assistant has even been enhanced to offer relevant information based on which screen is active on your display when activated.

There are also privacy-centric additions, like a green dot that appears in the top right-hand portion of the display when the microphone or camera is activated (see below). This is similar to a feature that Apple introduced a few years ago in iOS. Another significant change is the Android Private Compute Core (APCC), which featured a walled-off partition within the OS where certain AI-related tasks are processed. Google says that APCC helps keep your data safe from prying eyes while still leaving it accessible for system-level tasks.

If you want to try out Android 12 Beta 1, Google Pixel 3/Pixel 3 XL, and newer Pixels are currently supported. You can go directly to Google's "Android Beta for Pixel" website to enroll and download the operating system. The Android 12 beta is also supported on select smartphones from Google's OEM partners, including ASUS, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, TCL, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE. You can visit this Google page for instructions on how to install the beta on eligible devices.

However, we must warn you that this is still beta software, so you'll need to proceed with caution if installing Android 12 on your "daily driver" smartphone.