10 Best Android 14 Features (New and Upcoming)

The past couple of Android versions brought some of the major upgrades Android has gotten since its inception. Android 12 introduced Material You, which brought much-needed UI changes, and Android 13 added quality-of-life improvements over Android 12, making it a more polished experience. Much like Android 13, Android 14 may seem like an incremental upgrade, but you would be surprised by just how many internal changes it brings to improve the overall Android experience. Let’s look at the 10 best Android 14 features.

Best Android 14 Features

1. Photo Picker

Before Photo Picker, an app would ask for access to your entire photo library if you wanted to upload a single picture. This causes privacy concerns as allowing an app to access your entire library isn’t a wise move. Android 14 solves this problem using the Photo Picker feature. It’s a new interface that allows you to pick only certain photos to ensure the app doesn’t have access to all your photos.

That said, popular apps such as WhatsApp don’t yet utilize the Photo Picker API. The API works for the first time and then WhatsApp asks you to enable (allow all the time) permission rather than allowing you to select photos by asking every time. Although, Android apps should soon adopt the Photo Picker API once Android 14 releases to the masses.

2. Notification Flashes

Enabling the Notification Flashes feature is extremely useful for people who usually check their phones in a noisy environment where they can’t hear a notification, or for differently abled people with improper hearing. To turn the feature on/off, go to Settings -> Display -> Flash notifications -> Toggle on Camera Flash and/or Screen Flash.

For Screen Flashes, you can also pick from a choice of colors and preview it to find out how it will look before closing the prompt.

3. Camera and Battery Life Improvements

General Quality of Life (QoL) improvements always come packaged in new Android versions, and the same is the case with Android 14. Google claims Android 14 is more optimized for battery consumption, and there are a lot of QoL improvements both in the UI and internally to ensure users have a smoother experience.

Similarly, Android 14 adds new camera extensions which help reduce the post-processing time and quality of images. This should be more noticeable on Pixel devices powered by the Tensor G2 chip as the same also brings a lot of improvements in the Camera department.

Best Android 14 Features (Upcoming)

4. Lockscreen Customizations

One of the major features coming to Android 14 is in the customization category. Lockscreen customizations, as the name suggests, allow you to change the way your lockscreen looks. This includes changing the way your clock looks on the lockscreen and customizing the app shortcuts that show up on the lower corners of your lockscreen. h/t iOS 16, I guess?

As for the availability, they should be available in the stable Android 14 release which is due release next month if everything goes right for Google. That said, the lockscreen clock styles shown off at I/O aren’t the prettiest, so we hope the final versions end up looking more lively rather than the flat-looking styles.

5. Magic Compose

Magic compose is a feature Google will add to the Messages app later this summer. Much like the “Help me write” AI generative features that Google showcased at I/O 2023 that will make their way to Google’s Workspace apps later, Magic Compose in the Messages app can help you write your text messages in different moods. Based on the preview Google showcased at I/O, it looks very cool.

In the preview, after opening the options for the text message “Wanna grab dinner,” Magic Compose showed various rewrites — from the text that adds excitement to that which sounds lyrical or Shakespeare-like. We really hope this also makes it to Gboard at some point in time because you can clearly tell this is an attempt from Google to encourage more people to start using RCS and Google Messages in general. Also, this is a Pixel-only feature.

6. Emoji, Generative AI, and Cinematic Wallpapers

Customization has always been Android’s forte (maybe not Pixel UI’s) and the addition of Emoji, Generative AI, and Cinematic wallpapers make it even more customizable. Emoji wallpaper picker lets you select a few emoji and a dominant color, after which it mashes up and creates an interactive wallpaper with your favorite emoji.

On the other hand, the AI Generative Wallpaper feature has to be our favorite. It takes a few words as input from the user for the type of wallpaper they want to generate. In the end, they’re presented with a few unique wallpaper options that Google says, are completely unique and exclusive to your device.

Cinematic wallpapers allow you to select a photo to which the feature later adds depth and a parallax effect using AI. Hence, the wallpaper moves whenever you move your device at an angle. This is quite similar to Google Photos’ Cinematic feature.

7. App Cloning

App Cloning is hands down one of the most anticipated features in Android. Gone are the days when you had to download app cloning utilities containing spyware, Google will finally add a native App Cloning utility in Android 14. For those unaware, App Cloning allows you to use two instances of an app.

For example, if you have a phone with two SIM cards and want to use two WhatsApp accounts at the same time, you could clone the WhatsApp app, log in via your secondary SIM card, and have two WhatsApp accounts running. Now, Google hinted at App Cloning back in the Android 14 Developer Preview 1, but since then we haven’t heard any recent developments about the feature. We speculate App Cloning won’t make its way to the first stable Android 14 update, but Pixel users will get it in future Android 14 feature drop updates.

8. Predictive Back Gestures

Predictive back gestures in Android debuted in Android 14 Developer Preview 2, but the feature was shortlived and was removed in the Developer Preview that followed. Android apps use layers to remember app pages. For example, if you’re in the Display section of the Settings app, it’s a layer on top of the main Settings app layer.

Using predictive back gestures, you could slowly do a back swipe to reveal the layer beneath. This is especially helpful if you forget what was the page or layer below the one you’re viewing. If you’re viewing something important and don’t want to lose its contents while making sure the last layer is the one you want to visit, you could hold the back gesture and check if that’s the layer you’d want to navigate to.

When it made its way to the OS in DP2, it was only supported in Settings and a few other system apps. We’re not sure if the feature will make its way to the first stable release of Android 14, if not, it should eventually be added in feature drops in future.

9. New Find My Device Experience

The Find My Device app recently got a UI overhaul to match Android’s latest design language, and it’ll be getting a few new features this fall. Find My Phone will support an even wider range of devices and allow you to find your phones and accessories using other Android devices in the network.

This is a much-appreciated addition to Android as Apple has been the pioneer in its Find My iPhone experience. As for your bicycle or bigger objects, manufacturers like Tile and Chipolo will have tracker tags that will work with Find My Device.

10. Tracker Prevention and Alerts

While Google’s attempt at convincing Apple to adopt RCS may have been a failure so far, one thing that both giants have worked together on is in the privacy department with Tracker Prevention alerts. Irrespective of which Android device you’re using, if an unidentified tracker is following you, your Android device will warn and help you locate the same. A big win for Google.