Android N Developer Preview 4 is now available

Google has just released the fourth Android N Developer Preview.

In the announcement post, Google notes that all of the new APIs introduced in Android N are now final, which means developers can start compiling their apps to test against the official Android N APIs. Developers can also publish updates that use API 24 to their apps in Google Play. If you’re a developer and would like to make sure your updated application runs well on Android N, you’ll want to look into using Google Play’s beta testing feature.

Coming in a build number NPD56N, factory images are now available for the Nexus 6P, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, Pixel C, Nexus Player, General Mobile 4G (Android One) and the Sony Xperia Z3. Full OTA images are also available, but not for the Z3. If you aren’t keen on updating manually, you can always enroll your device in the Android Beta Program.

So what’s new in the fourth Android N Dev Preview? We’ll run through a few of the highlights below:

In previous versions of Android, an app activates with all of its locale resources loaded before locale negotiation begins. Starting in Android N DP4, the system negotiates resource locales individually for each resource object before the app activates.

As announced at Developer Preview 3, we’ve deferred the Launcher Shortcuts feature to a later release of Android. In Developer Preview 4, we’ve removed the Launcher Shortcuts APIs.

We’ve changed the BLE Scanning behavior starting in DP4. We’ll prevent applications from starting and stopping scans more than 5 times in 30 seconds. For long running scans, we’ll convert them into opportunistic scans.

The Multi-Window android:minimalHeight and android:minimalWidth attributes have been renamed to android:minHeight and android:minWidth

Google says the OTA update will be rolling out later today, so be on the lookout if you’re enrolled in the beta program!