Google releases Android 12 Beta 3 with enhanced auto-rotate, scrolling screenshots

According to Google, scrolling screenshots work out-of-the-box for most apps. For apps using a standard View-based UI, no changes should be needed, but for apps and UI toolkits that are not using View-based UI or that use highly customized UI, a new ScrollCapture API has been introduced to support scrolling screenshots.

Google has released the third Beta of Android 12 that brings along scrolling screenshots, privacy indicator APIs, enhanced auto-rotate and other new features.

The Android 12 Beta 3 is rolling out to Pixel devices enrolled in the Beta program and it is also available on select devices from several OEMs like Sharp and TCL.

Here's what's new in the Android 12 Beta 3:

Scrolling screenshots

With Beta 3, you can capture a screenshot of content that's scrollable. Using the “Capture more” button, you can extend the screenshot to the full content and thereafter adjust the crop.

According to Google, scrolling screenshots work out-of-the-box for most apps. For apps using a standard View-based UI, no changes should be needed, but for apps and UI toolkits that are not using View-based UI or that use highly customized UI, a new ScrollCapture API has been introduced to support scrolling screenshots.

Image Credit: Google

On-device Search

With the Android 12 Beta 3, Google is highlighting platform support for AppSearch, a new high-performance on-device search engine that allows apps to index structured data and search over it with built-in full-text search capabilities. Apps can also utilize native features like highly efficient indexing and retrieval, multi-language support, and relevancy ranking.

Enhanced auto-rotate

Android's auto-rotate feature has got better and faster with face detection to more accurately recognize when to rotate the screen. The enhanced auto-rotate feature is available on Pixel 4 and later Pixel devices.

Google has optimized the animation and redrawing and also added an ML-driven gesture-detection algorithm to make screen rotation faster, reducing the latency for the base auto-rotate feature by 25%.

Privacy indicator APIs

In Android 12 Beta 3, Google has added new privacy indicator APIs to WindowInsets that let you get the maximum bounds of the indicators and their relative placement on the screen, taking into account the current orientation and language settings.

Camera and microphone toggles configurable for enterprises

The system toggles that let users instantly turn off access to the device microphone and camera for all apps are now accessible to enterprise administrators who can set any restrictions needed on fully managed devices.