Android 15 hasn’t even landed on Pixel devices yet, but the development continues, and now we’re looking into what Android 16 might offer. According to Android Authority’s Mishaal Rahman, there could be some major multitasking upgrades in store next year.
The gist of it is, Google could let any app work in a pop up bubble. While the feature isn’t quite live yet, Rahman was able to enable it on Android 15 QPR1 beta, which is impressive. Of course, it’s important to note that all features that are discovered this year, could end up not launching with Android 16, depending on if all the kinks are worked out before Android 16 ships.
This would use the existing API for Bubbles which debuted with Android 11. Essentially allowing you to have messaging bubbles across your messaging apps. So you could have conversations with people without jumping into the app. Now, Google appears to be opening this API up for all apps. Meaning you could have a pop up window for Chrome that would sit in a bubble on your screen.
How is this different from the standard Pop-Up feature?
There’s already an option for a sort of pop-up view on virtually any Android phone these days. Of course, Samsung kind of pioneered it. So how would this new “bubble anything” – as Rahman refers to it – be different from a pop-up view? Well, it would give you a set of bubbles on the side of your screen that you could easily jump back in. It would make it easier to use.
Multitasking has always been a big deal for Android, since the early days of Android. So seeing Google continue to focus on multitasking even with the 23rd version of Android being in development, is not surprising. It would definitely be more useful on foldables and tablets like the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold.
