Android 13 Beta 1 is now available for supported Pixels

Following two Developer Previews, released in February and March, respectively, today Google has made the first Android 13 beta build available for public testing. It’s easier than installing the Developer Preview builds to play and it is much more user-friendly with Android betas.

This is by design. Hopefully there are no major, terrible, or show-stopping bugs. Despite this, there are likely to be many issues as you use the beta version of the software. The final release will come later in the year.

If you’re interested in trying out the Android 13 Beta 1, and have a supported Google Pixel smartphone, then you can just head on over to the Android Beta Program website here and enroll your device.

Then you should receive Android 13 Beta 1 as an over-the-air software update within a few minutes (up to a few hours). Subsequent beta builds will also be sent to you over-the-air just like normal software updates, and the same goes for the final version of Android 13 once that’s fully baked and ready to get out of the oven. If you are already running a Developer Preview build of Android 13, then you’ll get the first beta (and the next ones) over-the-air as well.

Android 13 Beta 1 comes with new permissions for more granular access to media files and improved audio routing APIs. Three permissions are now available to apps that access media files on your smartphone: one each for photos and videos and one each for audio files. All of these permissions were previously included in a “media access” permission that allowed all media types to be accessed by the app. But not anymore.

When you grant one of the new permissions, the app in question will only have read access to the respective media file type(s) and nothing else. When developers’ apps will target Android 13, they will have to migrate to this new permissions model.

There are also some minute improvements to audio routing, as well as better error reporting for apps that generate keys – but these will probably be of interest primarily to app developers.

Next month at the Google I/O developer conference, the company will share more details about Android 13 along with more new features, and it’s very likely that the second beta will drop right about that time, in order to showcase the newly unveiled stuff.

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