Android 16 will have some big changes around restricting orientation and aspect ratio by respecting the user's preferred orientation in more cases. Apps can no longer rely on assuming they have a specific aspect ratio to render in. For more details: android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/01/orie... - ThreadSky

vanyo.dev • 31 days ago

Android 16 will have some big changes around restricting orientation and aspect ratio by respecting the user's preferred orientation in more cases. Apps can no longer rely on assuming they have a specific aspect ratio to render in.

For more details:
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/01/orientation-and-resizability-changes-in-android-16.html

Comments

commonsware.com•31 days ago

Will Google finally allow developers to reliably opt out of distributing to large-screen devices?

If not, then I suspect that all this change will do is switch the UX from one so-so look to a different so-so look. 🤷🏻

Large screens are not a priority for everyone, nor should they be.

vanyo.dev•31 days ago

What would be a definition for a large-screen device that you would want to opt-out of distributing to?

Form factors are continuing to blur together more and more with foldables, phones plugged in to external displays, ChromeOS, tablets - along with XR and cars on the horizon

commonsware.com•31 days ago

Since Google defines it as "screens larger than 600dp wide" in regards to the adaptive change that you mentioned, that seems like a reasonable starting point.

vanyo.dev•31 days ago

Would you block shipping the app to any foldable then? What about any phone or other device that can be connected to an external display that is at least sw600dp?

vanyo.dev•31 days ago

One additional note is that the changes in Android 16 are display-environment-specific, not device-specific. As an example, orientation requests won't be respected on the inner screen of larger foldables, but will still be respected on the outer screen.

developerdan.bsky.social•30 days ago

Yeah if I could ban all our apps on sw600dp devices I probably would, if an app is already supporting these things that means it's important to them, if it's not, then it's probably very unimportant. Our users need features and bug fixes, not foldable support

commonsware.com•31 days ago

> Would you block shipping the app to any foldable then?

If that is what the app publisher wants, sure.

> What about any phone... that can be connected to an external display that is at least sw600dp?

There will always be edge cases. This likely is one of them.

commonsware.com•31 days ago

In an ideal world, all app publishers would have ample resources to support every form factor and environment that Google dreams up.

In reality, that doesn't happen as often as we would like.

Google is certainly welcome to fund publishers to do this work.

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