What's new in Android 17?

After upgrading, you'll see the following improvements to the Android operating system and other apps.

Home screen and quick settings improvements

You can now stack widgets, combining multiple widgets into a single block on your home screen.

Instead of taking up several grids on your home screen for your weather, calendar, battery and music player, stack them and swipe the stack to switch between them.

You can now use an icon theme that coordinates with your overall theme. Touch & hold a blank space on your Home screen, then tap Home settings > Themed icons.

If you're using Classic style for quick settings, you can now hide labels on the settings tiles. Hiding them frees up screen space if you already recognise the icons.

Improved notifications

Live updates let apps to display real-time, ongoing data. Instead of sending multiple notifications, an app can now continuously update a single live snippet in your status bar or notifications. You can turn these on or off.

You can now peek at your notifications for a one-sentence summary of a lengthy group chat or a rapid-fire thread from messaging apps (like WhatsApp or Messages).

Your phone now organises your notifications to separate your personal messages from clutter and automated alerts. It uses machine learning to screen lower-priority notifications and bundles them into separate, quiet folders under the Silent section of your notifications.

New settings

When you view HDR content – like an Ultra HDR photo in Google Photos, a HDR video on YouTube or an HDR feed on Instagram – your phone's display automatically sets brightness to its highest limits to make the highlights pop.

You can now limit this brightness to a more comfortable level by adjusting the intensity of Enhanced HDR brightness or turning it off to force HDR photos and videos to play at a normal brightness level.

Other improvements

Android system upgrades add more than new features. Using the latest Android update provides other improvements such as:

  • Enhanced security and protection to defend against evolving threats like malware, phishing and data breaches
  • App compatibility with newer apps, which often require the latest Android version to function correctly
  • Performance improvements that optimise your phone's operating system for smoother performance, better stability and, in some cases, longer battery life
  • Bug fixes and stability enhancements to resolve known issues and improve overall reliability and stability

Keeping Android apps updated is also important for security, performance and functionality, as most improvements are delivered through app updates rather than Android system upgrades.