- Android 15 adds support for a new Eyes Free videography extension that locks and stabilizes a given region or object of interest.
- This will be made available to third-party camera apps through a new Camera2 extension on supported devices.
- Android 15 could also add a software implementation of this extension so that it’ll be available to apps even on devices where the OEM didn’t implement it.
If you don’t like the stock camera app that came with your Android device, there are a lot of third-party camera apps for Android you can try. These third-party camera apps often add advanced, pro-level camera controls and filters you won’t find in the stock camera app. On the flip side, they usually lack some of the basic features offered by the OEM’s camera app. The solution to this is for the OEM to package its features into an “extension” that third-party camera apps can use. Android currently supports five different types of extensions, but the upcoming Android 15 update could add support for a sixth extension called Eyes Free videography.
Under the hood, every camera app — whether it be the OEM stock app or a third-party app — is built on top of Android’s Camera2 API (the Jetpack support library called CameraX is a wrapper for Camera2). The Camera2 Extensions API provides a way for camera apps to access extensions that OEMs have implemented on their devices. As of Android 14, the Camera2 Extensions API supports the following five types of extensions: