TL;DR
- Android 16 introduces “seamless app updates” to make installing app updates faster and less disruptive.
- This feature significantly reduces the time an app is frozen during an update, cutting it from seconds to milliseconds.
- The improvement is achieved by running optimization scripts earlier in the installation process, reducing app downtime.
When you update an Android app, the operating system freezes it to prevent it from running. This is an important step, as an app could experience issues if it tried to access code and resources that are in the process of changing. While most updates install almost instantly, some can take several seconds. This not only makes the app being updated temporarily unusable but can also affect other apps that depend on it. To improve this experience, Google has quietly introduced a change in Android 16 to make app updates faster and less disruptive.
Don’t want to miss the best from Android Authority?