Developer Preview 2 is currently available for developers for the Android 13 operating system. It also contains some interesting new features that Felix didn’t mention in his post. There is a return to celebrate in the new taskbar: there is an icon that serves as a shortcut for the app drawer.
In the first developer preview, it was even more awkward to get to the selection of all apps. You had to go back to the home screen and then swipe up. The App Drawer can now be accessed from anywhere. The icon only appears if you are currently active in an app – logical because there is a swipe method on the home screen to quickly call up all apps as a selection.
Android already contained an icon as a shortcut to the app drawer in the past, but it was already abandoned from Android 7.1 (Nougat). However, you will only see the taskbar and thus the shortcut to the app drawer at DPI levels of 600 or more. So this feature is not optimized for all devices.
The Android 13 DP2 has another trick up its sleeve: You can activate split-screen mode with the respective app by long-pressing a notification and dragging it. However, this should still run relatively buggy. It’s certainly more for larger screens, i.e. tablets. On smartphones, the whole thing should end up being rather confusing.
In Android 13 DP2, you can now long press a notification and drag it to enter split-screen mode.
This was actually added to Android 12L and was hidden behind a feature flag: https://t.co/M7Cre8ZEon
It’s still pretty buggy, though. pic.twitter.com/9qY0zMcwm2
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) March 17, 2022
Android 13’s taskbar now includes an app drawer! pic.twitter.com/dgXvsgQkBO
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) March 17, 2022