Android Show: I/O Edition - 12 May 2026

Thank you ​@Kirk 

It looks so interesting

I had a sneak preview demo of a couple of things that are going to be in the show earlier this week and there are some very cool things happening across Android, so I hope you can tune in. 

Last year we held a watch party for the Android Show, and we are hoping to have better watch party functionality built into the community platform later this year to make it easier to run these (thank you for your feedback). As many of you know, I love a watch party and it was so lovely to share these community moments with many of you. ​@Michel, ​@Moombas, ​@Alex_Muc, ​@jasonbayton, ​@Kris 

​@Kirk  and I will be watching next week, so it would still be great to hear your thoughts during and after the event, so please do continue to share these….popcorn at the ready! 😎

I'm excited for this! 

Who’s watching today? We’ll try and do a watch-a-long / talk-a-long in this thread

Just passing the popcorn to you ​@Michel 😆

Okay, seriously, the Paris hilton part was a bit to much 😩

Thanks for watching!

We’ll be posting a recap thread tomorrow so you don’t miss out on the important updates from the show.

Hey !

it was so interesting ! I can wait to discover in real the new Googlebook 😍 and the new Google Maps. But for this last, for french people like me, it will be in a very very long time...

Our very own ​@Lizzie summarised the show in this post - well worth checking out if you’re interested in the updates coming to Android!

The I/O lost me a bit in the first three minutes with this sentence: "We're transforming Android from an operating System into an intelligence system."
That sentence reminds me of a company from Redmond whose attempts to integrate AI features into its operating system faced a lot of backlash from their community. An operating system should serve as a solid foundation. Feel free to create additional, optional apps enhanced with LLMs ontop that improve the Android experience. That's probably what they mean in the I/O, but the wording suggests something else to me.

I thought the Rambler was pretty cool. I just don't know that many people who use voice dictation. When they speak, they usually just send a voice message. A "Rambler" for transcribing voice messages would be nice. 😅

“Create My Widget” looked really interesting. Especially when traveling across different time zones, I think a widget that combines local times for different cities with their respective local weather forecasts would be very handy. I'm curious to see if it's “Gemini only” or if you can integrate features from other apps or widgets. After all, when it comes to the weather, many people likely have their own preferences regarding which weather provider to use.

“Smart Enhance” irritated me a bit at 16:38 in the video. The original photo isn't perfect, but the edited version looks worse to me. It looks too bright and unnatural compared to the original. I'm aware that tastes vary - whether it comes to brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, etc. But I wouldn't edit or enhance photos that way.

I think the new 3D view in Android Auto / Google Maps is great. Especially in the U.S., where there are so many lanes, I found navigating intersections not as easy as in other countries. This redesigned 3D view should greatly improve navigation.