What’s New in Android 12 Beta 5?

Looking for what’s new in the latest Android 12 Beta 5 that Google just released for your Pixel phone? We are digging in right here as we always do to give you the goods.

We don’t necessarily expect to find a bunch of new stuff, but there are already at least a couple of noteworthy changes to point out. As we find more, we’ll surely update this post too.

Home / Device Controls shortcut on lock screen

In addition to the shortcut for Google Pay that Google added a few releases ago, we are now seeing a Home or Device Controls shortcut in the bottom left corner. Tapping on this opens up your device controls, which also live as a quick settings tile. I guess that’s cool.

On-device search is here!

The app drawer now lets you fully search your phone in Android 12 Beta 5. If you swipe into your app drawer, the search bar at the top of it now says to “Search your phone and more.” Tapping the 3-dot menu to the right of it brings up options for customizing that experience and also lets you tell it to bring up the keyboard by default for quicker searches.

Searching by keyword can bring up a lot of stuff, from apps and shortcuts to settings options and people. Tapping on anything takes you directly into those areas. This is awesome.

New clock widgets are live!

There are several new Clock widgets to choose from, all of which offer Material You color theming and the fun design that Google has teased us with for a while now.

At a Glance changes, but broken…

Google is preparing big changes to the At a Glance widget on the Android 12 home screen, with toggles to turn off most options. It also looks like they’ll let you turn the entire thing off (finally!).  However, it’s pretty broken at the moment and likely needs a Google App update to work properly. If we get it working, we’ll update.

Calculator gets a Material You makeover

The Calculator app, as a part of this Beta 5 update, is now prettier than ever, if Material You theming is your thing. Look at those beautiful purples.

We’re updating…