What’s New in Android 13 Beta 1?

With the first Android 13 Beta up and running on our Pixel 6, we’ve had a chance to dive through several settings pages in an attempt to find new stuff. There may not be a massive list of big changes, but there are some nice little tweaks from the last preview (and Android 12) until now.

Here are some of the new goodies in Android 13 Beta 1 that we have stumbled on.

More Material You colors!

The wallpaper theming we got in Android 12 is getting additional options in Android 13. This first 13 Beta 1 is bring us even more colors to choose from after picking a wallpaper. Above you can see that you get at least two sets of “wallpaper” colors to choose from, but the “basic” colors are now at least 4 pages deep too. Your options for coloring your phone are now just about endless.

Where’d app drawer search go?

13 Beta vs. 12

The app drawer in Android 13 Beta 1 killed off the on-device search capabilities we’ve enjoyed since Android 12 and replaced it with the Google Search bar. While searching on Google is always a good time, the beauty of the app drawer search was that it let you search throughout your phone for settings, people, whatever. Now it seems to mostly be limited to Google searches and apps.

I’m hoping this is a temporary thing for the beta while they figure out how to bring back on-device search? The Android 12 search they introduced is without a doubt one of my most used features.

Below is an example of how this certainly seems like a step backwards in terms of device searching.

13 Beta vs. 12

Media player has squiggles.

Look at those cute squiggles. That’s it.

Do Not Disturb is back.

Google weirdly renamed Do Not Disturb to “Priority Mode” in Developer Preview 2. They have since changed it back to Do Not Disturb for Beta 1. Who knows what Beta 2 will bring, but we hope this sticks as is.

New Clipboard pop-up and editor

Now when you copy something in Android 13, a little clipboard pop-up menu shows in the bottom left corner, similar to the menu you’d see after taking a screenshot. You can tap a little edit icon next to the copied item and edit what you’ve copied, which is pretty cool.

We’ll try to update this post as we find more.