Google’s newest quarterly platform release isn’t just a run-of-the-mill security patch update. Rolling out to Pixel 6 and later, Android 16 QPR2 brings a sweeping wave of customization, productivity improvements, and security hardening. It’s not the kind of whopper update that QPR1 was, but it changes everyday use in all sorts of meaningful new ways — from more intelligent notifications to more advanced multitasking and enhanced device-level protections.
Next-level customization reshapes icons and styles
Themed icons finally feel complete. If an app has not supplied a monochrome asset, Android creates one by automatically generating the mask (using autofill-style colorization) for the dominant region of an icon, then applying that computed shape to create a monochrome opaque icon with the original icons’ centers smoothed. The end result is a much more polished home screen without scattered unthemed holdouts.
Pixel owners can also customize icon shapes on the home screen — moving far beyond circles to squares, whimsical multi-sided “cookie” styles, and arches — right from Wallpaper & Style. It’s a little thing, but it can pay dividends to anyone who fusses over the look of their launcher.
Display and accessibility tweaks improve comfort at night
Dark theme gets serious. Expanded mode is a new option that can make your experience even better by dimming apps that didn’t get around to shipping a native night UI, and being smart about those images: it’ll dim out everything else while giving standard Android Views, Composables, and WebViews the attention they deserve. (Some layouts may still be crying out, Google warns for its part, but the comfort gain is immediate in apps that used to blast white screens at you late at night.)
HDR highlights do not need to burn your retinas any longer. Enhanced HDR Brightness introduces a slider to tamp down on highlight intensity, or turn off that aspect of the HDR uplift altogether — perfect for when you’re burning the midnight oil scrolling through your favorite news feed with autoplay video.
If you find Material blur too heavy for your liking, a new Reduce Blur Effects option in Accessibility disables the glassy background blur on Quick Settings, notifications, the lock screen, app drawer, and Recents for clearer layers that are easier to read.
There’s also a clever Low Light mode for screen savers: your favorite saver is shown by day, but at night the phone switches to a dim clock. You can also now limit screen savers to come on only when you’re charging wirelessly.
Productivity and multitasking upgrades streamline usage
Notifications get real triage. The new on-device Notification Organizer automatically sorts and mutes less important notifications into four keyword groups — Promotions, News, Social, and Suggested. It ships on Pixel 9 (and later, minus the 9a) for English notifications, and it allows users to control everything from categories to exempt apps to auto-expansion. Together with the new AI-driven Notification Summaries, that shade suddenly feels a lot less chaotic.
Lock screen widgets are coming to phones, after years of appearing first on tablets. Turn on the beta in Settings and swipe left on the lock screen to add glanceable widgets — you can have up to three per page. It works great for calendars, to-dos, and smart home controls — subject as ever to a warning about not putting sensitive info on a locked display.
Split screen adds a focused 90:10 ratio. Keep one app dominant while a second sits docked for quick reference. Tap the small pane to swap focus instantly. It’s a deceptively simple change that mirrors pro workflows seen on rival Android skins and makes phones feel more like compact productivity slabs. Desktop Linux and peripherals: Android’s Linux Terminal graduates. It shifts from CLI-only to supporting graphical desktop apps like Chromium, GIMP, and LibreOffice.
You can launch a display-enabled session right from the Terminal app. GPU acceleration is planned to improve performance. And the terminal’s file access now reaches most shared storage, matching what you see in Files. Both checkpoints reflect an aim to address laptops and tablets more directly. Input handling gets PC-grade polish.
Ambitions continue apace, with Google building toward Android on laptops and desktops. Touchpad gestures are more configurable — you can even assign them to the three-finger tap gesture to launch any app. And a wealth of visual improvements make both mice and touchpads more convenient. Controlled Scrolling is especially nice for mouse users. It’ll make you wonder how you scrolled before, as it ties scroll speed directly to the wheel’s movement for fine-tuned control. Security and privacy safeguards also see improvements.
Identity Check now protects third-party apps by refusing PIN, pattern, or password as a fallback for biometric prompts. It rejects them when you are elsewhere, for instance. That closes a common theft where a shoulder-surfed PIN could unlock banking or messaging apps. The system relaxes when a compatible smartwatch, such as the as-yet-unannounced Pixel Watch 3, is connected to reduce friction.
A new Parental Controls panel brings together all of your daily limits, app timers, and downtime features under PIN protection, with quick links to the broader Family Link toolset. As for the account, we have added protection of SMS one-time passwords: broadcast and query messages containing a retriever hash will be hidden from most apps (there is an exception list that includes smartwatch companion apps) for several hours to avoid OTP theft by malicious apps.
Secure Lock Device is shown as a system state for lockdown through “Find Hub.” It disables notifications, Quick Settings, lock screen widgets, and Gemini, with the exception of material gated by the primary credential. And for those of you that don’t want phone-as-a-failsafe like I mentioned last cycle, the Failed Authentication Lock state can now be disabled within Theft Protection.
Small touches across the system make a big difference
Google refactored Picture-in-Picture transitions for more predictable and consistent animations. The month scrubber and voice search are joined by a body of other additions to the Photo Picker. Live Caption slides back down beneath the volume slider where you might keep it, and the widget picker gets a Featured tab to help it point out awesome options more quickly.
Media controls have been made more intuitive with arrows denoting multiple active sessions, and an audio sharing shortcut streamlines the process of launching Auracast sessions on compatible Pixels. You can move or copy files into Private Space with fewer taps; the Files app has been Material-refreshed to show operation progress, and ART’s new gen-CMC garbage collector focuses on recently allocated memory to lower CPU usage, latency, and battery use.
There are quality-of-life touches as well: time zone change alerts, more visible haptic indications of your level, a more animated lock screen clock, a more informative printer’s dialog box, and small usability boosts like plus buttons alongside app shortcuts.
The importance of QPR2 reaches far beyond features
It’s the briefest minor update so far under Google’s “Get new features faster” plan (though possibly some bugs too), which has pushed platform capabilities for developers more rapidly, instead of waiting until a full cycle. Android 16 QPR2 devices report SDK 36.1, indicating new APIs and behavior changes that app developers can update their apps to take advantage of. For Pixel users, that means new features come sooner; for developers, it brings an expedited process from platform innovation to app update.
Together, Android 16 QPR2 is a strong choice as that end-of-year upgrade for Pixel phones — pragmatic, polished, and focused on the way people really interact with their devices day to day.
