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Alright, so I do one of these videos for every new Android version. Top five features for what to expect, so you have a better idea of what will be coming to your phone. If it's a Pixel. very soon. If it's not a Pixel, someday. But we all know these aren't massive, generational, overhaul updates anymore. Those days are few and far between. Instead, now it's more usually like the small, cosmetic stuff, and little tweaks, and quality-of-life things here and there. Back in the day, that would have all been like a dot-one update, but since it's 2026, it's an entirely new Android version: Android 17, Cinnamon Bun. Now I know what you're thinking.
Hold on a second, wait, what? Did the names come back? When did the names come back? The names aren't back, but I'm trying to bring them back. Do you remember when every new Android version was named after an alphabetical dessert, and the biggest surprise of every I/O was gonna be them unveiling what the dessert name would be? I mean, we had classics like Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread. And then, as the letters went on, they got more and more playful with it: Nougat, Oreo. Pie. Then they got to Q. And. so, you know,
I could understand not coming up with a dessert name just for Q. But then, after that, they just went straight to the numbers. They stopped the names. They just went Android 13, Android 14, Android 15. But internally, Google has actually kept doing the internal dessert codenames. And you can look on the Wikipedia, you can see after Q there was Red Velvet Cake, Snow Cone, Tiramisu, Upside Down Cake, Vanilla Ice Cream. And then I guess they just skipped W, X, Y, Z, and A for some reason. And now here we are. at Cinnamon Bun.
Android 16 was Baklava. So actually, if you get any system notification, that's what this little glyph here was meant to be. And so sure enough, if you get any system notifications in Android 17, there's a little cinnamon bun. Proof that somebody at Google still cares about this! Bring back the public dessert names, Google, it's more fun this way. Anyway, these are my top five features on the publicly available Android 17 on my Pixel. in my order. So number five, screen reactions are a built-in feature.
Now you go in and start a screen recording, and now you can just tick the "Show selfie camera" option, and you get live-keyed in, a version of yourself that you can move around and make bigger, smaller, and then record on the spot, which is. very convenient. Now I'll be honest, I never made these types of videos, so I don't know if this is Sherlocking some other big app people are all using to do this, or if they eventually built it into Instagram or TikTok at this point-I'm sure they did-but hey, it just got that much easier. So nicely done, Google. And number four is very cool. It's the new game mode on foldables. So on Pixel Fold, and Z Fold, and all these other foldables, like.
Android 17, you'll be able to play games where. half the screen is the game, and the other half is an on-screen gamepad. And I'm not even that much of a phone gamer, but that is really cool, not gonna lie. Now number three. is the bubbles. and the bubble bar. And I really like saying bubble bar. Sorry, I'm gonna say that a lot, but the bubble bar is new. So basically, any app you can now launch straight into a floating window that can minimize into a bubble at any time. This actually itself isn't new. You could do this with some messaging-related apps for a while, but what's new is the ability to have up to four bubbles open at once. of different apps,
and then kind of treat it like a multitasking hub over the top of whatever else is going on in the background. But this bubble bar can be very useful! Imagine taking notes over the top of a YouTube video playing. I imagine I'm not the only freak that actually. writes notes instead of having, like, Gemini summarize everything for me, because. the bubble bar seems perfect for that. Anyway, separate but related feature: the new screen recording UI, I think, kind of looks like it was inspired by the bubble bar, with the new pill at the top.
It's not actually one of the bubbles, but. does feel thematically in-line. Makes you think. So then, number two is this whole collection of what I'm going to call. aesthetic tweaks. And again, it's not some big overhaul. This isn't like a new liquid glass or anything crazy like that. But it is a good collection of things where it feels like somebody is going through and being very thoughtful about little things that could be better. or that should be a little different. Like, I like that you can hide app labels now on the home screen for a super clean look in the stock launcher. I feel like that's long overdue.
I also like that there's a bit less empty white space between options in some of the more buried settings. Like, that's a subtle thing, but it's nicely considered. It was going to be a little bit much before. and then there's actually a little bit of transparency added here. Now, not full-on liquid glass levels again, but just more. adding it to more places for consistency. So the app drawer already had it, the quick settings already had it. Now the widget picker has it as well. So you can see a little bit of that wallpaper peeking through there as you pick your widgets.
You can choose exactly which apps automatically open in the expanded dark mode theme now, instead of just everything. You can have certain apps that always come up in dark mode. And then it's such a small thing, but when you finish going through notifications, in Android 16, it would just have a little text that says. "No notifications." In Android 17, it says, "You're all caught up," and gives you a nice little trophy, which is nice. Now, before we get to number one, I, of course, need to show you the new. Android 17 Easter egg, which this year is an incredibly. complicated. puzzle. So you do the classic five taps on Android 17, and then it takes you into
this weird constellation-type thing with a ring of stars. And I stared at this. for hours trying to figure out what does it mean. What types of symbols do I have to draw here? What sort of patterns are going to make this work? And. no, just kidding. You basically just connect them all together in literally any way, and then the Android 17 logo pops up. And then you hold that down for a few seconds to get into the same Easter egg as previous years, which is this little Asteroids game where you pilot this little spaceship around.
It's a fun time. So then. the number one feature. of Android 17. is that they've finally. separated. the Wi-Fi and mobile data toggles in Quick Settings. Thank God. I don't know why, but a couple years ago they decided for some reason to merge them together into one Internet toggle that you had to click into and then click again to toggle either Wi-Fi or mobile data. So finally in Android 17, they heard us, they listened to us, and they separated back out. a Wi-Fi toggle and a mobile data toggle. In Quick Settings, you can tap just the icon to turn it on or off, or tap the words to enter that full menu and connect to different networks.
It's about damn time they brought this back. Now, obviously this isn't the number one biggest change to Android 17, but it does feel like it's part of a nice theme of Google. actually. listening to users and just making little tweak. type things at the surface level that make Android nicer to use. Like here's another one in Android 16 there's a permanent search button on the bottom of your home screen. You can't get rid of it. Now they had this cool customization that let you change transparency and theme color of the widget, but that was only if you added a second search widget to your home screen it would customize that one, which makes no sense.
Why would anyone add a second search widget? Why can't you customize the first one that you can't get rid of?. Well in Android 17 now you long press it. and you actually can. You can change the transparency and customize that first one straight away. Still can't remove it, but. that's better than nothing. So there's so many other little things like that. There's slightly bouncier, more exaggerated animations in Quick Settings and in multitasking. and little performance tweaks here and there throughout.
There's also more stuff coming too, like the ability to make new widgets from scratch using natural language. When they add that, that's going to be sick I think. And Rambler which they talked about at I/O which is going to be even better. Speech-to-Text and Pause Point as well, which is another Digital Wellbeing tool. Stuff like this makes me want to switch to the Pixel again and take the plunge before I come back to my senses and remember the type of pain that can turn into. I am once again hoping for Tensor to take a massive leap forward with the next generation of Pixel phones, but I've been hurt before. so I'm. not gonna cross my fingers. Anyway, if you just got Android 17 to update the inside of your Pixel,
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I'll leave a link down in the description so you can check everything out for yourself. Thanks for watching. and I'll cinnamon bun you later. Peace.
