Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google introduced Live Updates in Android 16 to standardize real-time progress notifications.
- Live Updates will offer a consistent UI across delivery, rideshare, and navigation apps, even on the lock screen.
- Live updates for Uber and other delivery apps are coming as part of a redesign later this year.
Google is kicking off the Google I/O party with an early focus on Android and its updates through “The Android Show” program. Of course, the big news is Android 16 and the features it will include, and now’s as great a time as ever to re-introduce Live Updates, which will come to several key apps later this year.
Live Updates are a new class of notifications that help users monitor and quickly access important ongoing activities through progress notifications on select apps. Apps like Uber have been showing such notifications for a while now, but they had to implement their own custom workaround. With Live Updates, Google has created a standardized version of such critical notifications.
Live Updates were officially introduced with the first Android 16 beta, and now, we know what they will look like in the stable update.
For instance, one of the more common phone use cases these days is ordering food through food delivery apps. If you place an Uber Eats order on an Android 16 phone, you will soon get a glanceable Live Update to track your delivery progress. You can view certain critical information without needing to pull down the notification.
When you do expand the notification by clicking on the Live Update chip in the status bar, you will see more information alongside a progress tracker. This will let you get most of what you need without re-opening the parent app.
Live Updates also gives such high-priority notifications a consistent look and experience across the lock screen and even the Always On Display. This way, you always have all that you need to know right at your fingertips, without needing to dig through apps and other notification clutter.
Live Updates are currently restricted to delivery, rideshare, and navigation apps. We’ve already shown you Live Updates in Google Maps, and later this year, you can expect to see them from other top players in these categories too.
Compared to what Google had shown off with the first Android 16 Beta, Live Updates look much more polished. In doing so, they also look closer than ever to iOS’ Live Activities feature. Android and iOS frequently get inspired by each other, and as long as end users benefit from it, I am not complaining.
