Android 14 Preview 1 was released yesterday. Google has been doing its best to hide interesting features for consumers from this early release (because they weren’t finished, or because of the big I/O exposure), but it stopped. Not finding interesting features from the internet. “App Cloning” is a new feature apparently hidden in his Preview 1 build that is shipping, and he who contributes to XDA Mishaal Rahman managed to enable it.
This feature leverages Android’s multi-user system to have two copies of the same app, but with different data, so each can be logged in with a different account. Some apps support multiple accounts, some don’t, and with this feature, all apps will now support multiple accounts. It also provides great consistency when you have multiple accounts. All apps can handle multiple accounts in the same way, with one icon for account number 1 and a second icon for account number 2. Under the hood, the whole functionality is a lot like Android for Work, but without the complicated Work Profile setup process and with the ability to choose which apps to clone.
You may have seen this feature in some Android skins or third party apps, but it is built into proper Android as part of the normal upstream process. As Android system UI lead Dan Sandler once explained at Google I/O, the system UI team’s functional loop is often about “seeing the paradigm in action, embracing it, learning about it, learning about it. to make it safer and contribute to Let’s go back to frameworks that everyone can use on Android. “
There is still a lot to be done with this feature. There is no obvious way to create a cloned app other than going through the obscure process of finding the appropriate settings screen. If you do this, Android’s launcher will not be able to distinguish between the cloned app and the original app. The icon name and icon will be the same. Android for Work puts a little briefcase badge on the duplicated work icon, but there’s nothing like that here.
One of the big drawbacks of this feature is that Android OEMs can control apps that use the clone feature. I hope this is not abused for no reason. The Android 13 Compatibility Definition document mentions “Clone App Profiles” (which apparently only allows you to create one additional clone app) as a required feature. We don’t know if this feature is ready for the Android 14 release later this year, but we’re actively working on it.
