Android 13 release changes you should know about

As with previous releases, the upcoming Android 13 release includes migration considerations and behavior changes that could impact your app. The associated technical details can be found in the Android Developer documentation and Android 13 release notes.

Depending on the functionality you include within your app an update to your app may be required to support the Android 13 behavior changes.

Fortunately, by using Median as your "website to app" app builder, we maintain all your native app code. So, as an app publisher you don’t have to worry about completing any native development. In most cases, with an active support & maintenance plan, you simply need to rebuild your app on our online build platform to obtain an updated app that is compatible with the latest iOS and Android operating systems and devices. However, it can still be helpful to review the changes accompanying a major OS release.

The following Android 13 related changes are most relevant for many of our customers.

For any further questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our support team.

Webview Cache

The Android system webview custom cache file has been deprecated and removed in Android 13. New apps and any app updates will now use the operating system default cache location. This means users who update your app will have their existing cache invalidated during the update process. As a result, users may need to re-login or set options within the app should that data be stored in the cache.

Push Notifications

An Android 13 change that will impact many apps is the new requirement to obtain permission from users prior to sending push notifications. For our OneSignal Android integration, we have implemented functionality to support this requirement that compares to our iOS integration. By default, your updated app will prompt users for push notification permission on initial launch. However, just like iOS, you can optionally defer the automatic registration and prompt until run-time. This way you can prompt the user after you provide context on why you are requesting push notification permission and the types and frequency of notifications they can expect. This strategy is a recommendation from Android and OneSignal, and leads to a better user experience and higher push notification permission consent rate. Android's best practices suggest the following examples as good times to show users the notification permission prompt:

• The user taps an "alert bell" button.
• The user chooses to follow someone's social media account.
• The user submits an order for food delivery.

For information on our OneSignal integration and requesting push notification permission at runtime refer to our documentation.

For information on OneSignal’s Android 13 updates refer to their recent blog post.

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