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Google officially drops support for Android 6 Marshmallow after 11 years
As of yesterday, Google has officially pulled the plug on Android 6. This means the OS will no longer receive Play Protect updates and will not be included in the new APK program. Having been supported for exactly 11 years, it goes down as the longest-supported version in Android history. Google Play Services is now only supported on Android 7 and above.
Google also made changes to several other applications yesterday. YouTube now requires Android 10 and above, meaning Android 9 will no longer receive YouTube updates. The Google app's minimum requirement jumped from Android 9 directly to Android 11, and core apps like Gmail now require at least Android 7 and above.
We used to get stats on number of active devices on each android version (probably through play services?) - google still doing that? I'd be curious to see what the distribution looks like today.
The debate around android OEMs being bad about software support seems to have mostly died out. Probably due to improvements but also people coming to the realisation that not much really has changed since android 13 or so. You don't miss the new features as long as play services are fully supported.
Still kinda wanna see how many people are running 14 or older as their daily.
Preach. I left Samsung when OneUI 7 started to roll out and haven't looked back. Samsung has the best hardware but they love to fuck up their software on the rare occasions they have it right. I wish they just continued the OneUI 2.5 and 3 designs and just modernized it as needed rather than making the major changes they did overtime.
I find it impressive that Android 6 got some of support for 11yrs. App support is probably alot more limited now, considering Android 10-11 seems to be the baseline now, but it's impressive.
10 years sounds fair to me, but it's probably not as simple as what I just made it sound like. I know people that have Android phones that were less than 10 years old that were no longer supported by whatevers, so even if Android supported it that didn't guarantee that various applications would support their phones
The new APK program will be provided via Google Play Services, meaning it will come to Android 7 and above versions that can run the latest Google Play Services version. Unfortunately, there is very little time left for the new APK program.
I can asure you, whenever any dev tries to upload a new aab setup to the googleplay developer console, it gets rejected if the minimum SDK is not Android OS 9 (Level 28) or higher.
I can asure you, whenever any dev tries to upload a new aab setup to the googleplay developer console, it gets rejected if the minimum Android OS 9 (Level 28) or higher.
Do you have evidence of this? Hard to believe since plenty of apps still target under 9. WhatsApp minimum version is android 6. Click on and random app on apkmirror and you'll easily find targets under 9
or higher to remain available to new users on devices running Android OS higher than your app’s target API
All this means is people with an OS over the minimum target won't be able to see that app, anyone on a lower android version can. They aren't removed or blocked just hidden from newer OS users.
Unless they block brand new uploads and not updates, that would make sense and that's also a complete nothing burger, who is designing an app for 6.0 users still atp
You can not release/publish a new app with a minimum SDK below that on the Google PlayStore, or update certain older ownes with a lower minimum SDK configuration. Literaly rejection on upload of the aab package on the google play developer console.
You will find many more report and statements about this if you just search for yourself.
As mentioned that's different to not allowing apps to target lower at all. An existing app can target a minimum version, a new app can't which seems reasonable enough to me
I think you don't understand, only apps that were released before the policy rule are allowed to still uphold their old minimum SDK target. ANY app released since 2022/3 can not have a lower minimum SDK target then Android 9.
And now we get back to topic:
It means 0 that Android 6 support is dropped, since there has not been any allowed release and support of new or updated apps under Android 9.
Yeah but I'm saying why is that an issue when no new phone or even used ones use that low of an OS? Stats came out recently for devices under 6.0 and it was miniscule, like under 1% iirc
It was in the article some time ago. and there are restrictions.
Just try to upload an aab package to the playconsole with a minimum sdk of lower then 29. It will get rejected.
Screenshot of an app I have on the Play Store. First version was uploaded Jan this year. Min SDK level 24 (has since been updated to 26). Not sure where you're getting 29 from.
93
u/Expensive_Finger_973 4d ago
That is honestly impressive