Google’s pre-I/O Android Show for 2026 has wrapped up, and it came loaded with news about new features and upgrades across Android’s toolset. Unsurprisingly, a lot of what was announced centers on AI, but the event also covered new emoji, security improvements, and plenty more besides. Below, we’ve gathered seven of the biggest and best Android 17 upgrades to come out of The Android Show.
1. Gemini Intelligence
Arguably the headline announcement of the show, Gemini Intelligence pushes Gemini toward being a genuinely agentic assistant rather than just a chatbot. It can move between apps to complete multi-step tasks with minimal input — Google’s own example involved long-pressing the power button while a grocery list is on screen and asking Gemini to build and place an online shopping order from it. Gemini’s reach also extends into Chrome, where it can browse and complete actions like booking appointments, and into everyday tools like Gmail, Calendar, and Keep.
2. Rambler Streamlining Voice-to-Text with Rambler
While speech-to-text dictation has drastically improved its raw word recognition over the years, literal transcripts rarely match how we actually want our written messages to read. When speaking naturally off the cuff, our sentences are naturally riddled with clumsy pauses, self-corrections, repeating phrases, and standard filler words like “ums” and “ahs.” Having to manually clean up a messy wall of text after dictating usually defeats the hands-free convenience of voice typing entirely.
To bridge this gap, Google is rolling out an AI-driven Gboard upgrade called Rambler, operating under its broader Gemini Intelligence umbrella. Instead of waiting for you to finish speaking and then retroactively correcting the errors, Rambler proactively processes your speech as it arrives. The feature instantly identifies the core meaning of your spoken thoughts, strips away the verbal clutter and false starts in real time, and translates your stream of consciousness into a clean, concise text message before it even hits the input field.
Rambler is also built for multilingual users — it can smoothly handle switching between languages within the same message. On the privacy side, it doesn’t store or save your message data, so that shouldn’t be a concern.
3. Transforming the Web with Gemini in Chrome
Gemini’s Chrome implementation is also getting smarter and more agentic, as starting in late June, it will have an auto browse feature that can do things like book appointments or reserve parking spots for you via Chrome. This isn’t a totally new feature, but it is new to Android.
Gemini in Chrome is also getting better at providing contextual assistance, as it will be able to provide responses that are tailored to your hobbies, interests, and life (assuming you opt into Personal Intelligence).
And it can work beyond Chrome by, for example, adding things to your calendar, searching your Gmail, or adding to-do lists to Keep.
Plus, there will soon be Nano Banana integration, allowing you to create new images and customize ones you’ve found online directly in Chrome.
4. Noto 3D Emojis
Android’s emoji set is getting its biggest visual overhaul since 2020. The new style, called Noto 3D, adds shading, depth, and a more sculpted look to replace the flatter, cartoonish emoji Android has used for years. Google frames it as giving messages more “physicality,” though the simpler takeaway is that Android emoji now look a lot closer to what iPhone users have had for a while. The rollout starts with Pixel phones later this year before spreading to the rest of the Android ecosystem.
Google’s Noto 3D emoji collection marks one of the biggest visual shake-ups for Android since the classic “blob” emojis were retired, swapping flat minimalism for hand-modeled depth. Tied directly to the upcoming Android 17 ecosystem, this overhaul updates nearly 4,000 unique icons with realistic lighting, deep shading, and defined textures. Google is leaning heavily into this sense of “physicality,” aiming to give digital reactions a distinct weight and presence that helps them stand out cleanly in a sea of standard text.
True to form, the rollout begins with Google Pixel devices later this year before expanding to the wider Android universe and web apps like Gmail and YouTube. While some redesigns are earning praise for their crisp detail, the community is already a bit split on the aesthetic pivot. Critics on tech forums note that adding glossy 3D depth makes the set look quite similar to Apple’s style or Microsoft’s Fluent design, prompting some debate over whether the new look compromises Google’s historically distinct, clean 2D identity.
5. Android 17 Pause Point
Aimed squarely at doomscrolling, Pause Point inserts a mandatory 10-second pause whenever you open an app you’ve flagged as distracting, such as social media apps. Rather than locking you out entirely, it fills that pause with something like a breathing prompt or a photo, nudging you to reconsider before you scroll. It’s a lighter-touch alternative to rigid app timers, which are easy to dismiss or ignore. Google’s new Pause Point tool introduces a psychological circuit breaker to the Android ecosystem, shifting the Digital Wellbeing philosophy away from late-stage app timers and targeting the reflexive impulse to scroll at the absolute root. When you attempt to open a self-designated distracting app, the operating system intercepts the launch and forces a mandatory 10-second delay. This intentional friction is designed to shatter the automatic, subconscious habit loop before the dopamine hit of a feed can take hold, giving you a critical window of mindfulness to choose an active alternative like a guided breathing exercise, a curated photo slideshow, or jumping directly over to a productive app. What makes Pause Point uniquely effective compared to easily bypassed screen-time limits is how it cleverly weaponizes a user’s own laziness. Google designed the feature with an intentionally high exit cost: once enabled for your problem apps, you cannot simply tap a snooze button or enter a PIN to turn it off in a moment of weak willpower. Disabling the guardrails completely requires a full smartphone reboot. By introducing a tedious, 30-second restart process to bypass the restriction, Android ensures that the minor friction of waiting out the initial 10-second pause is almost always the easier, more appealing option than resetting your entire device just to look at a feed.
6. Screen Reactions
This is one of the most practical additions for anyone making content. Screen Reactions lets you record your selfie camera and whatever’s on your screen — a video, app, website, or photo — at the same time, automatically overlaying your face on top of the action. It’s built for reaction-style videos for platforms like TikTok or YouTube, and it removes the need for a separate green-screen setup or a third-party editing app. It debuts on Pixel devices first.
With the launch of Android 17, Google is putting a massive focus on content creators by introducing “Screen Reactions,” a system-level feature that drastically simplifies the process of making reaction videos. Built directly into Android’s native screen recorder, the tool allows you to seamlessly capture your device’s screen and your front-facing camera simultaneously. By automatically overlaying a cutout of your face onto the screen capture—acting essentially as an instant, built-in green screen—it entirely eliminates the need for separate apps, complex shifting of files, or tedious post-production syncing.
Simultaneously, Google has closely partnered with Meta to resolve long-standing quality gaps and bring a true flagship media experience to Instagram on Android. The collaboration integrates Ultra HDR capture and playback, built-in video stabilization, and Google’s signature low-light photography directly into the Instagram camera app. Furthermore, Android 17 users gain exclusive tools within Instagram’s Edits app: a one-tap “smart enhance” feature that leverages on-device AI to instantly upscale photo and video clarity, alongside an AI-powered “sound separation” tool capable of isolating and neutralizing distracting background noises like wind or chatter.
7. New creator tools
Google is also introducing new ways to create and share with Android 17. These include ‘Screen Reactions’, which make it a breeze to record both yourself and your screen at the same time.
There are also improvements to how your photos and videos look on Instagram when using an Android phone, with Google working with Meta to enable ultra HDR capture and playback, built-in video stabilization, and improved low light performance.
Plus, Google and Meta are rolling out some Android-exclusive tools for Instagram’s Edits app. These include ‘smart enhance’, which uses on-device AI to upscale your photos and videos with a single tap, and sound separation, meaning that the Edits app can automatically identify and separate audio tracks, so you can more easily boost the sounds you want and reduce or remove those that you don’t.
8. Major security upgrades
Android 17 also brings a batch of security upgrades, the biggest being a new anti-spoofing feature that can automatically hang up on calls from a faked phone number — Google does this by checking with a partner bank’s app on your phone to confirm whether the caller is really who they claim to be, and ending the call if not; this isn’t tied exclusively to Android 17, since it’s coming to devices running Android 11 and up within weeks, starting with Revolut, Itaú, and Nubank before more banks are added later in the year. Alongside that, Live Threat Detection — the existing feature that flags suspicious apps — is being broadened to recognize more types of risky behavior and now includes “dynamic signal monitoring” for faster detection, while a separate addition lets you lock a lost or stolen phone using biometric authentication, so even someone who knows your PIN or password can’t get back in.