Android 16 QPR2 update brings major new features to Pixel phones

Google has recently finished the year by releasing another large software update for Pixel phones, known as Android 16 Quarterly Platform Release 2 (QPR2). While this update might not be as huge as the first one, it still includes many important changes, offering more ways to customize your device, new tools for getting things done, and better security features.

One of the most noticeable improvements is how you can make your phone look. For people who like a neat home screen, the Themed Icons feature will now work much better. If an app maker hasn’t created a special icon to match your phone’s color theme, the system will now automatically generate one.

This means fewer odd-looking icons sticking out on your screen, making everything look much more unified. You can also pick different shapes for your icons on the home screen, going beyond the standard circle to choose options like a square or various rounded styles.

If you enjoy using dark mode, the update introduces an ‘Expanded’ dark theme. This setting is stronger than the regular dark mode and attempts to darken apps that don’t have their own built-in dark design. It’s smart enough to avoid darkening photos and targets standard app elements, helping you avoid bright screens when reading at night, even in older applications.

You can also now turn down the brightness for high-quality videos (HDR content) using the Enhanced HDR brightness control, which is great for nighttime scrolling. Plus, if you don’t like the subtle blurring effect that shows up behind your menus, like in the Quick Settings panel, there’s a new option to disable all those blur effects system-wide.

The screen saver feature gets a useful upgrade called Low light mode. Previously, you could only choose one type of screen saver to show when your phone was resting. Now, this new mode automatically switches to a simple, dim clock display when the room light is low, regardless of what screen saver you selected for the daytime. This gives you your chosen display during the day and a subtle night clock after dark, similar to what you find on the Pixel Tablet.

To help manage the many alerts we get, the update brings a Notification Organizer. Using clever on-device technology, this tool groups and silences alerts into different simple categories such as Promotions, News, and Social, helping to clear up your notification shade so you only see what’s most important.

Also, a feature that was previously only on the Pixel Tablet, widgets on the lock screen, is now available for Pixel phones. You can manually enable this beta feature and swipe left on the lock screen to see small widgets for things like weather or calendar, without having to unlock your phone. For those who multitask often, there’s a new 90:10 split-screen mode.

This lets you dedicate most of the screen space (90%) to your main application while keeping a second app tiny and accessible in the remaining 10%, making it easy to swap between them quickly.

On the security side, a feature called Secure Lock Device has been added. Once activated (which is meant to be done remotely through Find Hub), it instantly locks your device and requires your main PIN or password, while temporarily disabling features like lock screen widgets and notifications for maximum safety.

Finally, for advanced users who connect their phone to external devices, the support for touchpads and mice has been greatly improved. New features include Action Corners, which let you trigger commands by moving the cursor into a screen corner, and better controls for the autoclick function, all part of Google’s efforts to make Android more useful on larger screens.

The operating system also runs more smoothly overall, thanks to a more efficient system process that cleans up unused memory faster, which should result in less lag and better battery life.