The Android team at Google Inc. today announced the next stage of Android 11’s development cycle with the third developer preview that adds bug fixes, productivity improvements for developers and debugging tools.

Today’s release is for developers seeking to create the next generation of apps that will run on Android 11 when the stable build is released in the third quarter of this year. It follows the previous developer preview that added several security updates and user interface improvements.

New additions in this preview include application programming interface app exit reasons, a heap analysis tool for memory debugging, an update for incremental builds for Android Games, additional wireless debugging and data access auditing.

When an app exits, it produces an exit code that can be read by the operating system. Apps can exit for any number of reasons: The user could request the app to close, the system could terminate it or it could crash. Knowing why an app exited can be instrumental to understanding how an app is operating, so Android 11 has an updated app exit reasons API.

In DP3, when memory issues strike, developers can use a tool known as GWP-ASan. This tool provides another way for developers to detect and repair memory safety issues by sampling the allocation of that memory from apps. This tool now runs by default in platform binaries and system apps, and now it can be enabled for third-party apps as well.

The Android Debug Bridge is an important component for understanding what’s happening inside an app while it’s running. But because of its nature, installing it with extremely large apps — above 2 gigabytes — can be extremely slow. Android 11 now includes ADB incremental installation so that less code needs to update with each change. That can speed up installation by up to 10 times, which is especially useful for Android Games developers, since those apps often have very large footprints.

In addition, the debugging experience using ADB has been revamped for using the tool over a Wi-Fi connection. Using the wireless debugging tool means developers no longer need a USB cable from the Android device they’re debugging to their work computer. This tool also remembers connections over time and can utilize the fastest Wi-Fi now available. To get started with this feature, developers need only use the pairing code workflow.

In DP3 several APIs for Android 11 involving data access auditing, developers already using this feature should familiarize themselves with the changes. Data access auditing allows a developer to better instrument their app to understand how it accesses data. That can be useful for identifying where apps get their data and how they get it, meaning that private data access can be audited so that its security can be tested and understood.

The preview is available for individual developers and studios, for free, and will work on the Pixel 2, 3, 3a and 4 phones. The package can be downloaded manually or flashed for those devices at the Android Developer portal. For users already running a Developer Preview build, an over-the-air update will be available soon to update to today’s release.

Aside from the above listed devices, developers can also set up an Android Emulator through Android Studio and get direct access to Android 11 Developer Preview 3 today through the Android 11 software development kit setup guide.

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