Google’s latest Android 17 QPR1 Beta 5 is available for testers

Last week marked a major milestone for Android launches, with Android 17 finally stabilizes and starting to arrive on Pixel devices everywhere. As much as we’ve been waiting for that release, testers are already onto the next big update beyond that, with Google’s Android 17 QPR1 Betas giving them a taste of the changes coming with the September feature drop. After QPR1 Beta 4 Landed two weeks ago, Google is now ready to move to QPR1 Beta 5.

Google’s Mishaal Rahman share the good news on X, confirming that build CP31.260608.007 is arriving for testers on Pixel 6 and later devices. This is important because last time the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro were explicitly excluded, although Google promised that we would see support for those older models with this new version.

As you should probably expect from a Beta 5, at this point Google is largely in cleanup mode, and that means a lot of bug fixes. Here’s what Google shares you can expect:

• An issue in Game Panel where users were unable to stop screen recordings or save video files. (Number 296368569, Number 328539170)
• An issue where the camera app temporarily freezes or stutters shortly after opening from an idle state. (Number 330488811)
• An issue that caused the screen to freeze with a pixelated bottom bar when waking the device from Always-On Display. (Number 515393542, Number 515497396)
• A timeout issue where Download Manager was unable to complete downloads when excluded from an active VPN connection. (Number 475985649)
• An issue causing inconsistent loading completion time estimates to be displayed on the lock screen versus the loading screen saver. (Edition number 489503595)
• An issue that causes the private space UI to crash and blocked private apps to appear incorrectly in the launcher’s search results. (Number 515631415)
• System and device crash occurred while downloading games. (Number 515364954)
• An issue where a non-functional bubble option would incorrectly appear in the context menu of archived applications. (Number 514585702)
• A system-level WebView rendering regression that caused Monopoly Go to freeze and crash when trying to open minigames. (Number 516576731)
• Home screen widgets would disappear or become unavailable in the widget launcher after restarting the device. (Number 488125748, Number 505117543, Number 505671079, Number 497140330, Number 506685943, Number 510967059)

A very nice change, Rahman. confirm is the addition of a new “don’t ask me again” option when activating mobile data:

If you’re curious to try QPR1 for the first time, you can start by registering your Pixel device with Google Android Beta Program.

On the other hand, if you have been testing Android 17 Beta and prefer to move to stable without having to erase all the data on your device, Google warns that you should No Install QPR1 Beta 5 and proceed to cancel participation in the program instead.