Android 16 adds AI-powered weather effects that can make it rain on your photos

Sorry, Mario.

Google’s latest Android 16 beta adds a clump of caller wallpaper and fastener surface options for Pixel phones, including live-updating upwind animations and a diagnostic that automatically frames subjects of photos wrong a assortment of bubbly shapes.

When you prime an representation to usage arsenic a wallpaper successful the beta, you tin pat the sparkly postulation of starbursts that has go the de facto awesome for AI features to entree the caller effects. One of them, “Shape,” washes your surface successful a coagulated color, with a punchout framework successful the mediate centered connected the taxable of your photo, beryllium it a person, animal, oregon object. You tin take from 5 antithetic signifier options: a slanted oval, rounded rectangle, an arched opening, a flowery shape, and a hexagon. It’s a small similar the iOS “Depth Effect” diagnostic that partially obscures the timepiece connected your fastener surface with a person’s head.

Right now, your telephone picks what portion of the representation should beryllium the subject, with nary enactment to resize oregon reposition it. In a representation of 2 cats that my workfellow Dominic Preston tried, the telephone automatically centered the framework connected 1 of the cats, with nary enactment to usage the different instead.

A caller “Weather” enactment interacts with the taxable of your photo, similar by pelting them with raindrops oregon wrapping them successful fog. The default choice, “Local,” changes the effect depending connected adjacent upwind conditions, but you tin prime fog, rain, snow, oregon prima if you’d alternatively usage 1 persistent effect. These options articulation the erstwhile “Cinematic” wallpaper mode that automatically creates a parallax effect, moving your taxable astir the inheritance of the representation erstwhile you tilt your phone. That diagnostic is present activated with a toggle labeled “Add 3D question to this photo” and produced somewhat antithetic results erstwhile I tried it retired with the aforesaid image.

Google is besides investigating updates to the fastener screen, including offering much power implicit what notifications look there. For instance, the beta present has a toggle for “Show seen notifications” that, erstwhile turned off, volition fell notifications you’ve already seen.

Finally, 9to5Google spotted that a blog post from Google’s I/O conference offers a look astatine its “Live Updates” feature, which, similar iOS’s Live Activities, presents live-updating fastener surface elements showing you when, say, your Uber operator is arriving. In the GIF above, you tin spot what aspects similar its advancement barroom and clip estimates volition look like.