Android 15 is supposed to force apps to go edge-to-edge, but Google quietly added a way to opt out
If you’re hoping that all your apps will finally go edge-to-edge in Android 15, you may be in for some disappointment.
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- Starting in Android 15, apps that target the new release are forced to go edge-to-edge by default, which makes the status and navigation bars transparent.
- However, Google quietly added an API that apps can use to opt out of edge-to-edge enforcement.
- This API isn’t mentioned in any of Google’s developer documents, blog posts, or codelabs, though.
Although Android has long offered apps the ability to use your phone’s entire screen by letting them draw content underneath the status and navigation bars, many apps don’t take advantage of this. There are many reasons why developers have shied away from making their apps go edge-to-edge, but in the upcoming Android 15 update, they’ll have no choice but to do so — or at least, that’s what we thought.
For a bit of context, apps have long been able to go edge-to-edge by implementing a few APIs that tells the OS to draw the app underneath the two “system bars” (ie. the status and navigation bars). The reason that Google didn’t immediately enforce this behavior is that many apps might have UI issues if they were forced to go edge-to-edge. For example, an app might have an interactive element like a floating action button that would overlap with the navigation bar if it went edge-to-edge.
