The Android 16 Easter egg hints at Android’s new Live Updates feature – Android Authority

Affiliate links on Android Authority may earn us a commission. Learn more.Published on6 hours agoUpdate, March 14, 2025 (11:20 AM ET): Since the Live Updates feature is disabled in Android 16 Beta 3, we originally weren’t able to show off the new Android 16 Easter egg in full. With a bit of tinkering, though, we managed to enable the Live Updates feature in Beta 3, and subsequently demo the new Easter egg experience. The article has been updated accordingly, complete with a video showcasing the new Easter egg in Android 16.Every year, Google sneaks in a fun little Easter egg into its latest Android release. These Android Easter eggs range from fun little minigames to tools that highlight some capability of that year’s release. The new Easter egg in Android 16 is both of those things, a space travel game that demonstrates how apps can make use of the platform’s new Live Updates feature. Here’s what the Android 16 Easter egg looks like, how it works, and how you can access it yourself.If you aren’t familiar, an Easter egg is any message, image, or feature that’s hidden from users. Android’s Easter eggs are no different, except they’re pretty much an open secret by this point. That’s because each Android Easter egg is hidden in the same place every year, which means if you found it in the past, you know how to access the new one already. If you don’t know how to access the Android Easter egg, we’ll share the steps in the next section.Finding the Android 16 Easter egg is simple. All you have to do is follow these steps:Although the Easter egg is the same for all Android phones and tablets running Android 16, the exact location of the “Android version” field may differ for some devices.The Android 16 Easter egg might look familiar, as it’s largely the same as those from Android 14 and Android 15. The Easter egg in Android 16 is a cute spaceship game that starts by simulating a take-off of a space vessel. When it launches, you take control of a tiny ship as it floats around in space. You can find a variety of stars and celestial bodies as you explore the vastness of space.To help you navigate, the game displays your ship’s thruster status, current coordinates, and velocity. It also shows the name of the star that’s closest to you, the class of that star, its radius, its mass, and how many objects are orbiting it. When you land on a star or a celestial body, your spaceship plants a yellow flag on it. Finding every celestial body can be a pleasant way to pass the time, but if you were hoping for a win condition, you won’t find one. The exploration itself is the sole source of entertainment.If you don’t enjoy manually moving the spaceship but appreciate the game’s aesthetics, you can set it as your screensaver. When set as a screensaver, the ship runs on autopilot, automatically navigating to the nearest celestial body. When it lands on one, it plants a flag, waits a few seconds, and then departs for its next target.All aspects of the spaceship game I’ve described thus far were present in the Android 15 Easter egg, but Android 16 Beta 3 introduces two changes. For starters, it’s now possible to manually engage the autopilot system while playing the game yourself. Simply tap the new “AUTO” button in the bottom right-hand corner. More importantly, though, the Easter egg now displays a progress-centric notification, which is a key part of the new Live Updates feature in Android 16.When you start the game and return to the home screen, the Android Easter egg will post a notification detailing the ship’s status. The notification uses Android 16’s new progress-centric notification style, which includes a progress bar displaying the distance to the nearest celestial body.Unfortunately, the Live Updates feature itself is disabled in Android 16 Beta 3. Normally, the Live Updates feature would allow the Easter egg’s notification to be shown prominently in the notifications panel, always-on display, and in the status bar. With a bit of tinkering, though, we managed to enable the Live Updates feature in Beta 3 to give you an early look at what the full Android 16 Easter egg will be like. Here’s a video demonstrating the new Easter egg in Android 16:The Live Updates feature allows the Easter egg’s notification to be shown prominently in the notifications panel, always-on display, and in the status bar. In the status bar, the Easter egg displays an icon and one word that represents the current status of the ship. The ship is “adrift” when it has no set destination, “en route” when the autopilot is navigating the ship to a celestial body, and “landed” when it has landed on a celestial body.Hopefully, Google will enable the Live Updates feature in the next beta so everyone can try out the new Easter egg in full. Some Android phones may display Live Updates a bit differently due to manufacturer customizations, so the video embedded in this article may not perfectly reflect your own experience with the Android 16 Easter egg. However, it should still serve as a demonstration of the new Live Updates feature as it’s implemented on your phone or tablet.Still, it’s cool to see the Easter egg in Android 16 make use of one of the operating system’s new features, as this wasn’t the case for the Easter egg in Android 14 or 15. I’m sure some of you were hoping for an entirely new Easter egg, though, so hopefully Google changes things up in next year’s release.

Source: https://www.androidauthority.com/android-16-easter-egg-3533677/