Multitasking on Android has long meant a flurry of swipes and taps just to glance at one app and get back to another. Android 17 trims that hassle with a feature called Bubbles, a floating shortcut that lets you open and use up to five apps in small overlay windows without leaving whatever you're already doing.
The shortcut expands and collapses with a tap, and you can keep as many as five different bubbles ready at once. On a regular phone you can park them anywhere on the screen; on a foldable they automatically dock to the bottom right corner. Think of it as a compact extra launcher sitting on top of everything else.
Not just another app launcher
The clever part is that a bubble doesn't simply open an app. It hands you the app inside a slightly smaller window, so you can check up on something or knock out a quick task and then return to what you were doing. Writing a text and need to refer to a website? Pull that site up in a bubble as an overlay, read what you need, and drop straight back into the message.
The result is multitasking that feels far more intuitive and smooth on Android. It can take a little while to figure out how to make the most of it, but it genuinely starts to change the way you use your phone.
How to create a bubble
To turn an app into a bubble, long-press its icon on the home screen or in the app drawer and choose Bubble. If the app already has its own long-press menu, you'll just see the bubble icon with no label, a rectangle with an arrow pointing to one corner of it.
Tap your new bubble to open the full selection, where a plus (+) icon lets you add more. Tap and hold to drag the bubbles shortcut to a different part of the screen. To get rid of a bubble, tap and hold it and drag it down to the X at the bottom, and you can clear all of your bubbles at once if you need to.
Apps that won't play along
A handful of apps can't be made into bubbles, and the reason isn't always clear. Maybe the developer hasn't enabled the feature, or maybe they're simply incompatible. The list includes the Google Authenticator app, games installed on the phone, and the default Camera app on Pixel phones.
Using your bubbles
Select a bubble and the app appears layered over whatever else is on screen, working exactly as normal apart from the slightly smaller window. Tap outside the window to close your app bubbles, or use the row along the top to switch to a different one.
With WhatsApp, Pocket Casts, and Google Health set up as bubbles, you can check and reply to messages, start and stop podcasts, and look up your daily step count without much of an interruption. Jobs that once needed several swipes and taps to reach and then back out of now take just a couple of taps.
