Google to release Android source code less frequently
Google has announced a significant change to the way in which it releases the source code for its Android operating system. The company has, until now, released source code several times a year as part of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).
Moving forward, Google says that it is going to be using a twice-a-year schedule for source code release – once in Q2 and then in Q4. With the latest code drop having come in November, we won’t see the next one until some time near summer. But what does all of this mean?
The impact of the change may not be felt for some time, but the open source nature of Android has allowed handset manufacturers to tweak the operating system to their preferences, or create a new operating system based on the code.
By halving the number of times source code is released, Google is unavoidably going to change the release schedule for builds developed by third parties. In terms of what the change means for users, it is going to be a matter of time before we can see, but the prediction would be that there would be little impact.
News of the change was broken by Android Authority, with the site sharing a statement from Google which reads:
Effective in 2026, to align with our trunk-stable development model and ensure platform stability for the ecosystem, we will publish source code to AOSP in Q2 and Q4. For building and contributing to AOSP, we recommend utilizing android-latest-release instead of aosp-main. The aosp-latest-release manifest branch will always reference the most recent release pushed to AOSP. For more information, see Changes to AOSP.
On the face of things, releasing source code half as often as previously seems like a massive change, but at the same time switching from four to two releases per year is a rather more manageable difference.
On the positive side, the fact that source code will remain unchanged for six months at a time means that developers will have more time to work on creating builds, and this in turn should help to improve stability and security.
