Android 10 allows two different apps to access the microphone at the same time

Android 10 is already among us but deployment is slow for now. Only some devices and reaching them by areas, although we can always resort to trying to install it on our own with the implications and difficulties that this entails. And it is a version so new that things are still being discovered about it that Google publishes with eyedroppers.

The latter comes from the Android code itself, and it follows that Google tries to improve the experience of using its assistant with artificial intelligence, Google Assistant, allowing several apps to access the microphone at the same time. That is, we could invoke Assistant while Soundhound or someone else is identifying a song.

Apps with common privileges and apps

The system is built on a new app classification system that Google establishes within Android 10, and in which it creates what it calls a group of priority applications, or privileged applications. These apps would thus have permission to access the microphone even if another application already had it in use.

Google thus establishes a new system that details in its blog of developers, and that establishes the following characteristics at the time of managing the access to the different components of the phone with their respective permissions:

• Privileged apps have a higher priority than common apps. As we had commented.
• Apps with user interfaces visible in the foreground have a higher priority over apps that run in the background.
• Apps that capture audio from sources sensitive to user privacy or their environment have even higher priority than apps that do not perform these tasks.
• Two common apps, without special privileges, cannot access audio capture at the same time.
• In certain situations, two apps with privileges can share audio or with an app classified as common.
• If there are two apps in the background capturing audio, the priority is the one that starts last, that is, the most recent.

Google's approach to this change is not only related to the operation, or better operation, of Google Assistant but also to benefit the accessibility services of the Android 10 operating system. Thus, it only remains to wait until they begin to appear Useful uses of this new functionality or this new permission system.

Via | Android