I Tried the Bubbles Feature in Android 17 and It Made Multitasking a Lot Easier?
Android 17 is just around the corner for Pixel phones worldwide, and while major updates aren’t exactly plentiful—Google typically releases them throughout the year —there’s a useful new feature that makes apps easier to access. Called “Bubbles,” it’s an expansion on the chat bubbles introduced in Android 11 and largely forgotten since. This time, bubbles will appear across all app categories, allowing you to customize a floating shortcut that appears on the side of your screen and contains the apps you use most often.
This shortcut expands and collapses when tapped, and you can use up to five different bubbles at a time. On a regular phone, you can place the bubbles anywhere on the screen, but on the foldable phone, they’re pinned to the bottom right corner. It’s like having an extra mini launcher at your fingertips.
The cool thing about these pop-ups isn’t just another way to launch an app: they actually provide access to it in a slightly smaller window, so you can quickly check something or interact with the app before returning to what you were previously doing. For example, if you’re writing a text message and need to link to a website in a pop-up, you can quickly get an overlay of that website, check the information you need, and then return to your message.
It promises to make multitasking on Android much more intuitive and fluid, and I’ve been using it extensively since updating to Android 17. It took me a while to figure out how to best use it at first, but it’s already changing the way I use my phone.
Using pop-up windows on Android 17
You can create a popup window for an app by long-pressing its icon on the home screen or in the app drawer and selecting “Popup Window.” If the app has its own long-press menu, you’ll only see the popup icon without text—it looks like a rectangle with an arrow pointing to one of its corners.
Tap a new bubble to open the full list, and you’ll see a “+” (plus) icon for adding new bubbles. Tap and hold, and you can drag the bubble icon to another part of the screen. To delete a bubble, tap and hold it, then drag it down to the “X” at the bottom. You can do this for all bubbles at once, if needed.
I can’t create tooltips in some apps, and I don’t understand why. Perhaps the developer hasn’t enabled this feature, or the apps are simply incompatible with tooltips. These apps include Google Authenticator, games I have installed on my phone, and the default Camera app for the Pixel.
When you select a pop-up window, the app is overlaid on top of everything else on the screen, and you can interact with it as usual—the window just appears slightly smaller than it would otherwise be. You can then tap outside the window to close the app’s pop-ups, or use the bar at the top to switch to another pop-up window.
This doesn’t replace the regular app launcher—you can still do that with apps you’ve created as pop-up windows—it simply provides an alternative, faster way to access specific apps without losing what you were already doing. It’s a bit like the more convenient Recent Apps screen or the Slide Over feature on the iPad .
I have WhatsApp, Pocket Casts, and Google Health configured as pop-up windows, so I can quickly check and reply to messages, start and stop podcasts, and track my daily steps with minimal distractions. Previously, performing these tasks and returning to the previous screen required several swipes and taps, but now it only takes a couple.