Android

Google’s private development of Android takes effect, with one door left open

Ben Schoon | Mar 28 2025 - 12:35 pm PT

It was revealed earlier this week that Google would be moving the development of Android entirely behind closed doors for the first time, a change that now appears to have taken effect, but the company isn’t fully cutting out other parties from AOSP.

Google has developed parts of Android in the open for years as a part of the Android Open Source Project. Earlier this week, it was confirmed that the remaining parts of the platform being developed in the public eye would be moved behind closed doors within Google.

Google will develop Android OS entirely behind closed doors

The change streamlines Android’s development and, on the whole, should prove to be a benefit to the platform. In a notice on the Android Source website, Google says that the “aosp-main” manifest is no longer being used to “build and contribute to AOSP,” with that being moved over the the “android-latest-release” in accordance with company’s adjustment. In a further note to developers, Google said that “aosp-main” will be locked and set to read-only, with developers instead told to sync their changes with the “latest-release” which is currently Android 15 QPR2.

Google says:

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Starting March 27, 2025, the latest release branch will always be referenced by the new android-latest-release manifest, which can be used directly with Repo. We recommend platform developers use android-latest-release instead of aosp-main to build and contribute to AOSP. The android-latest-release manifest is set to the latest AOSP release branch, android15-qpr2-release. See About android-latest-release for more information.

What’s noteworthy here is that Google says that developers can still “build and contribute to AOSP” following this change, something that wasn’t directly clear previously., The company also directly confirmed to Android Authority that it still welcomes contributions to AOSP from developers through its usual online Gerrit.