Android R (Android 11) to ease printing of images & PDFs with "Share to Print" feature

The next iteration of Android codenamed Android R and tentatively known as Android 11 is expected in the coming weeks as the first developer preview, but we’ve already had several encounters with the yet-to-be-announced software.

Late last year, we stumbled upon reports suggesting that Google will include systemwide dark mode scheduling in Android 11. Although not confirmed, this would be a cool addition and improvement to the system-wide dark mode introduced in Android 10.

It has also been suggested that Android R Airplane mode will not turn off Bluetooth audio when in use, an addition that many would relish having on their devices.

Even more interesting is that it seems there is a working Android R build out there already. Last month a Google Pixel 4 running the new OS was spotted on Geekbench and just this week, a Pixel 2 XL running a pre-release Android R build popped up online.

By all means, both cases strongly suggest that the Android 11 developer preview build is about to hit the road. When it arrives, the OS will have one more feature over its predecessor – the ability to directly print documents without manually choosing a print service from the Android Share menu.

This will be made possible thanks to a feature known as “Share to Print.” Google recently merged a new commit to AOSP meant to enable “share to print”. This feature should shorten/ease the process of printing documents from Android devices.

At the moment, printing a document from an Android device requires one to pick a printing service from the share menu, but this will be no more when Android 11 arrives.

Unfortunately, though, it’s unlikely that this feature will get a dedicated button in the Share menu, rather, it will only shorten the entire printing process by bypassing the share menu, thus enabling apps to send documents to be printed directly to the default printing service.

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