Meanwhile Android 12 was given a full unveil, and has received a radical visual overhaul to be more colourful, dynamic and personalised. This means changes to everything from the lock screen and notifications to widgets and media controls, with big, bubbly, heavily animated elements throughout. As always, this change will come first to Google’s Pixel phones and may be picked up by other Android devices as their respective manufacturers institute the new software.

Privacy and transparency was also a big focus of the Android 12 unveiling, with Google hoping to convince people that it (and third party apps) are not secretly siphoning off data from the camera, microphone and GPS. The new system will show a persistent icon at the top of the screen when the camera or microphone is in use, and users can disable them entirely with a single touch so that even apps with permission can’t see or hear anything.

You’ll also be able to set apps to receive only an approximation of your location, for example if you want a weather or photo sharing app to know roughly where you are but don’t want to hand over your home address. A new “Privacy Dashboard” will make it easy to see which apps have recently used your microphone, camera or location, akin to Google’s Digital Wellbeing dash that monitors phone use.

Finally Android 12 will sequester some AI-powered processes into a secure part of the operating system that has no access to the internet. Features like Smart Reply and Live Caption already work offline, but the idea is to let you know for sure that Google isn’t collecting your text messages or conversations if you turn them on. The technology is open source, meaning Google is inviting security researchers to kick the tyres.

There was privacy talk more broadly too, with a new Quick Delete option in Search and reminders in Maps that you can turn off location tracking if you want to, which is timely given recent court decisions about Google’s previous data privacy policies. There will also be a new password protected folder in Google Photos, which will prevent sensitive images from popping up unexpectedly when you’re trying to show someone your recent happy snaps.