The Android 16 Easter egg hints at Android’s new Live Updates feature

Every year, Google sneaks in a fun little Easter egg into its latest Android release. These Android Easter eggs range from fun little minigames to tools that highlight some capability of that year’s release. The new Easter egg in Android 16 is both of those things, a space travel game that demonstrates how apps can make use of the platform’s new Live Updates feature. Here’s what the Android 16 Easter egg looks like in the latest Beta 3 release, how it works, and how you can access it yourself.

What’s an Android Easter egg?

If you aren’t familiar, an Easter egg is any message, image, or feature that’s hidden from users. Android’s Easter eggs are no different, except they’re pretty much an open secret by this point. That’s because each Android Easter egg is hidden in the same place every year, which means if you found it in the past, you know how to access the new one already. If you don’t know how to access the Android Easter egg, we’ll share the steps in the next section.

How do I find the Android 16 Easter egg?

Finding the Android 16 Easter egg is simple. All you have to do is follow these steps:

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Tap About phone.
3. Tap on Android version.
4. Tap the Android version field repeatedly.
5. You should now see the Android 16 logo floating in space.
6. Lastly, press and hold on the Android 16 logo until the spaceship game launches. You should see the logo start to vibrate, the dots representing stars in the background turn into streaks, the background color turn white, and your phone start vibrating.

Although the Easter egg is the same for all Android phones and tablets running Android 16, the exact location of the “Android version” field may differ for some devices.

What the Android 16 Easter egg does

The Android 16 Easter egg might look familiar, as it’s largely the same as those from Android 14 and Android 15. The Easter egg in Android 16 is a cute spaceship game that starts by simulating a take-off of a space vessel. When it launches, you take control of a tiny ship as it floats around in space. You can find a variety of stars and celestial bodies as you explore the vastness of space.

To help you navigate, the game displays your ship’s thruster status, current coordinates, and velocity. It also shows the name of the star that’s closest to you, the class of that star, its radius, its mass, and how many objects are orbiting it. When you land on a star or a celestial body, your spaceship plants a yellow flag on it. Finding every celestial body can be a pleasant way to pass the time, but if you were hoping for a win condition, you won’t find one. The exploration itself is the sole source of entertainment.

If you don’t enjoy manually moving the spaceship but appreciate the game’s aesthetics, you can set it as your screensaver. When set as a screensaver, the ship runs on autopilot, automatically navigating to the nearest celestial body. When it lands on one, it plants a flag, waits a few seconds, and then departs for its next target.

All aspects of the spaceship game I’ve described thus far were present in the Android 15 Easter egg, but Android 16 Beta 3 introduces two changes. For starters, it’s now possible to manually engage the autopilot system while playing the game yourself. Simply tap the new “AUTO” button in the bottom right-hand corner. More importantly, though, the Easter egg now displays a progress-centric notification, which is a key part of the new Live Updates feature in Android 16.

When you start the game and return to the home screen, the Android Easter egg will post a notification detailing the ship’s status. The notification uses Android 16’s new progress-centric notification style, which includes a progress bar displaying the distance to the nearest celestial body.

Unfortunately, the Live Updates feature itself is disabled in Android 16 Beta 3. Normally, the Live Updates feature would allow the Easter egg’s notification to be shown prominently in the notifications panel, always-on display, and in the status bar. However, since the Live Updates feature isn’t enabled at the moment, we don’t know what the Easter egg Live Update notification will actually look like on these surfaces.

Still, it’s cool to see the Easter egg in Android 16 make use of one of the operating system’s new features, as this wasn’t the case for the Easter egg in Android 14 or 15. I’m sure some of you were hoping for an entirely new Easter egg, though, so hopefully Google changes things up in next year’s release.