Joe Maring / Android Authority

Earlier this week, Google rolled out the fifth beta for Android 17 QPR1. While digging into this latest beta, Android Authority learned that the tech giant is working on a long-overdue upgrade for Quick Settings. As we continue investigating Beta 5, we have an update on an in-progress feature we first spotted in Android 17 Beta 3. This update also includes a new folder-related feature.

When Android 17 Beta 3 was released, Android Authority discovered evidence of an “organizer” feature for the home screen on Pixel phones. As a quick recap, this feature will allow you to create, delete, and rearrange home screens. If you decide to create a home screen, your Pixel will offer to automatically populate it with apps and widgets of a certain type. For example, you could create a screen that only contains apps and widgets for social media.

When we first came across this feature, it wasn’t fully functional. The screenshots above are from our initial find, which contains blue dot and pink panel placeholders. However, today’s discovery in Android 17 QPR1 Beta 5 shows that Google has made more progress with this feature.

As you can see in the gallery below, the placeholders are all gone. And with the placeholders gone, we now have a better idea of what the finished product could look like if and when it releases.

Based on our initial findings, it seems like app categories will be pulled from Google Play Store information. So you should see app categories like Most used, Games, Health & Fitness, Productivity, Travel, and Social. But it appears that what categories you see will be based on the apps you have installed. We only saw categories for Social and Productivity because the phone used for this APK teardown only has a small number of apps installed.

Your Pixel phone will also offer different layout options for you to choose from. We were presented with three types of layouts that use different configurations of widgets and apps.

AssembleDebug / Android Authority

In addition to the updates to the organizer, we also spotted a new folder creator feature. This tool allows you to create app folders from different types of app groups. There’s even an option that lets you remove duplicate icons from the home screen if that app is already present in the app group.

⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.