Everything new in the December Android 16 update: Emoji kitchen, AI notifications, parental controls

Google launched Android 16 back in June, and with it came a ton of features and updates. Usually, that’s all Google does until the next version, which is expected to be released in beta sometime in January or February 2026. That isn’t the case this time, as Google just announced several new features coming to Android 16 as a sort of mid-cycle refresh for the OS. As per the norm these days, a sizable percentage of the new features will be powered by AI and leverage Gemini's abili