Google announced a lot of new goodies at its I/O keynote today, but perhaps one of the most interesting reveals was the one it saved for last.
Android Instant Apps is a new feature that Google is currently working on that’ll enable you to run Android apps without actually installing them. With just one tap, Android will download only the bits of an app that you need from Google Play. You can then exit out of that app, continue to click around inside of it, or install the entire thing from Google Play right there.
In its demo of Android Instant Apps, Google showed a user receiving a link to a BuzzFeed video. Upon tapping the link, Android downloaded just that one bit of content from the Tasty native Android app and showed the relevant video. Another demo showed the user viewing an item from the B&H Photo Video app, adding that item to a cart, and paying for it, all without actually downloading the app.
Android Instant Apps will officially launch later this year, and the good news is that Google says that the feature is backward compatible all the way back to devices running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.