Developer options tend to stay the same across Android iterations, essentially debugging and workarounds for, well, developers. Android 17, though, has added a couple of new options in there, one of which seems pretty useful.

Android 17 handed Pixel owners a real audio upgrade

The codec that finally gives Sony’s LDAC some competition

If you wanted high-resolution audio via Bluetooth on your Pixel in the past, you had to find headphones or earbuds that worked with Sony’s LDAC codec, as it was the only high bitrate codec Pixel phones worked with. If you had a pair built around a different standard, you’d have to settle for AAC or SBC instead.

Now, though, Android 17 supports Low Latency High-Definition Audio Codec, or LHDC, which can support up to around 1Mbps and can carry 24-bit audio at 96LkHz, which brings it up to the LDAC specs. Pixels relied heavily on LDAC for high-bitrate audio before this update, leaving anyone without LDAC gear stuck on lower-quality AAC or SBC by default. AAC tops out around 256 kbps, and while SBC can technically run a little higher, its compression is far less efficient, so it sounds noticeably worse than AAC at a similar bitrate, and both fall well short of what LHDC v5 or LDAC can carry.

Of course, it won’t matter too much if you’re not doing a lot of lossless streaming or using a higher-end set of earbuds or headphones. Codec choice is only one variable, and no setting change will make low-resolution compressed streams sound better alone.

Google hid this toggle away in Developer options, so to find it, you have to unlock Developer options, then go to Settings > System > Developer options, scroll down to the Bluetooth section, and open Bluetooth Audo Codec. It will be grayed out unless you have a compatible headset connected.

And that’s tricky, too, because there’s only a limited number of headsets that support this codec. Even Google’s own Pixel Buds don’t support LHDC v5. Savitech, the codec’s developer, maintains a running list of every supported device, and there only a few well-known earbuds on there, like Motorola and Nothing. On the headset list, I only really recognize Seinnheiser.

Personally, I don’t own any of those headphones or earbuds, so I can’t verify the difference in sound quality myself, so your mileage may vary.

The fine print on high-res audio

There are a few other things to be aware of when you go looking to upgrade your audio fidelity in this way. Your source material also has to be high-resolution to make any use of LDHC v5’s extra bandwidth. Tidal’s HiRes FLAC and Apple Music’s Hi-Res Lossless both go up to 24-bit/192kHz, so they’ll fill up that pipe. Spotify’s lossless tier only gets up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz, so it won’t be able to take full advantage of the wider codec. Your earbuds or headphones also have to cooperate. Companion apps (think HeyMelody for OnePlus Buds and Nothing X for Nothing Ear 2 buds) can often cap the sample rate by default to save battery, so you might need to dig into those apps’ settings separately to enable their own hi-res mode.

Plus, streaming nearly 1Mbps via Bluetooth isn’t cost-free. You’ll get a bigger hit to your battery, and in crowded spaces, the connection can drop down to standard definition audio with network congestion to preserve stability. And, honestly, if you just listen to podcasts on your commute, then AAC is just fine.

Android 17 tightens the rules on an older toggle

The Boot with 16 KB page size option itself isn’t new. It’s been sitting in Developer Options on your Pixel 9 since Android 15 QPR2, part of Google’s broader push to move devices from the traditional 4 KB memory page size to 16 KB, which can improve app launch speed and overall efficiency on supported hardware. What Android 17 actually changes is stricter, adding a command that forces any app not built for 16 KB pages to abort immediately, rather than silently falling back to a compatibility mode that papers over the mismatch.

That’s a developer-facing enforcement flag, run from a command line, and not something you’ll find as a toggle in the menu itself. It only matters if you’re a developer checking whether your own app survives the transition cleanly. For everyone else, the practical bits haven’t changed: flipping the page-size toggle can require wiping your device if your storage partitions aren’t already formatted for it, and it’s not something to test just to see what happens.

Worth a look, even if the second change isn’t for you

The Bluetooth codec change alone makes this worth a five-minute detour into a menu most people never open. Google buried a solid fidelity upgrade behind Developer options, something many folks don’t enable. The 16 KB backcompat change is good for developers to know about, but not something any of us rank and file will flip on our own.

MOst of the rest of what’s changed in Android 17 has nothing to do with Developer Options at all. Desktop mode, which used to live behind a set of hidden toggles on Pixel phones, is one of several features that moved out into the regular Settings app well before this release. What’s left in the hidden menu now skews more niche than it used to, closer to the background process tweaks that speed up an aging phone than to anything flashy.

If you’re running Android 17 on a Tensor-powered Pixel (and you have compatible headphones or earbuds), this is one hidden setting actually worth checking out.