You might recall the massive failure that was Facebook Home, but one part of that disaster became an integral part of the Messenger app: chat heads. In Android Q Beta 2, Google has unveiled a framework to make chat head-like functionality part of Android. It could be more than that eventually, but it doesn't appear to do much of anything right now.

The idea is that apps can use Bubbles to create floating icons that pull up notification content on top of whatever you're doing. This feature was hiding in the last Q beta, but experimenting with the unannounced Bubbles was an exercise in frustration. This just isn't a good way to manage all of your notifications. There's a toggle in Beta 2 to enable this feature, but no apps are using it yet—not even Hangouts and Messages, which were featured in the blog post screenshot.

In Google's Beta 2 blog post, it said that Bubbles are built atop the Android notification system. That should make them easy to implement, but it also limits the functionality somewhat. It did suggest that notes and other app functionality would work with Bubbles. This could just become a new way to reply to messages or maybe developers will do something truly interesting. It's hard to know which way it'll go.