Google is following through on a promise it made when it unveiled Android Q. As of the newly launched beta, apps running in the background can no longer launch activities. Google has a good reason for doing this, but it's sure to upset the users of automation apps like Tasker.

The goal of this change is to keep apps from unexpectedly jumping into the foreground at the behest of some background service. That's usually a good thing. However, sometimes you might be running a background service specifically to launch activities. That's not going to work so well in beta 3.

According to Google, there are some exceptions to the background activity rules. They can still launch activities with user interaction. For example, tapping on a notification. Additionally, users can disable this feature in developer options by turning on "Allow background activity starts." This is still a beta, so it's unclear how the restriction will take shape for the final release.