Android Marshmallow
Android Marshmallow (codenamed Android M during development) is the sixth major version of the Android operating system developed by Google, being the successor to Android Lollipop. It was announced at Google I/O on May 28, 2015, and released the same day as a beta, before being officially released on September 29, 2015. It was succeeded by Android Nougat on August 22, 2016.
| Version of the Android operating system | |
| Developer | |
|---|---|
| General availability | September 29, 2015 |
| Final release | 6.0.1_r81 (MOI10E) / October 1, 2017 |
| Kernel type | Monolithic (Linux) |
| Preceded by | Android 5.1.1 "Lollipop" |
| Succeeded by | Android 7.0 "Nougat" |
| Official website | www |
| Support status | |
| Unsupported since August 2018 | |
Android Marshmallow primarily focuses on improving the overall user experience of its predecessor. It introduced a new opt-in permissions architecture, new APIs for contextual assistants (first used by a new feature "Now on Tap" to provide context-sensitive search results), a new power management system that reduces background activity when a device is not being physically handled, native support for fingerprint recognition and USB-C connectors, the ability to migrate data and applications to a microSD card, and other internal changes.
Android Marshmallow was met by low adoption numbers, with 13.3% of Android devices running Marshmallow by July 2016. Usage of Marshmallow steadily increased since then, and by August 2017, 35.21% of Android devices ran Marshmallow, before receding. As of November 2023, 1.4% of Android devices ran Marshmallow. Security updates for Marshmallow ended in October 2017.