Worst to best: The best Android Easter eggs, ranked TechTricks365

Google has a tradition of hiding a little surprise inside each Android OS generation. It can be a quirky mini-game, an odd animation, or just something delightfully weird. These Android Easter eggs aren’t announced or advertised, but if you know where to tap, you’re rewarded with a glimpse into the Google dev team’s more playful side. We decided to go back through the vault and rank them all from worst to best.

We’re just rating the eggs here — it isn’t a guide on how to discover or use them. You can find the full list with all of those instructions in our comprehensive guide to the Android Easter eggs. However, they all start by going to Settings > About phone > Software information and then tapping on the Android version repeatedly.

There are 16 Easter eggs in total, but we’ve combined a few of them on our list for reasons that will become clear. You might well disagree with our rankings, but there’s no one way to measure them against each other. We certainly took originality into account, and our expectations were higher as the generations went on, but we’re mainly looking at how engaging they are.

The honeybee-Bugdroid image might be a good nod to the Android version, and it did appear over your wallpaper, but that’s about all it had going for it. The second-ever Easter egg wasn’t very inspiring and wouldn’t hold your attention for more than 10 seconds.

It was technically the first interactive Android Easter egg, as tapping the bee shows “REZZZZZZZ…” below it. If this doesn’t mean much to you, don’t worry — it’s a reference to the Tron: Legacy movie that was fairly big at the time. Making it specific to the zeitgeist means that the Android Honeybee itself leaves very little legacy.

There was a nice, colorful opening part to the Easter egg, and the inclusion of a widget to find was a unique twist in the series, but that widget was disappointing when you found it. Our rankings include the context of where each Easter egg falls in the evolution of these gems, and we’d had all manner of interesting surprises by the time Android 12 rolled around. By comparison, this one was a damp squib.

This one was just a still image, and an odd one at that, but at least a bit of work has gone into this entry. More importantly, it was the first-ever Android Easter egg, which must have made it extra exciting to discover. Besides, it’s a mildly interesting picture in terms of surprise value, with a closer inspection of the zombies in the background revealing that they’re all using cell phones.

Like a lot of the early Easter eggs, the third evolution had a bit of novelty value. It was the first multi-stage Easter egg, and the flying Bugdroids dressed in the ice cream treats had a retro pixelated aesthetic. It was fun back then, but the Nyan Cat meme on which it was based is another thing that hasn’t stood the test of time, and your attention was unlikely to be captured for long by this one.

This two-step egg offered a modicum of entertainment, but the two parts are completely unrelated. Dragging the octopus around is fun for 20 seconds, and you could perhaps make the case that it offered more interactivity than the likes of DessertCase (see right below). However, given the standards that had been set in different ways by its various predecessors, this one was a bit of a letdown at the time. Also, why is it so creepy?

It might have been Android’s first three-stage Easter egg, but that only makes the relative lack of interactive features all the more frustrating. You can spin the K a couple of times on the first screen and help the colorful tiles fly around for about 30 seconds, but it’s nowhere near as engaging as BeanBag from the previous generation. If the tiles were some sort of puzzle to arrange, it might have ranked closer to the business end of our rundown.

Some would see this later addition in the series as a bit of a step back, given that there’s no mini-game or much to interact with. However, as far as the ‘simple’ Easter eggs go, it’s one of my favorites. The initial clock part copies Android 12, but the subsequent emoji bubbles are very pleasing to the eye. It’s also fun jumping between the different sets of bubbles, even if you quickly realize there are only a handful in the randomized reel.

This is a tough one to place for a couple of reasons. The first part with the color-changing Pie logo is a bit of fun, but the subsequent paint canvas might divide opinion. It’s certainly different from the other iterations, but it doesn’t really have easter egg vibes, and it feels like inspiration was lacking at the time. That said, it can keep you amused for longer than many of the others in the series, especially if you have an artistic bent.

A few Android Easter eggs are throwbacks to previous successes, and Neko Controls revived the cat collection game from four generations prior. The first iteration was very original, as it was the first egg that went beyond the confines of a single app or screen and had you hunting through your system settings in an attempt to entice digital felines.

The second version is marginally more interesting, and the Spinal Tap reference to the OS number in the Android 11 version is a nice touch. The type of people who used to have a Tamagotchi might find rounding up the pets good fun, but those hoping for a proper mini-game might see these ones as a bit tedious with too much waiting around and limited payoff.

BeanBag was the first Android Easter Egg that was genuinely engaging for more than 30 seconds. The graphics were nice, and tossing the beans across the screen was oddly addictive, even if there’s no goal to it — I was trying to hit my selfie cam cutout. One could argue that this is the purest form of what an easter egg should be, looking great and pleasing to play with while not trying to be anything more than that.

It wasn’t an original concept, but copying an insanely popular mobile game of the prior years wasn’t the worst idea. As simple as Flappy Bird and its Android Easter eggs clones are, they could still have an addictive effect on people playing them 20 years from now.

The Android 5 and 6 spinoffs are monstrously difficult. Each jump is proportionate to your tap duration, and anything other than a feather touch prevents you from squeezing through each lollipop or marshmallow gate. I’m not too dextrous, and my record was five lollypop gates after 15 minutes of getting reacquainted with it. Given the focus required to get through each gate, adding a multiplayer element in the second version was way too impractical to keep a group entertained for long.

It’s hard to argue that the Android 14 entry isn’t the best mini-game of the lot in terms of build — nicely combining a retro feel with a pleasing bit of physics in the gravitational pull of the celestial bodies. However, that doesn’t make it an un-put-down-able game, and it’s almost a little too complex to be an Easter egg. You’d really need some time to get into it and properly explore the universe, at which point, you might as well just explore the free games on the Play Store.

Still, it didn’t disappoint, so much so that Google decided to reuse it for Android 15 with just a tweak or two, and it’s even set to make an unprecedented third appearance in Android 16.

This is my favorite for a few reasons. The first is that it starts off like a normal easter egg, and you’d have to either be a keen thinker or play around for a while to work out how to unlock the mini-game. The second is that the nonogram is quite a fun game once you learn the basics of how to play. There are also a ton of nonograms, whereas Google could have easily decided that just one was sufficient for an easter egg.

Maybe it’s because I like a good puzzle, but the combination of the typical first part of the easter egg that rivals the opening of all others, plus the collection of nonograms, makes this a winner for me. It isn’t a perfect science, but if I had to take a flight with only one of the easter eggs for entertainment, this is the one I’d pick.

I’m sure you have your own view of which are the best Android Easter eggs. Feel free to let us know in the comments.