Android Developers Blog

Posted by Shawn Willden, Software Engineer Android's keystore has been available for many years, providing app developers with a way to use cryptographic keys for authentication and encryption. Keystore keeps the key material out of the app's process space, so that the app cannot inadvertently reveal it to the user where it could be phished, leak it through some other channel, or have it compromised in the event of a compromise of the app. Many devices also provide hardware-based security for keystore keys in secure hardware, which keeps the key material out of the Android system entirely, so that the key material cannot be leaked even by a Linux kernel compromise. In the vast majority of Android devices, secure hardware is a special mode of the main CPU, with hardware-enforced isolation from the Linux kernel and Android userspace. Alternatively, some devices use a separate secure microprocessor. Android provides APIs that allow the app to determine whether a given keystore key...

Posted by Kacey Fahey, Developer Marketing, Google Play At the Google Play Indie Games Festival over the weekend, we welcomed hundreds of attendees to try out and enjoy a diverse range of amazing games from the indie community. The competition was very tough, and in the end, we recognized three winners: href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.noodlecake.flippinglegend">Flipping Legend by Hiding Spot href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bluewizard.slayawaycamp&hl=en">Slayaway Camp by Blue Wizard Digital Tiny Bubbles by Pine Street Codeworks (coming soon!) We'd also like to congratulate the rest of the Top 10 developers and all of the finalists who shared their games to make for such a fun and exciting event. Check out the great href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/promotion_30023d4_games_indie_games_festival_2017">collection of games on Google Play. Here are the other seven games th...

Posted by Neto Marin, Developer Advocate In June we announced the href="https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/06/money-made-easily-with-new-google-play.html">developer preview for a new Google Play Billing Library . Today, we are pleased to announce the official release of the Play Billing Library 1.0. This library simplifies the development process for Google Play Billing, allowing you to focus your efforts on your app. Thank you for your valuable feedback and suggestions that helped us reach the 1.0 release. Watch the video below for a quick overview of the library's features. Before you start With Play Billing, you can receive payments from users around the world via a payment system they trust and you can take advantage of features and reports in the Play Console to manage and earn more revenue. If you have never implemented in-app billing in your apps, or you want to know what you can offer using Play Billing Library, read the href="https://developer...

Posted by Dave Smith , Developer Advocate for IoT Android Things lets you build professional, mass-market products on a trusted platform, without previous knowledge of embedded system design. With Android Things you get a turnkey hardware solution and an easy-to-use software development platform based on Android Studio and the Android SDK -- making it easy to build designs that scale to production. Android Things is currently in developer preview and we'd love to see what you can build with href="https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/08/android-things-developer-preview-5.html">our latest release . Today we are announcing a contest with Hackster and NXP for developers to showcase their use of Android Things with other Google developer platforms. Project ideas should be added to href="https://www.hackster.io/Google">Google's Hackster.io Community by including href="https://www.hackster.io/google/products/android-things">Android Thi...

Posted by William Luh, Software Engineer Google Play Protect , which includes the Verify Apps security feature, helps keep users safe from harmful apps. Google Play Protect is available on all Android devices with Google Play installed and provides users with peace of mind and insights into the state of their device security. App developers can get similar security insights into the installed apps landscape on user devices from the SafetyNet href="https://developer.android.com/training/safetynet/verify-apps.html">Verify Apps API . This new suite of APIs lets developers determine whether a user's device is protected by Google Play Protect, encourage users not already using Google Play Protect to enable it, and identify any known href="https://source.android.com/security/reports/Google_Android_Security_PHA_classifications.pdf">potentially harmful apps (PHAs) that are installed on the device. These APIs are especially useful for developers of apps that may b...

Posted by Daraiha Greene, CS Education in Media Program Manager, Multicultural Strategy, and Kate Brennan and Mathilde Cohen Solal, Google Play Today, we are thrilled to announce Infinite Deviation: Games . href="http://infinitedeviation.com">Infinite Deviation is an initiative created by Google Computer Science (CS) in Media and href="http://ideasunited.com/">Ideas United in order to tackle issues of representation by bringing creativity and computer science together in unexpected ways -- ensuring that representations of computer scientists are inclusive of women, people of color, the LGBTQIA+ community, people with disabilities, and other underrepresented groups. Last year, Infinite Deviation produced a series of narrative short films to dispel stereotypes in computer science and is excited to collaborate with Google Play to bring the Infinite Deviation program to gaming. Currently only href="https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.igda.org/resource/resmgr/fi...

Posted by Adriana Puchianu, Google Play Developer Marketing There are increasing growth opportunities for indie game developers, but being one can still feel daunting in today's crowded gaming industry. We've been working hard to help indie developers find an audience and to recognize them for their creativity and innovation. We launched the href="https://play.google.com/store/info/topic?id=topic_b000054_games_indie_corner_tp&hl=en_GB&e=-EnableAppDetailsPageRedesign">Indie Corner as a destination for exciting new games along with longstanding indie masterpieces. Since launch, more than 380 games have been featured. Earlier this year, we launched href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/promotion_30028e5_android_excellence_collection_games">Android Excellence which showcases apps and games that deliver incredible user experiences on Android, while providing another opportunity to be discovered on Google Play. We've also held sev...

Posted by Dan Albert , Android NDK Tech Lead The latest version of the Android Native Development Kit (NDK), Android NDK r16 Beta 1, is now available for download . It is also available in the SDK manager via Android Studio. NDK r16 is a big milestone for us, because it's the first release that we're ready to recommend that people start migrating to libc++! More on this later. We've also updated libc++ and its related projects, so this release has improved support for C++1z. Keep in mind that until C++1z becomes C++17, everything included is subject to change. You can find the release notes for this release here . libc++ and libandroid_support The NDK has a library called libandroid_support that backports libc APIs that libc++ depends on that weren't available on older releases. The reason we've been unable to endorse libc++ (as implemented in the NDK) until now has been a lack of confidence in this library. The focus of r16 was to rewrite this library for improved ...

Posted by Cheryl Lindo Jones, Mobile App Solutions Consultant, Google Play As more Chromebooks are enabled with Google Play, now is a great time to href="https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/05/bring-your-android-app-to-chromebooks.html">optimize your Android app for Chromebooks to reach a larger audience. The changes made to optimize for large screens will benefit mobile devices that are able to project to desktop monitors, like the Samsung Galaxy S8. The href="https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps">current list of Chromebooks that can access the Play Store continues to grow. There are several differences to consider when optimizing your Android app or game for Chromebooks: Larger screen sizes and higher resolutions Multi-window and resizable-window support Different hardware input methods: keyboard, trackpad, mouse, stylus Convertible Chromebooks enabling use in laptop and tablet modes Chromebook users can...

Posted by Kobi Glick, Product Manager, Google Play Every app on Android is signed with a key. This key is used to ensure the app's integrity by checking that updates are signed with the same signature. In the past, the burden of securely holding the signing key has always been with the developer. We're now offering an app signing service on Google Play that can help you if you lose or compromise your key. Until recently, losing your key would make it impossible to update your app with a new version. A compromised key would be a serious issue too: a third-party could maliciously replace an authentic app or corrupt it. Unfortunately in such cases, the only solution was to publish a new app, with a new package name and key, and ask all of your users to install it. App signing in the Play Console allows us to offer help in such circumstances. For existing apps, it requires transferring your app signing key to Google Play. For new apps, we can generate your app signing key. Once enr...

Posted by Alan Ni, Associate Product Manager, Gboard Messaging is getting more and more expressive -- today you can say I love you with an emoji, a gif, or a sticker. Millions of users share expressive content every day on Android devices using Gboard as their default keyboard. We want to push expression even further by allowing developers to create their own stickers for Gboard. Some of our early partners include Bitmoji, Disney, and even our own Allo team. Once published, your stickers could be seen and shared by millions of users around the world. Using the Firebase App Indexing API , you'll be able index any sticker assets you create, publish your app to the Play Store, and get featured in the href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/promotion_30029ba_stickers_apps_gboard?e=-EnableAppDetailsPageRedesign">Gboard Sticker collection . Once a user downloads your sticker pack from the Play store, they'll be able to send those stickers directly from the...

Posted by Adriana Puchianu Based in Berlin, href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.zalando.mobile">Zalando is Europe's leading online fashion platform. With more than 70% of its traffic now coming from mobile, the company has invested a lot in improving the quality of its app to provide a good user experience. Investing in bridging the online and the offline worlds, as well as providing a seamless cross-platform experience, has had positive results on their user engagement and revenue. Using features like A/B testing, the pre-launch report and the new release dashboard from the Google Play Console, Zalando saw a 6% increase in installs and a 15% increase in the users' lifetime value. Watch Rushil Dave, Senior Product Specialist and Meritxell Rivera, Android Developer discuss how the company has improved user experience and key revenue and engagement metrics by investing in app quality for their href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?i...