Android Developers Blog

Posted by Purnima Kochikar, Director, Apps and Games Business Development, Google Play This year's Google Play Awards will take place on Monday, May 7th, kicking off the week of Google I/O. Celebrating our third year, we're excited to highlight nine categories; some you may recognize from previous years, along with new additions highlighting growth areas and trends we're focused on, such as building for emerging markets. Each year, the Google Play Awards recognize top apps and games on Google Play. They represent some of the best experiences available on Android, with an emphasis on overall quality, strong design, technical performance, and innovation. The nominees were selected by various teams across Google, and all meet criteria thresholds covering high star rating, Android vitals, and have had a launch or major update since April 2017. Congratulations to this year's nominees below and don't forget to check them out on the Google Play store at g.co/play/gpa2...

Posted by Nate Fischer, Software Engineer Since 2007, Google Safe Browsing has been protecting users across the web from phishing and malware attacks. It protects over three billion devices from an increasing number of threats, now also including unwanted software across desktop and mobile platforms. Today, we're announcing that Google Play Protect is bringing Safe Browsing to WebView by default, starting in April 2018 with the release of WebView 66. Developers of Android apps using WebView no longer have to make any changes to benefit from this protection. Safe Browsing in WebView has been available since Android 8.0 (API level 26), using the same underlying technology as Chrome on Android . When Safe Browsing is triggered, the app will present a warning and receive a network error. Apps built for API level 27 and above can customize this behavior with new APIs for Safe Browsing . An example of a warning shown when Safe Browsing detects a dangerous site. The style and content of ...

Posted by Dave Smith , Developer Advocate for IoT Earlier this year at CES, we showcased consumer products powered by Android Things from partners like Lenovo, LG, JBL, iHome, and Sony. We are excited to see Android Things enable the wider developer ecosystem as well. Today we are announcing the final preview release of Android Things, Developer Preview 8, before the upcoming stable release. Feature complete SDK Developer Preview 8 represents the final API surface exposed in the Android Things support library for the upcoming stable release. There will be no more breaking API changes before the stable v1.0 release of the SDK. For details on all the API changes included in DP8, see the release notes . Refer to the updated SDK reference to review the classes and methods in the final SDK. This release also brings new features in the Android Things developer console to make building and managing production devices easier. Here are some notable updates: Production-focused console enhancem...

Posted by Erik Kline, Android software engineer, and Ben Schwartz, Jigsaw software engineer The first step of almost every connection on the internet is a DNS query. A client, such as a smartphone, typically uses a DNS server provided by the Wi-Fi or cellular network. The client asks this DNS server to convert a domain name, like www.google.com , into an IP address, like 2607:f8b0:4006:80e::2004 . Once the client has the IP address, it can connect to its intended destination. When the DNS protocol was designed in the 1980s, the internet was a much smaller, simpler place. For the past few years, the Internet Engineering Task Force ( IETF ) has worked to define a new DNS protocol that provides users with the latest protections for security and privacy. The protocol is called "DNS over TLS" (standardized as RFC 7858 ). Like HTTPS, DNS over TLS uses the TLS protocol to establish a secure channel to the server. Once the secure channel is established, DNS queries and responses ca...

Originally posted by Jen Person on the Firebase Blog . In 2016, we unveiled Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) as the next evolution of Google Cloud Messaging (GCM). Since then, we've been working hard to make Firebase Cloud Messaging even more powerful than its predecessor. Like GCM, Firebase Cloud Messaging allows you to send notifications and data messages reliably to iOS, Android, and the Web at no cost. In addition, FCM includes a host of new features, such as an intuitive notifications interface in the Firebase console, better reporting, and native integrations with other Firebase products. With FCM, you can target and test notifications to re-engage your users with greater ease and efficiency. We're excited to devote more time and attention to improving FCM. That's why today we're announcing that all developers will need to upgrade to FCM within a year. The GCM server and client APIs have been deprecated and will be removed as soon as April 11th, 2019. We recommend ...

Posted by Chad Brubaker, Senior Software Engineer Android Security Android is committed to keeping users, their devices, and their data safe. One of the ways that we keep data safe is by protecting all data that enters or leaves an Android device with Transport Layer Security (TLS) in transit. As we announced in our Android P developer preview, we're further improving these protections by preventing apps that target Android P from allowing unencrypted connections by default. This follows a variety of changes we've made over the years to better protect Android users.To prevent accidental unencrypted connections, we introduced the android:usesCleartextTraffic manifest attribute in Android Marshmallow. In Android Nougat, we extended that attribute by creating the Network Security Config feature, which allows apps to indicate that they do not intend to send network traffic without encryption. In Android Nougat and Oreo, we still allowed cleartext connections. How do I update my ...

Posted by Jeffrey van Gogh, Software Engineering Manager D8 now default dex compiler Faster, smarter app compilation is always a goal for the Android tools teams. That's why we previously announced D8 , a next-generation dex compiler. D8 runs faster and produces smaller .dex files with equivalent or better runtime performance when compared to the historic compiler - DX. We recently announced that D8 has become the default compiler in Android Studio 3.1. If you haven't previously tried D8, we hope that you notice better, faster dex compilation as you make the switch. D8 was first shipped in Android Studio 3.0 as an opt-in feature. In addition to our own rigorous testing, we've now seen it perform well in a wide variety of apps. As a result, we're confident that D8 will work well for everyone who starts using it in 3.1. However, if you do have issues, you can always revert to DX for now via this setting in your project's gradle.properties file: android.enableD8=f...

Kacey Fahey, Developer Marketing, Google Play Congratulations to the latest apps and games featured in the Android Excellence program on Google Play. As a reminder, these collections are refreshed every three months and recognize apps and games that set the bar for high quality, great user experience, and strong technical performance. If you're looking for some new apps, here are a few highlights. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC : Capture, edit, and share your photos with the power of Lightroom on your mobile device. Use presets for quick and easy edits, or dive in with the advanced editing tools. Seven - 7 Minute Workout Training Challenge : Use this app to fit seven minute workouts into your busy lifestyle. Grab your phone, or even your Wear OS device to work out anywhere and anytime. Keep it up to earn achievements and join the 7 Club for even more support. SoloLearn: Learn to Code for Free : Learn one of many new coding languages by joining a community of millions. Tap in to the...