Android Developers Blog

Posted by Paul Bankhead, Director, Product Management, Google Play Every day, millions of people come to the Play Store to discover the best apps and games. As part of our continued effort to deliver great experiences to our users, we regularly update the Play Store to help people find and discover safe, high quality, and relevant apps and games. Over the last year , we've been enhancing our search and discovery algorithms' consideration of app quality and user engagement . This means that apps and games that have high retention rates, low crash rates, low uninstalls, and many other factors, are recommended more often. Recently, we increased the importance of engagement and app quality in our recommendation systems and users reacted favorably to the changes. With more high quality titles being surfaced in the Play Store's recommendations, people are playing the games they download more often. We believe that providing great experiences for our users on Google Play will enco...

Posted by Nicole Borrelli, Android Developer, Programs Engineer Screenshot of UAMP v2's UI showing a pair of albums"/> The Universal Android Music Player (or "UAMP") is a favorite on GitHub for music app developers with over 9,500 stars and 3,000 forks. Since UAMP was first released, Android development has changed significantly. ExoPlayer has improved, Architecture Components were introduced, and Kotlin became a first-class language for Android developers. We decided that the best way to integrate the modern features for our beloved music app would be to re-write UAMP. UAMP v2 was built from the ground up in Kotlin. The UI is built around ViewModels and LiveData. Playback, and particularly integration with MediaSessionCompat, was vastly simplified by utilizing the MediaSession extension of ExoPlayer. We also added a bunch of new songs by The Kyoto Connection and Kai Engel . There are some features from UAMP v1 that haven't been integrated into the new code...

Posted by Nicholas Lativy, Software Engineer At Google I/O we shared how Google's own apps make use of Google Play for successful launches and updates and introduced the new Google Play Developer Publishing API Version 3. The Publishing API enables you to integrate publishing operations into your existing release process or automated workflows by providing the ability to upload APKs and roll out releases. Here's an overview of some of the improvements you can now take advantage of in Version 3 of the API. Releases in the API The Publishing API now uses the release model you are familiar with from the Play Console. { "track": "production", "releases": [ { "name": "Release One", "versionCodes": ["100"], "status": "completed" } ] } This gives you full control over releases via the API allowing a number of operations which were previously available only in the...

Posted by Ivan Lozano, Information Security Engineer Android's switch to LLVM/Clang as the default platform compiler in Android 7.0 opened up more possibilities for improving our defense-in-depth security posture. In the past couple of releases, we've rolled out additional compiler-based mitigations to make bugs harder to exploit and prevent certain types of bugs from becoming vulnerabilities. In Android P, we're expanding our existing compiler mitigations, which instrument runtime operations to fail safely when undefined behavior occurs. This post describes the new build system support for Control Flow Integrity and Integer Overflow Sanitization. Control Flow Integrity A key step in modern exploit chains is for an attacker to gain control of a program's control flow by corrupting function pointers or return addresses. This opens the door to code-reuse attacks where an attacker executes arbitrary portions of existing program code to achieve their goals, such as counterf...

Posted by Anuj Gulati, Developer Marketing Manager, Google Play and Sami Kizilbash, Developer Relations Program Manager, Google Emerging markets now account for more than 40% of game installs on Google Play. Rapid smartphone adoption in these regions presents a new base of engaged gamers that are looking for high quality mobile gaming experiences. At Google Play, we are focused on helping local game developers from these markets achieve their full potential and make the most of this opportunity. Indie Games Accelerator is a new initiative to support top indie game startups from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam who are looking to supercharge their growth on Android. This four month program is a special edition of Launchpad Accelerator , designed in close collaboration with Google Play, featuring a comprehensive gaming curriculum and mentorship from top mobile gaming experts. Successful participants will be invited to attend two all-exp...

Posted by Jamal Eason , Product Manager, Android Starting today, you can download Android Studio 3.2 Beta. Previewed at Google I/O 2018, the latest release of the official Android IDE is focused on helping onboard you to all the new features launched around Google I/O -- Android JetPack , Android P Developer Preview , and the new Android App Bundle format. There are also several other exciting new features included in Android Studio 3.2 to accelerate your app development, such as Emulator Snapshots and the Energy Profiler. As the usage of Android Studio has grown in the 3.5 years since version 1.0, we have also become increasingly obsessed with quality. We continue to invest in quality because we know that millions of app developers spend almost everyday in Android Studio and need a reliable set of tools. Stability, build times, and other quality work will be the primary focus for our next release once we finish Android Studio 3.2. We also did not want to wait, so we have made check...

Posted by Wayne Piekarski, Developer Advocate for IoT +WaynePiekarski @WaynePiekarski We're releasing a client library to make it easy to use Google Cloud IoT Core from Android Things devices. With just a few lines of code, you can easily connect to the IoT Core MQTT bridge, authenticate the device, publish device telemetry and state, subscribe to configuration changes, and handle errors and network outages. What is Cloud IoT Core? Cloud IoT Core is a fully managed service on Google Cloud Platform that allows you to easily and securely connect, manage, and ingest data from millions of globally dispersed devices. Cloud IoT Core, in combination with other services which make up Google's Cloud IoT platform, provides a complete solution for collecting, processing, analyzing, and visualizing IoT data in real time, to support improved operational efficiency, compliance, or revenue management. Android Things is designed to support everything from collecting telemetry data to powerf...

Posted by Vishwath Mohan, Security Engineer To keep users safe, most apps and devices have an authentication mechanism, or a way to prove that you're you. These mechanisms fall into three categories: knowledge factors, possession factors, and biometric factors. Knowledge factors ask for something you know (like a PIN or a password), possession factors ask for something you have (like a token generator or security key), and biometric factors ask for something you are (like your fingerprint, iris, or face). Biometric authentication mechanisms are becoming increasingly popular, and it's easy to see why. They're faster than typing a password, easier than carrying around a separate security key, and they prevent one of the most common pitfalls of knowledge-factor based authentication—the risk of shoulder surfing . As more devices incorporate biometric authentication to safeguard people's private information, we're improving biometrics-based authentication in Android ...

Posted by Larry Yang and Angela Ying, Product Managers, Google Play Subscriptions on Google Play continue to see huge growth , with subscribers growing over 80% year over year. At I/O 2018 , we announced several improvements we're making to the user experience to reduce barriers to subscription sign-up, and more tools to let you manage your business the way you want to. More control for subscribers While users derive a lot of value from their subscriptions, our research shows their fears of being "trapped" in a subscription without the ability to cancel or worry they'll lose track of how much they're spending create a hindrance to users signing up for your subscription apps. To address these fears, we recently launched a new subscriptions center , a one-stop shop for users to manage their subscriptions on Google Play. Through the subscriptions center, users can: View all of their subscriptions to see details and status Manage and update payment methods, including ...

Posted by James Bender, Product Manager, Google Play In December last year we announced that we would be making updates to app security to help verify product authenticity from Google Play. We are now adding a small amount of security metadata on top of APKs to verify that the APK was distributed by Google Play. One of the reasons we're doing this is to help developers reach a wider audience, particularly in countries where peer-to-peer app sharing is common because of costly data plans and limited connectivity. In the future, for apps obtained through Play-approved distribution channels, we'll be able to determine app authenticity while a device is offline, add those shared apps to a user's Play Library, and manage app updates when the device comes back online. This will give people more confidence when using Play-approved peer-to-peer sharing apps. This also benefits you as a developer as it provides a Play-authorized offline distribution channel and, since the peer-to-p...

Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Developer Marketing, Platforms & Ecosystems The Android developer ecosystem is made up of exceptional individuals with different backgrounds, interests, and dreams. To celebrate the people who make up our community, starting today, and over the coming months, we'll be meeting with developers, founders, product managers, designers, and others from around the world to hear more about their passions and discover what they do when they step away from their computers. Watch stories featuring adventurer Niek Bokkers from Polarsteps (Netherlands), artist Faith Ringgold from Quiltuduko (USA) and chair restorer Hans Jørgen Wiberg from Be My Eyes (Denmark). You can also read more about them and their apps on g.co/play/imakeapps . Share your story We'd love to hear from you too. Use the hashtag #IMakeApps on your social channels, sharing the app or game you work on, your role in its creation, and an image that best depicts who you are outs...

Posted by David Brazdil and Nicolas Geoffray, Software Engineers In Android, we care immensely about providing the best experience to our users and our developers. With each OS release, new features enable you to provide amazing experiences for users; however, we noticed that some app developers have been using non-SDK interfaces, which leads to increased crashes for users and emergency rollouts for developers. We want to do better and need your help to ensure that Android is stable with each new OS. Three months ago, we announced our plans to start restricting the usage of non-SDK interfaces in Android P . We know these restrictions can impact your release workflow, and we want to make sure you have the tools to detect usage of non-SDK interfaces, as well as time in your planning for adjusting to the new policies and for giving us feedback. In the Developer Preview and Beta 1, we have provided ways for you to see the impact of these restrictions on your app. In the Developer Preview ,...

Posted by Hoi Lam , Lead Developer Advocate, Wear OS by Google From the outset of the Wear OS by Google developer preview, battery life has been a major focus area. When we talked to the developer community, the update that attracted the most feedback was the disabling of alarms and jobs for background apps. After listening to developer feedback and reviewing the battery statistics, we are reversing this change. This should be reflected in all connected Wear OS preview devices, so there is no need to reflash your device. App Standby Buckets The decision came as we reviewed the feedback and saw that a strict on/off setting prevents reasonable usage and promotes anti-patterns. Going forward, we plan to leverage the App Standby Buckets feature in Android P to fine-tune a suitable setting for Wear OS devices. The exact setting for alarms and jobs for background apps is still being iterated on. Developers are advised to follow the best practices to make sure their apps behave well, whichev...

Posted By Dave Burke, VP of Engineering Four weeks ago at Google I/O we released the first beta version of Android P , putting AI at the core of the operating system and focusing on intelligent and simple experiences. We talked about some of Android's newest features in the keynotes and went deep on the developer APIs during the breakouts. If you missed the livestream, make sure to check out the full playlist of Android talks . Today we're releasing Android P Beta 2, an update that includes the final Android P APIs , the latest system images, and updated developer tools to help you get ready for the consumer release coming later in the summer. You can get Android P Beta 2 on Pixel devices by enrolling here . If you're already enrolled and received the Android P Beta 1 on your Pixel device, you'll automatically get the update to Beta 2. Partners that are participating in the Android P Beta program will be updating their devices over the coming weeks. Enhance your app wi...