Android Developers Blog

Posted By Megan Potoski, Product Manager, Android System UI Smartphones are quickly moving towards smaller bezels and larger aspect ratios. On these devices, display cutouts are a popular way to achieve an edge-to-edge experience while providing space for important sensors on the front of the device. There are currently 16 cutout devices from 11 OEMs already released, including several Android P beta devices , with more on the way. These striking displays present a great opportunity for you to showcase your app. They also mean it's more important than ever to make sure your app provides a consistently great experience across devices with one or two display cutouts, as well as devices with 18:9 and larger aspect ratios. Examples of cutout devices: Essential PH-1 (left) and Huawei P20 (right). Make your app compatible with display cutouts With many popular and upcoming devices featuring display cutouts, what can you do to make sure your app is cutout-ready? The good news is, for the ...

Posted by Aurimas Liutikas, software engineer on AndroidX team AndroidX (previously known as Android Support Library) started out as a small set of libraries intended to provide backwards compatibility for new Android platform APIs and, as such, its development was strictly tied to the platform. As a result, all work was done in internal Google branches and then pushed to the public Android Open Source Project ( AOSP ) together with the platform push. With this flow, external contributions were limited to a narrow window of time where the internal and AOSP branches were close in content. On top of that, it was difficult to contribute -- in order to do a full AndroidX build and testing, external developers had to check out >40GB of the full Android platform code. Today, the scope of AndroidX has expanded dramatically and includes libraries such as AppCompat for easier UI development, Room for database management, and WorkManager for background work. Many of these libraries implement ...

Posted By Dave Burke, VP of Engineering Android P is almost here! As we put the finishing touches on the new platform, today we're bringing you Android P Beta 4. Beta 4 is the last preview milestone before we launch the official Android P platform later this summer. Take this opportunity to test your apps and publish updates, to make sure you offer a great experience for users transitioning to Android P! What's in this update? Today's Beta 4 update includes a release candidate build with final system behaviors and the official Android P APIs (API level 28), available since Beta 2 . It includes everything you need to wrap up your testing in time for the upcoming official Android P release. Get your apps ready for Android P With the consumer launch coming soon, it's important to test your app for compatibility with Android P. Just install your current app from Google Play on an Android P Beta device or emulator . As you work through the flows, make sure your app runs an...

Posted by Tom Greenaway, Senior Partner Developer Advocate Last year we announced that starting from August 2018 Google Play will require all new apps and games to target a recent Android API level – set to API level 26 (Android 8.0 Oreo), or higher. Additionally, this requirement will extend to updates for existing apps and games starting from November 2018. Every new Android version introduces changes that bring significant security and performance improvements – and enhance the user experience of Android overall. Updating your games to target the latest API level ensures that your users can benefit from these improvements, while still allowing your games to run on older Android versions. Simple next steps: Install the Android 8.0 Oreo SDK (API level 26) via Android Studio by navigating to (Tools > Android > SDK Manager > Android SDK > SDK Platforms). Update your game to target API level 26 and see whether your game has any incompatibilities or issues as soon as p...

Posted by Neto Marin - Actions on Google Developer Advocate There are millions of apps in the Android ecosystem, so helping yours get discovered can require some investment. Your app needs to offer something that differentiates it from other similar apps to stand out to users. Building a companion Action is a fast and simple way to increase your Android app's potential reach by creating a new entrypoint from devices covered by the Google Assistant. This lets you bring your services to users without needing to install anything through voice, and can bring people into your app when it can provide more value. Your companion Action complements your Android app's experience by offering some of your services through the Google Assistant, which is available on more than 500 million devices including speakers, phones, cars, headphones, and more. Creating an Action provides a frictionless way for users to start engaging with your services wherever the Google Assistant is available. Crea...

Posted by Jamal Eason , Product Manager, Android Since the major revamp of the Android Emulator two years ago, we have focused on delivering a fast and feature-rich emulator to help you build great app experiences for users. Today, the Android Emulator is the top device deployed to from Android Studio — more than 2x over physical Android devices. We are humbled to hear from many of you that the Android Emulator has come a long way, but we are not done yet. Making the Android Emulator faster is one of the top priorities for the Android Studio team. Over the last few releases, we have launched quick boot & emulator snapshots for quickly starting and resuming emulator sessions in under 2 seconds. Up until now, our emulator experience has almost universally worked on macOS ® and Linux computers. But for users of Microsoft ® Windows ® or the Microsoft ® Hyper-V ™ platform, our hardware accelerated speed enhancements for the Android Emulator only worked with computers with Inte...

Posted by Florina Muntenescu , Developer Advocate & Siyamed Sinir Android Text Technical Lead In " What's new in Android P Beta " we mentioned two of the new text features in Android.. Now that Android P Beta 2 and the final APIs are here, it's time to dive deeper into what's new for text. We know that TextView is one of the most critical components of the Android view system. This is why we continue to invest in both developer- and user-facing features and API improvements. PrecomputedText Displaying text can be complex, encompassing features like multiple fonts, line spacing, letter spacing, text direction, line breaking, hyphenation and more. TextView has to do a lot of work to measure and lay out the given text: reading the font file, finding a glyph, decide the shape, measure the bounding box, and caching the word in an internal word cache. What's more, all of this work takes place on the UI thread, where it could potentially cause your app to drop...

Posted by Kacey Fahey, Developer Marketing, Google Play Join us in congratulating the latest apps and games entering the Android Excellence program on Google Play. This diverse group of apps and games is recognized for their high quality, great user experience, and strong technical performance. Whether you're interested in learning meditation or a new language, or are looking for a game about butterflies or warships, we're excited to dive in to these new collections. Check out a few of our highlighted apps. Beelinguapp : Learn a new language with this unique app. Read and listen to stories with side by side text of the language you're learning, while following along with your language as a reference. Fortune City : If you're looking for a fun app to help manage your personal finances, learn how Fortune City teaches good budgeting habits as you build a prospering metropolis. ShareTheMeal : Feed a child in need with one tap on your phone, or create a team to fight hunge...

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering Today we're rolling out Beta 3 of Android P, our next milestone in this year's Android P developer preview. With the developer APIs already finalized in the previous update , Beta 3 now takes us very close to what you'll see in the final version of Android P, due later this summer. Android P Beta 3 includes the latest bug fixes and optimizations for stability and polish, together with the July 2018 security updates. It's a great way to test your apps now to make sure they are ready before the final release. Give Beta 3 a try and let us know what you think! You can get Android P Beta 3 on Pixel devices by enrolling here . If you're already enrolled and received the Android P Beta 2 on your Pixel device, you'll automatically get the update to Beta 3. Partners who are participating in the Android P Beta program will also be updating their devices to Beta 3 over the coming weeks. What's in this update? Today's previe...