Android Developers Blog

Posted by Hoi Lam , Lead Developer Advocate, Wear OS by Google Today we announced that we are evolving the design of Wear OS by Google to help you get the most out of your time - providing quicker access to your information and notifications. Notifications can come from the automatic bridging of the phone's notification or be generated by a local Wear app running on the watch. Whether you are a phone developer, a Wear app developer, or both, there are a few things you will need to know about the new notification stream. The new notification stream Until now, each notification took up the entire screen in Wear OS. Although this provided more space to include things like inline action, it also meant it took a long time for the user to go through all their notifications. The new notification stream is more compact, and can display multiple notifications on the same screen. This means users can process their notification streams more quickly. What this means for developers Concise not...

Posted by Nevin Mital, Partner Developer Relations The Media Controller Test (MCT) app is a powerful tool that allows you to test the intricacies of media playback on Android, and it's just gotten even more useful. Media experiences including voice interactions via the Google Assistant on Android phones, cars, TVs, and headphones, are powered by Android MediaSession APIs. This tool will help you verify your integrations. We've now added a new verification testing framework that can be used to help automate your QA testing. The MCT is meant to be used in conjunction with an app that implements media APIs, such as the Universal Android Music Player . The MCT surfaces information about the media app's MediaController, such as the PlaybackState and Metadata, and can be used to test inter-app media controls. The Media Action Lifecycle can be complex to follow; even in a simple Play From Search request, there are many intermediate steps (simplified timeline depicted below) whe...

Posted by Tom Grinsted, Product Manager, Google Play We've updated the Play Console acquisition reports to give new insights into what users do on the Play Store to discover your app. It's a great way to super-charge your App Store Optimization (ASO) and onboarding experience. One of the things every developer wants to know is how people discover their app or game. User acquisition reports in the Google Play Console are a great way to understand this. For many apps and games, a stand-out source is Organic traffic — it's usually the largest or second largest source of store listing visits and installs. Organic traffic is made up of people who come to your store listing while exploring or searching the Play Store. These visitors might find your app in a seasonal collection, from featuring, or while searching for a specific use case or term. Until recently, this traffic has been bundled together with no breakdown of data into user behavior. With our latest updates we have cha...

Posted by Dave Kleidermacher, VP, Head of Security - Android, Chrome OS, Play At Google I/O 2018 , in our What's New in Android Security session, we shared a brief update on the Android security updates program. With the official release of Android 9 Pie, we wanted to share a more comprehensive update on the state of security updates, including best practice guidance for manufacturers, how we're making Android easier to update, and how we're ensuring compliance to Android security update releases. Commercial Best Practices around Android Security Updates As we noted in our 2017 Android Security Year-in-Review , Android's anti-exploitation strength now leads the mobile industry and has made it exceedingly difficult and expensive to leverage operating system bugs into compromises. Nevertheless, an important defense-in-depth strategy is to ensure critical security updates are delivered in a timely manner. Monthly security updates are the recommended best practice for A...

Posted by Vlad Zavidovych, Software Engineer; Artem Yudin, Software Engineer Google Play Instant enables people to experience your game or app natively without having to go through a full installation process. Removing the friction of installing is a great way to increase engagement, conversions, and lifetime value of your users. Today, we've made it easier to build instant games and apps by removing the URL requirement. Previously, in order to publish an instant game you had to create a web destination for it. The website also had to be connected to the instant game through intent filters and digital asset links verification . Now, it is no longer required to add URL-based intent filters to your instant game. People will be able to access the instant experience through a 'Try Now' button in the Play Store or Play Games apps, via deep link API , and in the future through the app ads. While being particularly helpful for games which often don't have a corresponding we...

Posted by Benjamin Baxter, Developer Advocate and Bacon Connoisseur All TVs have the same problem with keyboard input: It is very cumbersome to hunt and peck for each letter using a D-pad with a remote. And if you make a mistake, trying to correct it compounds the problem. APIs like Smart Lock and Autofill , can ease user's frustrations, but for certain types of input, like login, you need to collect complex input that is difficult for users using the on-screen keyboard. With the Nearby Connections API , you can use a second screen to gather input from the user with less friction. How Nearby Connections works From the documentation : "Nearby Connections is an offline peer-to-peer socket model for communication based on advertising and discovering devices in proximity. Usage of the API falls into two phases: pre-connection, and post-connection. In the pre-connection phase, Advertisers advertise themselves, while Discoverers discover nearby Advertisers and send connection reque...

Posted by Seang Chau, Vice President, Engineering According to the World Health Organization 1 , around 466 million people worldwide have disabling hearing loss. This number is expected to increase to 900 million people by the year 2050. Google is working with GN Hearing to create a new open specification for hearing aid streaming support on future versions of Android. Users with hearing loss will be able to connect, pair, and monitor their hearing aids so they can hear their phones loudly and clearly. Hearing aid users expect a high quality, low latency experience with minimal impact on phone and hearing aid battery life. We've published a new hearing aid spec for Android smartphones: Audio Streaming for Hearing Aids (ASHA) on Bluetooth Low Energy Connection-Oriented Channels . ASHA is designed to have a minimal impact on battery life with low-latency while maintaining a high quality audio experience for users who rely on hearing aids. We look forward to continually evolving the s...

Posted by Hoi Lam , Lead Developer Advocate, Wear OS by Google Today we are announcing a new initiative to improve Wear app quality and their presentation in the Google Play Store. The Wear app review process, which has been in place since the launch of Android Wear 2.0, is currently optional. It will become mandatory for apps to be listed on the Wear OS by Google version of the Google Play Store from the following dates: New Wear apps: 1 October 2018 Existing Wear apps: 4 March 2019 . The review process for mobile apps remains unchanged, and is independent of the Wear app review. Mobile app updates will not be blocked if they fail the Wear app review. We hope this lightweight app review process will improve the quality of Wear app experiences across the wide range of devices available to your users. In addition, since screenshots are required for the Wear app review, this will improve the discovery and presentation of your Wear apps in the Google Play Store. See a comprehensive list ...

Posted by Shailen Tuli, DPE Today we're releasing the source code for the official Google I/O 2018 for Android app. The 2018 version constitutes a comprehensive rewrite of the app. For many years, the app has used a ContentProvider + SyncAdapter architecture. This year, we rewrote the app using Architecture Components and brought the code in sync with the Android team's current recommendations for building modern apps. Architecture We followed the recommendations laid out in the Guide to App Architecture for writing modular, testable and maintainable code when deciding on the architecture for the app. We kept logic away from Activities and Fragments and moved it to ViewModels . We observed data using LiveData and used the Data Binding Library to bind UI components in layouts to the app's data sources. The overall architecture of the app can be summarized in this diagram: We used a Repository layer for handling data operations. IOSched's data comes from a few diffe...

Posted by Purnima Kochikar, Director, Google Play, Apps & Games On Monday we released Android 9 Pie . As we continue to push the Android platform forward, we're always looking to provide new ways to distribute your apps efficiently, help people discover and engage with your work, and improve the overall security of our ecosystem. Google Play has had a busy year so far with some big milestones around helping you reach more users, including: Shrinking download size: Android App Bundle & Dynamic Delivery has helped reduce app sizes by up to 65%, leading to increased downloads and fewer uninstalls. Helping improve quality: New tools in the Play Console have helped you reduce crash rates by up to 70%. Improving discovery: Improvements to the discovery experience have increased Google Play Store visits by 30% over the last 12 months. Keeping users safe: Google Play Protect scans more than 50 billion apps a day and Android API level 26 adoption requirements improve app secu...

Posted by Vineet Tanwar, Business Development Manager, Google Play In June, we announced the Indie Games Accelerator , a new four month program to help indie game startups from India, Pakistan and Southeast Asia supercharge their growth on Android. We have been truly impressed by the overwhelming responses we have received, and the creativity that indie game developers from these regions have to offer. We had a great time going through the applications and playing the games which were submitted for review. Now, it's finally time to announce the inaugural class of startups selected for the program who we will mentor and coach over the next few months. Here they are: Congratulations to the selected participants and a huge thanks to everyone that applied! Find out more about the program or express your interest in joining next class of Indie Games Accelerator . How useful did you find this blogpost? ★ ★ ★ ★ ★