Android Developers Blog

Posted by Kanika Sachdeva, Product Manager, Google Play In May, we launched new Families policies to provide additional protections for children and families on Google Play. As part of this policy change, we’re requiring all developers to provide information on their app’s target audience and content via the Google Play Console by September 1st. Thanks to everyone who has completed it already. If you haven’t done so, please fill it out as soon as possible and consult our developer guide and training course for additional information. Apps that include children in their target audience need to adhere to our new policy requirements including appropriate content, showing suitable ads ( learn more ), and disclosing personally identifiable information correctly. We’ve found that checking for these requirements takes longer than the normal review process, and can result in review times of up to 7 days (or longer in certain exceptional circumstances). Apps who submit inaccurate responses ...

Posted by Adam Bacchus, Sebastian Porst, and Patrick Mutchler — Android Security & Privacy We’re constantly looking for ways to further improve the security and privacy of our products, and the ecosystems they support. At Google, we understand the strength of open platforms and ecosystems, and that the best ideas don’t always come from within. It is for this reason that we offer a broad range of vulnerability reward programs, encouraging the community to help us improve security for everyone. Today, we’re expanding on those efforts with some big changes to Google Play Security Reward Program (GPSRP) , as well as the launch of the new Developer Data Protection Reward Program (DDPRP) . Google Play Security Reward Program Scope Increases We are increasing the scope of GPSRP to include all apps in Google Play with 100 million or more installs. These apps are now eligible for rewards, even if the app developers don’t have their own vulnerability disclosure or bug bounty program. In th...

Boris Valusek, Design Lead, Google Play The Google Play Store has over two billion monthly active users coming to find the right app, game, and other digital content. To improve the overall store experience, we’re excited to roll out a complete visual redesign. Aligning with Material design language, we’re introducing several user-facing updates to deliver a cleaner, more premium store that improves app discovery and accessibility for our diverse set of users. To make browsing faster and easier, we’ve introduced a new navigation bar at the bottom of the Play Store on mobile devices and a new left navigation on tablets and Chrome OS. There are now two distinct destinations for games and apps, which helps us better serve users the right kind of content. Once users find the right app or game, the updated store listing page layout surfaces richer app information at the top of each page as well as a more prominent call-to-action button. This makes it easier for users to see the important de...

Posted by Jamal Eason , Product Manager, Android Have you ever wished that Android Studio was faster, more performant, and more memory efficient? If so, then download Android Studio 3.5 today. This stable version of Android Studio is a different kind of release where the Android Studio team took a step back from large feature work for eight months and instead focused on product quality to further accelerate your day-to-day app development. We called this initiative Project Marble, and it focused on making the fundamental features and flows of Android Studio & Emulator rock-solid by looking at three core areas: system health, feature polish, and bugs. Working on Project Marble was in direct response to feedback from you and we continue to welcome any further feedback you have. To improve system health in Android Studio, we first created a new set of infrastructure and internal dashboards to better detect performance problems. We did this to establish a safety net to catch issues th...

Posted by Ian Stoba, Program Manager, Accessibility Engineering With billions of Android devices in use around the world and millions of apps available on the Play Store, it might seem difficult to drive change across the entire ecosystem, but the Accessibility Developer Infrastructure team is doing just that. Every time a developer uploads an APK or app bundle to the open or closed tracks, Play tests this upload on various device models running different versions of Android and generates a pre-launch report to inform the developer of issues. One year ago, the team added accessibility suggestions to the report based on industry best practices and Google’s own experience. These tests check for common issues that can make an app harder to use by people with disabilities. For example, they check that buttons are large enough to be comfortable for people to press, and that text has enough contrast with the background to be easier to read. Since launching in July 2018, more than 3.8 millio...

Posted by Takeshi Hagikura, Developer Programs Engineer Today we're releasing the source code for the official Google I/O 2019 Android app. This year's app substantially modified existing functionality and added several new features. In this post, we’ll highlight several notable changes. Android Q out of the box Gesture navigation Android Q introduced an option for fully gestural navigation , allowing the user to navigate back and to the home screen using only gestures. To support gesture navigation, app developers need to do two things: Extend app content to draw edge-to-edge Handle any conflicting app gestures The Google I/O 2019 app was one of the first apps to support fully the gestural navigation. For more details, check out this series of blog posts about gesture navigation and the commit in the Google I/O app repository that extended the content to draw edge-to-edge. Gesture navigation navigating back and to the home screen Dark theme Another new feature that was in...

Posted by Kacey Fahey, Google Play Developer Marketing Nexon Korea Company has published several games across PC, mobile, and console. With the launch of their mobile game FAITH , a MMORPG released exclusively in Japan, they wanted to promote the game before launch and find a way to capture early consumer demand that would help boost early installs at launch. What they did Nexon ran a pre-registration campaign on Google Play with a multi-channel marketing campaign driving players to pre-register and receive an exclusive pre-registration reward. Their campaign used consistent creative assets throughout TV commercials, YouTube influencer campaigns, social media, performance marketing campaigns, and more. Offering a pre-registration reward provided an incentive and benefit for players who pre-registered on Google Play during the month-long campaign leading up to launch. “It was very easy to run, since the steps to activate the campaign were very clear and simple. All we needed to do was ...

Posted by Allen Huang and Rohan Shah, Product Managers on Android UI One of the biggest changes in Android Q is the introduction of a new gesture navigation. Just to recap - with the new system navigation mode - users can navigate back (left/right edge swipe), to the home screen (swipe up from the bottom), and trigger the device assistant (swipe in from the bottom corners) with gestures rather than buttons. By moving to a gesture model for system navigation, we can provide more of the screen to apps to enable a more immersive experience. We wanted to give folks an inside look at how we’ve approached this challenge, the rationale, and some of the trade-offs as well. There is some nerding out on design around gestures ahead, but hopefully it provides some insight into our process and how we balance the developer and OEM ecosystem in service of users. If you’re looking for more detail on how to handle these changes as an app developer, check out Chris’s “Going edge-to-edge” article serie...

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering We’re just a few weeks away from the official release of Android Q! As we put the final polish on the new platform, today we’re rolling out Beta 6, the last Beta update . Now is the time to make sure your apps are ready, before we bring the official release to consumers. Take this opportunity to finish up your testing and publish your app updates soon to give users a smooth transition to Android Q. You can get Beta 6 today on Pixel devices by enrolling here . If you're already enrolled and received Beta 5, you'll automatically get Beta 6 soon. Partners participating in the Android Q Beta program will also be updating their devices over the coming weeks -- visit their sites to learn more. To get started with Android Q, visit developer.android.com/preview . Watch for more information on the official Android Q release coming soon! What’s in Beta 6? Today’s Beta 6 update includes the latest Android Q system images for Pixel and Android Emula...