Android Developers Blog

This is the final blog post for #11WeeksOfAndroid . Thank you for joining us over the past 11 weeks as we dove into key areas of Android development. In case you missed it, here’s a recap of everything we talked about during each week: Week 1 - People and identity Discover how to implement the conversation shortcut and bubbles with ‘ conversation notifications ’. Also, learn more about conversation additions and other System UI news, and discover the people and conversations developer documentation here . Finally, you can also listen to the Android Backstage podcast where the System UI team is interviewed on people and bubbles . To tackle user and developer complexity that makes identity a challenge for developers, we've been working on One Tap and Block Store, part of our new Google Identity Services Library. If you’re interested in learning more about Identity, we published the video “ in Identity on Android: what’s new in sign-in ,” where Vishal explains the new libraries ...

Posted by Chris Banes & Nick Butcher This blog post is part of a weekly series for #11WeeksOfAndroid . Each week we’re diving into a key area of Android so you don’t miss anything. This week, we spotlighted people & identity; here’s a look at what you should know. The big news: Jetpack Compose Alpha This week we released the first alpha of Jetpack Compose 🎉, Android’s modern UI toolkit with native access to the platform APIs. Compose combines the power of Kotlin with the reactive programming model to make it easier and faster to build UI. We want your feedback to help us build the APIs that you need in your apps, so now is the time to try it out. To get you up to speed with Compose, this week we’ve released 4 new codelabs , 7 new samples , new documentation and a podcast from the Compose team. If you prefer videos; we’ve got you covered... To understand the reactive mindset and how to think about building apps with Compose, check out ‘Thinking in Compose’: Learn how J...

Posted by Karen Ng , Director, Product Management Today, we’re releasing the alpha of Jetpack Compose , our modern UI toolkit designed to help you quickly and easily build beautiful apps across all Android platforms, with native access to the platform APIs. Bring your app to life with dramatically less code, interactive tools, and intuitive Kotlin APIs. No matter where you’re working from -- whether it’s your kitchen table or an office, we know you need a programming language, an IDE and a powerful UI framework that can save you time and reduce how much code you need to write. So we built Jetpack Compose to make you (and us!) more productive with building UI. We started with Android Jetpack — taking the hardest, most common developer problems on Android and creating a suite of libraries that ensure high quality apps that work across all versions of the platform. Today, 84% of the top 10,000 apps in the Play store are using a Jetpack library. Then we heard how developers love Kotlin,...

Posted by Dan Galpin , Developer Advocate This blog post is part of a weekly series for #11WeeksOfAndroid . For each of the #11WeeksOfAndroid, we’re diving into key areas so you don’t miss anything. This week, we spotlighted games, media, and 5G; here’s a look at what you should know. What's the buzz in Android 11? You can now control media applications from a dedicated space within the notification area while enabling features such as playback resumption and seamless transfer. New and updated 5g APIs help you unlock transformative new user experiences. Adds new support for key game tools and technologies. On top of that foundation, we're building tools to both improve your game developer experience and help you better characterize the performance of your game, services to help you expand the reach of your game to more devices and new audiences, and new and improved features to support your games' go-to-market with Google Play. Android 11 media We covered how to take adva...

Posted by Stella Loh, Product Manager, Android 5G Getting ready for 5G on Android Connectivity is the lifeblood that makes all of the experiences on our phones come alive, helping us connect, communicate, and express ourselves to the people that we care about. As app developers, this mission is as important now as it’s ever been. You’ve probably heard the buzz around 5G and wondered: what does this mean for my app? As we dive into Media & Games as part of this weeks' #11WeeksofAndroid, two areas where 5G offers a lot of potential, we wanted to spotlight ways for you to think about taking advantage of 5G for your app or game . Transforming your app or game with 5G: unlocking new experiences 5G isn’t just about faster connectivity: it’s about unlocking transformative new experiences, and we want to see how you continue to push the bar. Turn indoor use cases into outdoor use cases: Suddenly, everything you could only do indoors comes alive outside, like high-quality video chat ...

Posted by Don Turner - Developer Advocate - Android Media In Android 11 we've made it easier than ever for users to control media playback. This is achieved with three related features: media controls, playback resumption and seamless transfer. This article will explain what these features are, how they work together and how you can take advantage of them in your apps. Media Controls Android 11's media controls are found below the Quick Settings panel and represent a dedicated persistent space for controlling media playback. Media controls in Android 11 Part of the motivation for media controls is that users often have multiple media apps (music player, podcasts, video player etc) and regularly switch between them. Media controls display up to five current and recent media sessions in a carousel allowing the user to swipe between them. On Android 10 and earlier, media notifications for multiple apps can occupy most of the notification area. All those control buttons can a...