Android Developers Blog

Posted by Posted by Purnima Kochikar, Director, Business Development, Games & Applications Today, we announced Google Play’s annual Best of 2020 awards , highlighting the year’s best apps, games and digital content. None of this would be possible without the developers that created the amazing content that made a profound impact on us in 2020, or should we say a Genshin Impact … From miHoYo Limited to Loona Inc, the makers behind your favorite apps and games were unafraid to experiment, challenge the status quo, and design incredible experiences we never thought possible. Check out the full rundown of the developers behind the best apps and games of 2020 in the U.S. on Google Play: Best App of 2020 Loóna: Bedtime Calm & Relax by Loona Inc. Best Personal Growth Apps Paired: App for Couples | Relationship Advice by Better Half Ltd. Centr, by Chris Hemsworth by Loup Pty Ltd Speekoo by LearnMyLanguage Intellect by The Intellect Company Jumprope: How-to Videos by Jumpr...

Posted by Ben Weiss , Developer Relations Engineer The Android App Bundle series of Modern Android Development has just concluded. We finished off with a live Q&A session. I was joined by Chet Haase , Wojtek Kaliciński , and Iurii Makhno to go over bundles of questions from the #AskAndroid hashtag on Twitter as well as from the chat during the live stream. But let’s rewind for a moment and take it from the top. Introduction to Android App Bundles In the inaugural episode Wojtek sets the tone for this series by talking about why app bundles matter to you and your app. Everything to know about Play App Signing In this episode you learn how to opt into Play App Signing by joining Wojtek on a journey through the Play Console. After watching this video you will have learned what options are available to you when opting into Play App Signing. Alongside this video we recommend taking a look at the FAQ about Play App Signing , the app signing Android docs and the Play Console’s Pla...

  The Android Kotlin Extensions Gradle plugin (not to be confused with Android KTX ) was released in 2017 and brought two new conveniences to Android development in Kotlin: Synthetics let you replace calls to findViewById with kotlinx.android.synthetic bindings. Parcelize allows you to remove boilerplate and easily create Parcelables through the @Parcelize annotation. Since then, we have released View Binding for Android , an officially supported library that has deep integration with the Android build toolchain and provides similar functionality as Kotlin synthetics. While we continue to recommend Parcelize, a number of drawbacks have appeared with using Kotlin synthetics: They pollute the global namespace They don’t expose nullability information They only work in Kotlin code JetBrains originally developed the Android Kotlin Extensions plugin, and together we have discussed the pros and cons of continuing to maintain synthetics: we strive to ensure long term support ...

Posted by Hoi Lam , Developer Relations Engineer, Android Platform In 2021, we are continuing with our annual target API level update, requiring new apps to target API level 30 (Android 11) in August and in November for all app updates. In addition, as announced earlier this year, Google Play will require new apps to use the Android App Bundle publishing format. This brings the benefits of smaller apps and simpler releases to more users and developers and supports ongoing investment in advanced distribution. Over 750,000 apps and games already publish to production on Google Play using app bundles. Top apps switching save an average size of 15% versus a universal APK. Users benefit from smaller downloads and developers like Netflix and Riafy see higher install success rates, which is especially impactful in regions with more entry level devices and slower data speeds. Developers switching can use advanced distribution features such as Play Asset Delivery and Play Feature Delive...

Posted by Krish Vitaldevara, Director of Product Management Trust & Safety, Google Play When it comes to privacy, we are committed to giving users control and transparency over data access. Users consistently tell us that they want more control over their location data, so earlier this year we announced a few privacy improvements, such as updates to Google Play’s Location Permissions policy and enhancements to location permission controls in Android 11 . To help prevent unnecessary access to background location, the updated policy allows access only if it’s critical to the app’s core functionality and provides clear user benefit. We found that many apps that requested background location don’t actually need it. Removing or changing it to foreground can help apps be battery-efficient and avoid poor app ratings when users don’t want to share their location. If your app uses background location data, you must submit a form for review and receive approval by January 18, 2021 so your ...

Posted by Oli Gaymond, Product Manager Android Machine Learning On-Device Machine Learning enables cutting edge features to run locally without transmitting data to a server. Processing the data on-device enables lower latency, can improve privacy and allows features to work without connectivity. Achieving the best performance and power efficiency requires taking advantage of all available hardware. Android Neural Networks API 1.3 The Android Neural Networks API (NNAPI) is designed for running computationally intensive operations for machine learning on Android devices. It provides a single set of APIs to benefit from available hardware accelerators including GPUs, DSPs and NPUs. In Android 11, we released Neural Networks API 1.3 adding support for Quality of Service APIs, Memory Domains and expanded quantization support. This release builds on the comprehensive support for over 100 operations, floating point and quantized data types and hardware implementations from partners acro...

Posted by David Zeuthen, Shawn Willden and René Mayrhofer, Android Security and Privacy team In the United States and other countries a Driver's License is not only used to convey driving privileges, it is also commonly used to prove identity or personal details. Presenting a Driving License is simple, right? You hand over the card to the individual wishing to confirm your identity (the so-called “ Relying Party ” or “ Verifier ”); they check the security features of the plastic card (hologram, micro-printing, etc.) to ensure it’s not counterfeit; they check that it’s really your license, making sure you look like the portrait image printed on the card; and they read the data they’re interested in, typically your age, legal name, address etc. Finally, the verifier needs to hand back the plastic card. Most people are so familiar with this process that they don’t think twice about it, or consider the privacy implications. In the following we’ll discuss how the new and soon-to-b...