Android Developers Blog

Posted by Suzanne van Tienen, Product Manager, Google Play Today we are simplifying and improving the merchant experience for developers who have paid apps, in-app purchases, or subscriptions based on the feedback we've heard from the community. First, we're moving order management from the Google Payments Center to the Google Play Developer Console and adding some improved features. Second, payments settings will now be accessible from the Developer Console in addition to continuing to be available on payments.google.com. The new features come with appropriate access control settings so you can be sure users only have access to the tools they need. The new order management tab in the Google Play Developer Console You can perform the same tasks in the Developer Console which you previously would have performed in the Google Payments Center. We've also made some improvements: Bulk refunds: You can now select multiple orders for simultaneous refund, instead of issuing them in...

Posted by Ian Lake , Developer Advocate With the release of the href="https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/support-library/revisions.html?utm_campaign=android_launch_exifsupportlibrary_122116&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog#rev25-1-0">25.1.0 Support Library, there's a new entry in the family: the ExifInterface Support Library. With significant improvements introduced in Android 7.1 to the framework's href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/ExifInterface.html?utm_campaign=android_launch_exifsupportlibrary_122116&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">ExifInterface , it only made sense to make those available to all API 9+ devices via the Support Library's ExifInterface . The basics are still the same: the ability to read and write href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exif?utm_campaign=android_launch_exifsupportlibrary_122116&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">Exif tags embedded withi...

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Developer Marketing at Google Play With just a few clicks, you can publish an app to Google Play and access a global audience of more than 1 billion 30 days active users. Finding success in global markets means considering how each market differs, planning for high quality localization, and tailoring your activity to the local audience. The new Going Global Playbook provides best practices and tips, with advice from developers who've successfully gone global. This guide includes advice to help you plan your approach to going global, prepare your app for new markets, take your app to market, and also include data and insights for key countries and other useful resources. This ebook joins others that we've recently published including The Building for Billions Playbook and The News Publisher Playbook . All of our ebooks are promoted in the Playbook for Developers app , which is where you can stay up to date with all the news and best practices you ...

Posted by Jason Douglas, PM Director for Actions on Google The Google Assistant href="https://blog.google/products/assistant/personal-google-just-you/">brings together all of the technology and smarts we've been building for years, from the Knowledge Graph to Natural Language Processing. To be a truly successful Assistant, it should be able to connect users across the apps and services in their lives. This makes enabling an ecosystem where developers can bring diverse and unique services to users through the Google Assistant really important. In October, we href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4y0KOeXViI&feature=youtu.be&t=1h16m8s">previewed Actions on Google, the developer platform for the Google Assistant. href="https://developers.google.com/actions/?utm_campaign=product area_launch_actionsgoogle_120816&utm_source=gdev&utm_medium=blog">Actions on Google further enhances the Assistant user experience by enabling you to bri...

Posted by Niko Schröer, Business Development, Google Play Driving installs is important to growing a user base, but it's not much use if your app sits on users' devices and is rarely opened. In a competitive app landscape, it's increasingly important to engage and retain users over the long term to build a successful business. Users who are using your app more will have a higher lifetime value and be more likely to share your app. Watch my Playtime session below to hear about the tools and features other developers are using to increase app engagement. You can also read the summary of my main tips below. 1. Build a high quality app to engage Android users Building a high quality app is the foundation of a great user experience on Android. The better your app's user experience is, the more engaged your users will be. Optimizing for material design , for example, can significantly improve user engagement as well as building for Android Wear , Auto or TV where it ma...

Posted by Clayton Wilkinson , Developer Platform Engineer Some changes are coming to Play Game Services in early 2017: Changes to Google API Client building In November, we announced an href="https://developers.googleblog.com/2016/11/moving-to-google-sign-in-for-a-better-user-experience-and-higher-conversion-rates.html">update to Google Sign-In API . Play Game Services is being updated to use Google Sign-In API for authentication. The advantages are: Games and Sign-In in same client connection. Single API for getting Auth code to send to backend servers. This change unifies the Google Sign-in and the Games API Sign-in, so there are updates to how to build the Google API Client: class="prettyprint">// Defaults to Games Lite scope, no server component GoogleSignInOptions gso = new GoogleSignInOptions.Builder(GoogleSignInOptions.DEFAULT_GAMES_SIGN_IN).build(); // OR for apps with a server component GoogleSignInOptions gso = new GoogleSignInOption...

Posted by Kacey Fahey, Marketing Programs Manager, Google Play Working at Google Play, we’re on the front line watching developers build, polish, and launch their dreams for millions of users to experience. While it’s exciting to be a part of so much creativity, we’re often asked how small startups can stand out in such a competitive field. We recently had Josh Elman & Sarah Tavel of Greylock Partners speak at our events, sharing their experiences working in Product Marketing and Engineering at major tech companies including Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. Below are four tips to hit the ground running and create a business built for success. Set goals, both large and small Every startup has an ultimate goal, but don’t forget to create micro-goals. Breaking your larger goal down into smaller milestones creates checkpoints to review progress and ensure momentum is heading in the right direction. This also allows for flexibility if teams need to course correct along the way, not to ...