Android Developers Blog: Android

Google releases source code for Google I/O 2019 for Android

14 August 2019

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

Dark theme To support the dark theme, you must set the app’s theme to inherit from a dark theme. <style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.DayNight"> OR <style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.MaterialComponents.DayNight">
You also need to avoid hard-coded colors or icons. You should use theme attributes (such as ?android:attr/textColorPrimary) or night-qualified resources (such as colors defined both in the res/values/colors.xml and res/values-night/colors.xml) instead. Check out the Google I/O talk about Dark Theme & Gesture Navigation for more details or the series of commits (1, 2, 3) in the Google I/O 2019 app repository for how we achieved implementing the dark theme in a real app.

Schedule UI in dark theme Improved schedule screen The new schedule UI is a single stream, allowing the app to render only visible content and users to easily jump to another conference day by choosing a day at the top of the UI. Check out the series of commits (1, 2) for how we revamped the schedule UI.

This year’s schedule UI jumping to another conference day Navigation component We introduced Navigation component to simplify this year’s app into a Single Activity app and observed the following benefits:

Being able to see all the transitions at a glance in the navigation editor which simplified launching Session Details and the Map from launch actions

Removed boiler plate code for handling up and back navigations

Arguments between Fragments were statically typed by using the Safe Args gradle plugin

Check out the getting started guide for how you can start introducing the Navigation component in your app and the series of commits (1, 2, 3, 4) in the Google I/O 2019 app repository for the usage in a real app.

All transitions in the navigation editor Full Text Search with Room For this year’s app we added a search feature for users to quickly find sessions, speakers, and codelabs. To accomplish this, we used the Full Text Search feature of the Room Jetpack component. Whenever the conference data is fetched from the server, we update the session, speaker, and codelab data in the Room tables, which have corresponding FTS mapping tables. When a user starts typing in the search box, the search term is used to query the session title and description, speaker names, and codelab title. The search results are shown almost instantly, which allows the search results to be updated with each character typed in the search field. The user can then tap on a search result to navigate to see the details on the session, speaker, or codelab. Check out the series of commits (1, 2, 3, 4) for how we achieved the Full Text Search feature.

Searching for a session and a speaker Lots of improvements These were the biggest changes we made to the app, but we improved a lot of little things as well. We added the new Home UI, allowing the app to tell the user time relevant information during the conference and the Codelab UI, which gave users more information about codelabs at I/O and how to participate in them.

Home UI and Codelabs UI We also introduced Firebase Remote Config to toggle the visibility of each feature by updating the boolean values in the Remote Config without updating the app and removed the hard-coded values that were used for representing start and end time of each event in the Agenda UI. Go explore the code If you’re interested go checkout the code and let us know what you think. If you have any questions or issues, please let us know via the issue tracker on GitHub.

Final Beta update, official Android Q coming soon!

07 August 2019

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 Emulator, the final API 29 SDK, and updated build tools for Android Studio. Beta 6 includes all of the features, system behaviors, and developer APIs that you’ll find in the final platform, so it gives you everything you need to get your apps ready. For users, Beta 6 includes many new fixes and optimizations -- take a look at the release notes for details. We've made further refinements to Gesture Navigation in Beta 6 based on user feedback. First, to ensure reliable and consistent operation, there's a 200dp vertical app exclusion limit for the Back gesture. Second, we've added a sensitivity preference setting for the Back gesture. Watch for more details coming soon in our blog post series on optimizing for gesture navigation. Get your apps ready for Android Q! With the consumer release coming soon, we’re asking all Android developers to update your current apps for compatibility as soon as possible. Here’s how to do it:

Install your app on Android Q: Install your current app from Google Play onto an Android Q Beta device or emulator, then test. Your app should look great and run well, with full functionality, and handle all of the Android Q behavior changes properly. Watch for impacts from privacy changes, gestural navigation, changes to dynamic linker paths for Bionic libraries, and others.

Test with the Android Q privacy features, such as the new location permissions, restrictions on background activity starts, changes to data and identifiers, and others. See the privacy checklist to get started, and review the behavior changes doc for more areas to test.

Test for uses of restricted non-SDK interfaces and move to public SDK or NDK equivalents instead. Details here.

Test the libraries and SDKs in your app: If you find an issue, try updating to the latest version of the SDK, or reach out to the SDK developer for help. You can also report SDK compatibility issues here.

Update and publish your compatible app: When you’ve finished your testing and made any updates, we recommend publishing your compatible app right away. This lets Android Beta users test the app now, and helps you deliver a smooth transition to users as they update to Android Q.

We realize that supporting these changes is an investment for you too, so thanks to all of you who have prioritized the work to get your apps ready for Android Q! Enhance your app with Android Q features and APIs Next, when you're ready, dive into Android Q and learn about the new features and APIs that you can use. Here are some of the top features to get started with. We recommend these for every app:

Dark Theme: Ensure a consistent experience for users who enable system-wide dark theme by adding a Dark Theme or enabling Force Dark.

Support gestural navigation in your app by going edge-to-edge and making sure your custom gestures are complementary to the system navigation gestures.

Optimize for foldables: Deliver seamless, edge-to-edge experiences on today’s innovative devices by optimizing for foldables.

We recommend these if relevant for your app:

More interactive notifications: If your notifications include messages, enable suggested replies and actions in notifications to engage users and let them take action instantly.

Better biometrics: If you use biometric auth, move to BiometricPrompt, the preferred way to support fingerprint auth on modern devices.

Enriched recording: To support captioning or gameplay recording, enable audio playback capture -- it’s a great way to reach more users and make your app more accessible.

Better codecs: For media apps, try AV1 for video streaming and HDR10+ for high dynamic range video. For speech and music streaming, you can use Opus encoding, and for musicians, a native MIDI API is available.

Better networking APIs: If your app manages IoT devices over Wi-Fi, try the new network connection APIs for functions like configuring, downloading, or printing.

These are just a few of the many new features and APIs in Android Q -- to see them all, visit the Android Q Beta site for developers. Publish your app updates to Google Play As soon as you're ready, publish your APK updates to Google Play that are compiled against, or optionally targeting, API 29. To make sure that your updated app runs well on Android Q as well as older versions, try using Google Play testing tracks. With tracks you can safely get early feedback from a small group of users and then do a staged rollout to production. How do I get Beta 6? It’s easy! Just enroll any supported Pixel device here to get the update over-the-air. If you're already enrolled, you'll receive the update soon and no action is needed on your part. Downloadable system images are also available here. Partners who are participating in the Android Q Beta program will be updating their devices over the coming weeks. See android.com/beta for details. To get started developing, download the official API 29 SDK and tools into the stable release of Android Studio 3.4, or for the latest Android Q support update to Android Studio 3.5 Beta. Then follow these instructions to configure your environment, and see the release notes for known issues. Please continue to share your feedback and requests in our issue tracker. You can use our hotlists for filing platform issues (including privacy and behavior changes), app compatibility issues, and third-party SDK issues. A big thank you to our developer community for your participation in our recent Reddit AMA on r/androiddev! It’s always great to hear what’s important to you and we hope we were able to help!

Make stronger decisions with new Google Play Console data

31 July 2019

Posted by Tom Grinsted, Product Manager, Google Play At this year’s Google I/O, we announced a slate of new features to help you take your business further with Google Play. Launching today, these changes include several improvements designed to help you make better decisions about your business by providing clearer, more actionable data. We know the right data is critical to help you improve your app performance and grow your business. That’s why we’re excited to share a major update that enables you to better measure and analyse your core statistics — the most fundamental install and uninstall metrics by user and device. We’ve also enhanced the Statistics page on the Play Console to show change over time, enable more granular configurations, and, coming soon, exclusive benchmarks for core stats!

More granular configurations are now available on the Statistics page to help you better understand your acquisition and churn. More accurate and more expansive than before, the new metrics will help you better understand your acquisition and churn. For the first time, we are including data on returning users and devices - something that we understand is critical to many developers' growth strategies. We’re also including new install methods (such as pre-installs and peer-to-peer sharing) and the ability to aggregate and dedupe over periods that suit your business needs. With these new updates, you can perform analyses that weren’t possible before, such as how many people re-installed your app last month. Here’s what else is new:

Clearer, consistent metrics definitions:

Select users or devices, acquisitions or losses
Define if you’re interested in new, returning, or all users
Measure events (for example, when someone installs) or uniques (for instance, every person who installs)

Change analysis charts automatically show the largest changes during a selected period of time for a given dimension, making it easy to see the largest contributors to your metric trends.

Saved reports allow you to configure your metrics just the way you want them, then save them for easy retrieval and common analyses.

Suggested reports help you to find interesting ways to combine your data for more valuable analysis.

And finally, all configured data can be downloaded as CSVs from within the interface.

As a result of these updates, you will notice a few changes to your metrics. Old metrics names will be deprecated, but you can configure new metrics that map to the old ones with this cheat sheet. And don’t forget to use the ‘save report’ feature on the stats page so you can easily return to any configurations you find particularly helpful!

Don’t forget to use the ‘save this report’ feature on the stats page to easily return to any configurations you find particularly helpful. Other metrics like active user and active device will see a step-change as the new definitions are more expansive and include previously under-counted data. Some new metrics map onto older ones. Where this happens, all historic data will be automatically included. But in other cases new metrics will only be generated from launch day. For unique devices or users, weekly metrics will start to appear two weeks after launch, monthly metrics once there’s a single full month’s data, and quarterly metrics once there’s a full quarter’s data. We know it’s a lot to take in at once, so make sure to bookmark the cheat sheet for helpful tips as you navigate the transition and explore your new metrics. Additionally, our Decision-Making with the Google Play Console session from Google I/O and our Play Academy training are other great resources to help you get up to speed.

Check out these updates in the Google Play Console today — we hope you find them useful. Your comments help to shape the future of Google Play, so please continue to let us know what you think.

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What’s new with Fast Pair

19 July 2019

Posted by Catherina Xu (Product Manager) Last November, we released Fast Pair with the Jaybird Tarah Bluetooth headphones. Since then, we’ve engaged with dozens of OEMs, ODMs, and silicon partners to bring Fast Pair to even more devices. Last month, we held a talk at I/O announcing 10+ certified devices, support for Qualcomm’s Smart Headset Development Kit, and upcoming experiences for Fast Pair devices.

The Fast Pair team presenting at I/O 2019.

The Fast Pair team presenting at I/O 2019. Upcoming experiences Fast Pair makes pairing seamless across Android phones - this year, we are introducing additional features to improve Bluetooth device management. True Wireless Features. As True Wireless Stereo (TWS) headphones continue to gain momentum in the market and with users, it is important to build system-wide support for TWS. Later this year, TWS headsets with Fast Pair will be able to broadcast individual battery information for the case and buds. This enables features such as case open and close battery notifications and per-component battery reporting throughout the UI.

Detailed battery level notifications surfaced during “case open” for TWS headphones.

Detailed battery level notifications surfaced during “case open” for TWS headphones.

• Find My Device. Fast Pair devices will soon be surfaced in the Find My Device app and website, allowing users to easily track down lost devices. Headset owners can view the location and time of last use, as well as unpair or ring the buds to locate when they are in range.

• Connected Device Details. In Android Q, Fast Pair devices will have an enhanced Bluetooth device details page to centralize management and key settings. This includes links to Find My Device, Assistant settings (if available), and additional OEM-specified settings that will link to the OEM’s companion app.

The updated Device details screen in Q allows easy access to key settings and the headphone’s companion app.

Compatible Devices

Below is a list of devices that were showcased during our I/O talk:

Anker Spirit Pro GVA
Anker SoundCore Flare+ (Speaker)
JBL Live 220BT
JBL Live 400BT
JBL Live 500BT
JBL Live 650BT
Jaybird Tarah
1More Dual Driver BT ANC
LG HBS-SL5
LG HBS-PL6S
LG HBS-SL6S
LG HBS-PL5
Cleer Ally Plus

Interested in Fast Pair?

If you are interested in creating Fast Pair compatible Bluetooth devices, please take a look at:

Once you have selected devices to integrate, head to our Nearby Devices console to register your product. Reach out to us at fast-pair-integrations@google.com if you have any questions.

Kotlin named Breakout Project of the Year at OSCON

18 July 2019

Posted by Wojtek Kaliciński, Developer Advocate, Android

Stephanie on Stage with Kotlin on screen

Stephanie Saad Cuthbertson announces support for Kotlin during the Developer Keynote at I/O 2017. Today at OSCON (the O'Reilly Open Source Software Conference), Kotlin was awarded the Open Source Award for Breakout Project of the Year. There is no doubt to us why Kotlin received this award: it’s a fast moving (but thoughtfully developed) programming language that lets you write better code, faster. It’s great to see Kotlin continue to receive the sort of recognition as Breakout Project of the Year, building on other awards like #1 fastest growing language on Github. We’re big fans of Kotlin, and we’ve heard that you are too – feedback from you is in part why we announced support for the language over two years ago. This meant bundling the Kotlin plugin in Android Studio, along with promising to support Kotlin-built apps going forward. But there was a long way to go for many teams at Google to provide a first class experience with Kotlin in the Android ecosystem, and to convince developers that Kotlin on Android is not just a fad, but is here to stay. If you haven’t tried Kotlin yet, now is a great time to start! In fact, in the past two years, we’ve been adding a number of new features and upgrades to the Kotlin for Android experience, including:

Android Jetpack APIs now have first class support for Kotlin Coroutines, transforming the way we do async operations on Android. This includes Room, LiveData, ViewModels, WorkManager and more coming in the future.

Many Jetpack libraries have Kotlin extension libraries (KTX) to make using them even more fluent with Kotlin.

The compilation toolchain has received many improvements for Kotlin, including compiler enhancements, incremental annotation processing with KAPT, and Kotlin-specific R8 optimizations.

All of our documentation pages now contain Kotlin code snippets, so you can easily compare how our APIs work in both languages.

Most of our flagship samples are also written in Kotlin (including IOSched, Plaid, Sunflower and many more), along with any new samples that we make in the future.

We've added a language switcher to our API reference pages, so you can have a Kotlin view of the AndroidX library and the Android framework.

We doubled down on providing guidance to developers and teams who want to switch to Kotlin on our developers.android.com/kotlin pages.

Our Developer Relations engineers are posting real life examples and guides on integrating Kotlin in your apps on our Medium publication, such as the great intro to Coroutines on Android series and many more.

If you prefer to learn Kotlin in person, you can join one of the many Kotlin/Everywhere events happening around the world. If you are an organizer in a local developer community, consider signing up to host your own event!
This initiative is a cooperation between JetBrains and Google.

For those of you who don't have access to in-person training, we added a new, free course on Udacity for Developing Android apps in Kotlin. Our Kotlin Bootcamp for Programmers course is still available as well!

We have worked with many external partners to gather feedback and learn about their experiences with Kotlin, such as this case study with Square.

And lastly, we've enabled Kotlin as a supported language for Android app teams at Google. We're already seeing adoption in apps such as Google Home, Google Drive, Android System UI, Nest, with many more to follow.

The road to fully supporting Kotlin on Android was not always easy, but it was truly rewarding seeing Kotlin adoption among professional Android developers rise from a handful of early adopters to around 50% since the original announcement! We were confident when we announced earlier this year at Google I/O 2019 that Android is going increasingly Kotlin-first, opening up the possibility for APIs built specifically around Kotlin and for Kotlin users, starting with the new, declarative UI toolkit - Jetpack Compose (still in early development). We want to congratulate JetBrains, our partners through the Kotlin Foundation and creators of Kotlin, on receiving the OSCON Open Source Award today. It shows how disruptive and transformative Kotlin has been, and not just for the Android developer community, but beyond. We know one thing: on Android, Kotlin is here to stay.

Android Dev Summit 2019 Registration is Open

16 July 2019

Posted by Sean McQuillan, Developer Advocate, Android

Registration now open! #AndroidDevSummit. Oct 23-24 in Sunnyvale, CA

Registration is now open for Android Dev Summit 2019! Learn, share, and connect at #AndroidDevSummit 2019. It's a great place to learn new Android development skills, share feedback and ideas with the Android engineering team, and connect with Android developers from around the globe. Join us for the two day conference on October 23-24 hosted at the Google Event Center (MP7) in Sunnyvale, CA. We'll share two days of deep technical talks covering topics such as Jetpack, Android Studio, Android Q, Kotlin, and more. You will learn about the latest innovations straight from the Android engineering team, discover best practices to help you build even better apps, and accelerate your teams’ productivity on Android. The Android engineering team will be there in person to answer your questions, hear your ideas and feedback (we love that!), and discuss the direction of Android development. And you will be joined by Android developers from around the globe ⁠— it’s a great place to connect with your community. Conference details When: October 23-24 Where: Google Event Center (MP7) Unable to attend? Wherever you are, you can still watch the talks and engage with the community. You can tune in from anywhere to watch all of the talks online by joining our livestream. Sign up here to stay updated on event announcements. All of the talks will also be posted on YouTube soon after the event, so you can always catch up with the recordings on your own schedule. The event schedule has not yet been posted, but we encourage you to check out last year’s sessions to learn more about the great content and opportunities Android Dev Summit has to offer. Register now Attendance is free and by invitation only ⁠— register now to become eligible for an invitation. Selected attendees will receive their tickets after registration closes on August 15th at 5:00pm PDT. #AndroidDevSummit will fill up fast, so be sure to register today.

What’s new for text in Android Q

11 July 2019

Posted by Florina Muntenescu, Android Developer Advocate Displaying text is an important task in most apps, so in Android Q we're continuing to introduce new features to support your needs and improve performance. We disabled hyphenation by default, enabled creating a typeface using multiple fonts or font families, exposed the list of fonts installed on the device, and improved some of the most-used text styling APIs. Hyphenation is off by default in Android Q and AppCompat v1.1.0 Our performance tests showed that when hyphenation is enabled, up to 70% of the time spent on measuring text is on hyphenation.

pie chart showing CPU of time spent making StaticLayout: Hyphenation takes up to 70% of the time spent measuring text, 30% Other text

Hyphenation takes up to 70% of the time spent measuring textGiven that hyphenation often isn’t needed for all TextViews in an app, and because of the impact on performance, we decided to turn hyphenation off by default in Android Q and AppCompat v1.1.0. If you want to use hyphenation, you need to manually turn it on in your app by setting the hyphenation frequency to normal. You can set this in multiple ways: As a TextAppearance attribute in styles.xml: <style name="MyTextAppearance" parent="TextAppearance.AppCompat"> <item name="android:hyphenationFrequency">normal</item> </style> As a TextView attribute: <TextView android:hyphenationFrequency="normal" /> Directly in code: textView.hyphenationFrequency = Layout.HYPHENATION_FREQUENCY_NORMAL Find out more about how hyphenation works from this talk at Android Dev Summit 2018. Use multiple custom fonts in the same TextView Consider a button which mixes a custom font (Lato in this example) with an icon font:

Secure Checkout Button with lock icon, icon and latin fonts

Button with icon and Latin fonts The Button class accepts only a single instance of a typeface to be set on the text. Pre-Android Q, you can create a Typeface using a single font family. Android Q enables the creation of a typeface from multiple font families with a new API, Typeface.CustomFallbackBuilder, that allows adding up to 64 font families per typeface. Our icon font example can be implemented like this: button.typeface = Typeface.CustomFallbackBuilder( // add the Latin font FontFamily.Builder( Font.Builder(assets, "lato.ttf").build() ).build() ).addCustomFallback( // add the icon font FontFamily.Builder( Font.Builder(assets, "icon_font.ttf").build() ).build() ).build() When creating the font family, make sure you don’t put fonts that belong to different families in the same font family object nor the same style fonts into the same font family. For example, putting Lato, Kosugi, and Material into the same font family creates an invalid configuration, as does putting two bold fonts into the same font family. To define the general font family (serif, sans-serif, or monospace) to be used when text is rendered using system fonts, use the setSystemFallback() method to set the system fallback font: Typeface.CustomFallbackBuilder( FontFamily.Builder( ... ).build() ).setSystemFallback("sans-serif") .build() Text styling API updates Android Q brings several updates to different text styling APIs: Improved support for variable fonts TextAppearance now supports the fontVariationSettings attribute: <style name="MyTextAppearance" parent="TextAppearance.AppCompat"> <item name="android:fontVariationSettings">...</item> </style> The fontVariationSettings attribute can be set directly on the TextView in Android Q and in AppCompatTextView: <TextView ... app:fontVariationSettings="..." /> Improved spans APIs TextAppearanceSpan now supports typeface, shadow settings, fontFeatureSettings and fontVariationSettings. LineBackgroundSpan and LineHeightSpan interfaces now have standard implementations: LineBackgroundSpan.Standard and LineHeightSpan.Standard. Access system fonts With more than 100 languages supported by Android, and with different fonts supporting different character sets, knowing which system font can render a given character is not trivial. Apps doing their own text rendering such as games, document viewers, or browsers need this information. In Android Q, you can retrieve the supported system font for a string with the FontMatcher NDK API.

System fonts that can render this text Let’s consider the above search string. The FontMatcher API returns us the font object and length. A simplified pseudocode example looks like this: // font = NotoSansCJK-Regular.ttc // length = 2 auto[font, length] = AFontMatcher_match("たすく a.k.a. のな"); // font = Roboto-Regular.ttf // length = 8 auto[font, length] = AFontMatcher_match(" a.k.a. のな"); // font = NotoSansCJK-Regular.ttc // length = 2 auto[font, length] = AFontMatcher_match("のな"); The FontMatcher API never returns nullptr:

If no font supports the given string, a font for Tofu (󟿽), the missing glyph symbol, is returned.

If no exact style is supported, a font with the closest, most similar style is returned.

If you want to get all available system fonts, you can do this with a new font enumeration API. In Java, you can use SystemFonts.getAvailableFonts, or in the NDK, you can use ASystemFontIterator. The results of the font enumeration are changed only by a system update, so you should cache them. Font updatesNew Myanmar font Android added a new Myanmar font to Android Q that is Unicode-compliant and capable of rendering both Unicode and non-Unicode Burmese (commonly known as Zawgyi), right out of the box. This means starting in Android Q, Android makes it easier for users to switch to Unicode: a user can now use a Unicode font to read Unicode and non-Unicode text for the first time. Android also added new requirements to the Android ecosystem CDD that takes a stronger stance in requiring Unicode, including a new subtag "Qaag" which OEMs should use as a locale designating non-Unicode Burmese. All of these changes should make developers’ life easier in the long term, as reduced ecosystem fragmentation makes it easier to develop for our 50M users in Myanmar. New emojis

Emojis in Android Q Say Hello to your new emoji friends! The latest update includes a number of disability-focused emojis, multi-racial couples, as well as a few cute animals and household objects. See the latest and greatest in Gboard on your Android Q device of choice. Text plays an important role in a vast majority of apps, so we’re continuing to invest in improving text API features and performance. Learn more about the new APIs in Android Q along with best practices when working with text in our Google I/O 2019 talk:

Android Q Beta 5 Update

10 July 2019

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Android Q Beta 5 launches today! Today we're rolling out Beta 5, bringing Android Q Beta very close to the system behaviors you'll see in the final release. Developer APIs were already finalized in the previous update. So, now is the time to test your apps for compatibility and make sure they are ready! You can get Beta 5 today on Pixel devices by enrolling here. If you're already enrolled and received Beta 4 on your Pixel device, you'll automatically get the update to Beta 5. Partners participating in the Android Q Beta program will also be updating their devices to Beta 5 over the coming weeks. To get started with Android Q Beta, visit developer.android.com/preview. What’s in Beta 5? The Beta 5 update includes the latest Android Q system images for Pixel and Android jEmulator, along with the final Android Q developer APIs (API level 29), the official API 29 SDK, and updated build tools for Android Studio. These give you everything you need to test your apps on Android Q and build with Android Q features. Gestural navigation updates As we talked about at Google I/O, we’ve been working closely with device-maker partners to ensure a standardized Android gestural navigation for users and developers. Gestural navigation lets apps use the full screen for content while minimizing the visible system chrome and navigation – which is particularly important on today’s edge-to-edge screens. In Beta 5 we’re continuing to improve and polish based on your feedback and we wanted to provide an update on a few key areas. We’ve introduced a swipe gesture from either corner to get to the Assistant - you’ll notice indicators in the bottom corners that we’re continuing to tune. For apps using a navigation drawer, we’ve added a peek behavior when users have grabbed the drawer to indicate that a swipe will bring in the navigation drawer. This works for all versions of DrawerLayout, with DrawerLayout 1.1.0-alpha02 optimized for the best experience. Custom launchers are another area where we’ve heard feedback and we’re continuing to work on issues, particularly with stability and Recents. Starting in Beta 6, we’ll switch users to 3-button navigation when they are using a custom launcher by default. We’ll address the remaining issues in a post-launch update allowing all users to switch to gestural navigation. Meanwhile, please continue to give us your feedback. Get your apps ready for Android Q! With the consumer release coming soon, it’s highest priority for all Android developers to update your current apps for compatibility as soon as possible. Here’s how to do it:

Install your app on Android Q: Install your current app from Google Play onto an Android Q Beta device or emulator, then test. Your app should run and look great and run well, with full functionality. handle all of the Android Q behavior changes properly. Watch for impacts from privacy changes, gestural navigation, changes to dynamic linker paths for Bionic libraries, and others.

Test for uses of restricted non-SDK interfaces and move to public SDK or NDK equivalents instead. Details here.

Test the libraries and SDKs in your app: Make sure they work as expected on Android Q and follow best practices for privacy, performance, UX, data handling, and permissions. If you find an issue, try updating to the latest version of the SDK, or reach out to the SDK developer for help. You can also report SDK compatibility issues here.

We realize that supporting these changes is an investment for you too, and we're working to minimize the impact on your apps and be responsive to your input as we move toward the final release. Enhance your app with Android Q features and APIs Next, when you're ready, dive into Android Q and learn about the new features and APIs that you can use. Here are some of the top features to get started with. We recommend these for every app:

Dark Theme: Ensure a consistent experience for users who enable system-wide dark theme by adding a Dark Theme or enabling Force Dark.

Support gestural navigation in your app by going edge-to-edge and making sure your custom gestures are complementary to the system navigation gestures.

Optimize for foldables: Deliver seamless, edge-to-edge experiences on today’s innovative devices by optimizing for foldables.

We recommend these if relevant for your app:

More interactive notifications: If your notifications include messages, enable suggested replies and actions in notifications to engage users and let them take action instantly.

Better biometrics: If you use biometric auth, move to BiometricPrompt, the preferred way to support fingerprint auth on modern devices.

Enriched recording: To support captioning or gameplay recording, enable audio playback capture -- it’s a great way to reach more users and make your app more accessible.

Better networking APIs: If your app manages IoT devices over Wi-Fi, try the new network connection APIs for functions like configuring, downloading, or printing.

These are just a few of the many new features and APIs in Android Q -- to see them all, visit the Android Q Beta site for developers. Publish your app updates to Google Play As soon as you're ready, publish your APK updates to Google Play that are compiled against, or optionally targeting, API 29. To make sure that your updated app runs well on Android Q as well as older versions, try using Google Play testing tracks. With tracks you can safely get early feedback from a small group of users -- including Beta 5 users — and then do a staged rollout to production. How do I get Beta 5? It’s easy! Just enroll any supported Pixel device here to get the update over-the-air. If you're already enrolled, you'll receive the update soon and no action is needed on your part. Downloadable system images are also available here. Partners who are participating in the Android Q Beta program will be updating their devices over the coming weeks. See android.com/beta for details. To get started developing, download the official API 29 SDK and tools into the stable release of Android Studio 3.4, or for the latest Android Q support update to Android Studio 3.5 Beta. Then follow these instructions to configure your environment, and see the release notes for known issues. There will be one more Beta release before the consumer launch later this quarter. Please continue to share your feedback and requests -- you can use our hotlists for filing platform issues (including privacy and behavior changes), app compatibility issues, and third-party SDK issues. Also, the Android engineering team will host a Reddit AMA on r/androiddev to answer your technical questions about Android Q later this month. Look out for an announcement on r/androiddev with details in the coming weeks. We look forward to addressing your questions!

Indie Games Showcase from Google Play - meet the winners!

02 July 2019

Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Developer MarketingWe just wrapped up the Indie Games Showcase in Europe, Japan & South Korea! Back in March we started our search for some of the newest and most creative indie titles from these regions. The search culminated last week with the celebration of indie developers at events in London, Tokyo, and Seoul, and the selection of the winners from our finalists. Developers from 12 countries traveled to the events and showcased their games to the audience of gamers, industry experts, YouTube creators, and journalists.The games were on show to the public, who spent several hours trying out their games and voting for their favourites, alongside the Google Play team. The top 10 finalists were then selected, and went on to pitch their games, and compete for big prizes in front of the jury.

Now, we are happy to announce the winners from each region! They will be returning home with a prize package that includes promotions on the Google Play Store, consultations with Google teams, Google hardware, and more.We also want to take this opportunity to congratulate all the other finalists and developers who entered the competition this year. We are impressed by your creativity and passion, and hope you will continue to create amazing experiences for players worldwide.

Europe

G30 - A Memory Maze by Ivan Kovalov (Russia) Ordia by Loju (United Kingdom) Photographs by EightyEight Games (United Kingdom) The other finalists as selected by audience and Google Play votes were:

#DRIVE by Pixel Perfect Dude (Poland) Fly THIS! By Northplay (Denmark) Golf Peaks by Afterburn (Poland) Rest in Pieces by Itatake (Sweden) see/saw by Kamibox (Germany) STAP by Overhead Game Studio (United Kingdom) Tesla vs. Lovecraft by 10tons (Finland)

Japan

Infection - 感染 - by CanvasSoft MeltLand by 個人 Bear's Restaurant by 個人 The other finalists as selected by audience and Google Play votes were:

Lunch Time Fish by SoftFunk HULABREAKS ReversEstory by 個人 Kamiori - カミオリ by TeamOrigami キグルミキノコ Q-bit -第一章- by 個人クマムシさん惑星　ミクロの地球最強伝説 by Ars Edutainment Girl x Sun - Terasene - Tower defence & Novel game by SleepingMuseum Persephone by Momo-pi

South Korea

ROOMS: The Toymaker's Mansion by HandMade Game Seoul2033: Backer by Banjiha Games Cartoon Craft by Studio NAP The other finalists as selected by audience and Google Play votes were:

Hexonia by Togglegear Hexagon Dungeon by Bleor Games 7Days - Decide your story by Buff Studio WhamBam Warriors by DrukHigh Onslot Car by Wondersquad Maze Cube by IAMABOY 언노운 나이츠 by teamarex

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Moving Android Studio and Android Emulator to 64-bit versions

11 June 2019

Posted by Sam Lin, Product Manager, Android

With Project Marble, the Android Studio team focused our efforts on making the fundamental features and flows of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) rock-solid. Performance is an underlying tenant to delivering a high quality IDE. To this end, we are sharpening our product focus and we will only support 64-bit operating systems going forward. Using Android Studio with an 64-bit operating systems enables efficient access to memory for both the IDE and the Android Emulator, and overall leads to a better development experience. While this change will not affect most Android Studio users, this change does have an impact if you use 32-bit versions of Microsoft^® Windows^®. To aid in this transition for those developers using 32-bit versions of Microsoft Windows, we want to give you details on the upcoming depreciation timeline plus steps to take to be ready for this upcoming change. Timeline To minimize the impact of this change towards exclusively supporting 64-bit operating systems, we will first deprecate the 32-bit version. During the depreciation phase, both Android Studio and the Android Emulator will continue to work but the products will not receive new feature updates. During this transition period you can still download the product from the Android Studio web site. After one year, we will officially end product support and will remove the 32-bit product version download links. Note, if you have the 32-bit version of Android Studio previously installed during this period then the product should continue to work, but we will not provide a link for you to re-download the product. The exact dates for the depreciation and end-of-support period are in the table below:

Supported 32-bit Product Version	Deprecation from	End of Support on
Android Studio IDE 3.6	December 31, 2019	December 31, 2020
Android Emulator 28.0.25	Jun 30, 2019	December 31, 2020

Advantages of a 64-bit development environment There are a few advantages to using a 64-bit version of Android Studio, which include:

Performance - The IDE can perform better because it can access more than 4GB of memory. The increase in memory especially provides a better experience when you are working on a large project.

64-bit App Support - You can build both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of apps if your app uses C/C++ native code. Testing on both architectures can help you to get ready for the 64-bit requirement on Google Play which starts on August 1st, 2019.

Testing on Emulators - Both the 32-bit and 64-bit Android Emulator system images are supported by the 64-bit version of the Android Emulator. This flexibility makes it easier to test your app in different Android environments with one development machine.

Next steps To recap, before ending support for the 32-bit version of Android Studio, we want to inform you in advance, provide guidance, and allow for a one-year lead time to help you migrate to a 64-bit operating system. You can still use 32-bit versions of Android Studio, but be mindful that these version will not receive future updates. Therefore, if you want to migrate we suggest you start planning early so that you can continue to get the latest product updates and take advantage of the performance improvements of a 64-bit development environment.

Improved app quality and discovery on Google Play

04 June 2019

Posted by Kosuke Suzuki, Product Manager, Google Play Every month, more than 2 billion users from over 190 countries visit the Google Play Store to browse and discover new apps and games. As part of making Google Play a great discovery experience, we continue to increase our focus on quality. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be updating our featuring and ranking logic to further prioritize high quality apps and games with strong technical performance and engaging content. If you’re looking for ways to improve your app quality, below are three key areas to focus on. Along with these suggestions, we've highlighted several tools available in the Google Play Console to help you better understand user behavior, monitor technical performance, and deliver the best in-app experience for users. Remember, app quality will impact where and how prominently you're eligible to surface in the store, so always look to create the most compelling and delightful experience possible. Good in-app user experience Have you thought about your UI and if your app has intuitive navigation, controls, and menu access? Do you have a good first-time-user experience, overall polished design, and enough content to keep users engaged for the long term? Quality guidelines: meet user expectations and maximize your exposure opportunities by testing against the quality guidelines for different platforms. Testing tracks: release early versions of your app to gather early user feedback and make improvements before full release. Engaging content: build loyalty and sustainable app engagement by satisfying your users needs Ad placement: for apps with ads integrated, ensure a good user experience by choosing the right ad format and placement throughout your app. Strong app stability and technical performance Have you considered whether your app has good overall technical performance, and if it is power-thrifty, responsive, efficient, and well-behaved? 42% of users who leave a 1-star review mention stability or bugs. Android vitals: review the Android vitals dashboard to see how your app is performing on core vitals metrics including crash rate, ANR rate, excessive wakeups, and stuck partial wake locks in the background. Look at developer selected peer benchmarks to see how you measure up to others in your category. Exhibiting bad behavior in Android vitals will negatively affect the user experience in your app and could limit your exposure opportunities on Google Play. Pre-launch reports: identify where your app has problems to ensure you’re presenting the highest possible quality to users upon launch. The pre-launch reports use automated tests on real devices that can identify layout issues, provide crash diagnostics, locate security vulnerabilities, and more. Effective store listing page Last but not least, a quality app also means having an effective and accurate listing page. Does your store listing page make a great first impression? Does it clearly and accurately communicate the value and intended use cases of your app? Best practices: use strong creative assets, including your app title, icon, screenshots and video, along with a clear and informative app description, that provide an accurate representation of your app. To improve discovery opportunities, we suggest all pages have a video (set to public or unlisted and non-monetized) to inform users about your app, and for game developers to provide three or more 16:9 aspect ratio screenshots. New icon specification: create a more polished experience on the store by updating your icon before June 24th. Ratings and reviews: monitor your user ratings and reviews and respond to negative reviews where possible. When receiving a reply from developers, users increase their rating by +0.7 stars on average. Paying attention to ratings and reviews will be increasingly important as we rollout the new rating score in August 2019. This will place more weight on your most recent ratings in the Google Play Store. Store listing experiments: A/B test different versions of your listing page amongst actual Google Play users. Make sure to test each component independently and run tests for at least a week in order to gather significant results. Custom store listings: tailor your marketing messages to specific user groups based on their country, install state or even pre-registration. This is a great way to highlight key features and updates best suited for existing or lapsed users. Localization: take advantage of Google Play’s worldwide reach to identify key markets, translate your app store listing, and even run store listing experiments to optimize for each country. Get the most out of the Google Play Console and learn about improving app quality on the Academy for App Success, a free e-learning resource.

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Congratulations to the finalists of the Indie Games Showcase from Google Play

22 May 2019

Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Platforms & Ecosystems Developer Marketing

Google Play Indie Games Showcase Announcements gif

Back in March we opened submissions for the Indie Games Showcase, an international competition for games studios from Europe*, South Korea, and Japan who are constantly pushing the boundaries of storytelling, visual excellence, and creativity in mobile. We were once again impressed by the diversity and creativity that the indie community is bringing to mobile, and we’re happy to announce the 20 finalists. Check out the local websites to learn more about the finalists and the events.

Europe

AntVentor by LoopyMood (Ukraine) CHUCHEL by Amanita Design (Czech Republic) #DRIVE by Pixel Perfect Dude (Poland) Fly THIS! By Northplay (Denmark) Fobia by Tapteek (Russia) G30 - A Memory Maze by Ivan Kovalov (Russia) Gold Peaks by Afterburn (Poland) Grayland by 1DER Entertainment (Slovakia) Hexologic by MythicOwl (Poland) Lucid Dream Adventure by Dali Games (Poland) OCO by SPECTRUM48 (United Kingdom) Ordia by Loju (United Kingdom) Peep by Taw (Russia) Photographs by EightyEight Games (United Kingdom) Rest in Pieces by Itatake (Sweden) Returner Zhero by Fantastic, yes (Denmark) see/saw by Kamibox (Germany) STAP by Overhead Game Studio (United Kingdom) Tesla vs. Lovecraft by 10tons (Finland) Tiny Room Stories: Town Mystery by Kiary games (Russia)

Japan

ALTER EGO by 株式会社カラメルカラム Infection - 感染 - by CanvasSoft Jumpion - Make a two-step jump ! by Comgate Lunch Time Fish by SoftFunk HULABREAKS MeltLand by 個人 ReversEstory by 個人キグルミキノコ Q-bit -第一章- by 個人 SumoRoll - Road to the Yokozuna by Studio Kingmo Escape Game: The Little Prince by 株式会社 Jammsworks Kamiori - カミオリ by TeamOrigami Bear's Restaurant by 個人クマムシさん惑星　ミクロの地球最強伝説 by Ars Edutainment ゴリラ！ゴリラ！ゴリラ！by Gang Gorilla Games Girl x Sun - Terasene - Tower defence & Novel game by SleepingMuseum タシテケス by 個人 Destination: Dragons! by GAME GABURI Cute cat's cake shop by 個人 Persephone by Momo-pi Hamcorollin' by illuCalab. Food Truck Pup: Cooking Chef by 合同会社ゲームスタート

South Korea

다크타운 - 온라인 by 초콜릿소프트 Bad 2 Bad: Extinction by Dawinstone 셧더펑 : 슈팅액션 by Take Five Games Cartoon Craft by Studio NAP Catch Idle by HalftimeStudio Hexagon Dungeon by Bleor Games Hexonia by Togglegear Mahjong - Magic Fantasy by Aquagamez Maze Cube by IAMABOY Road to Valor: World War II by Dreamotion Inc. Onslot Car by Wondersquad ROOMS: The Toymaker's Mansion by HandMade Game Rhythm Star: Music Adventure by Anbsoft 7Days - Decide your story by Buff Studio Seoul2033: Backer by Banjiha Games Super Jelly Pop by STARMONSTER UNLINK Daily Puzzle by Supershock 몬스터파크 온라인 by OVENCODE WhamBam Warriors by DrukHigh 언노운 나이츠 by teamarex We will welcome all finalists at events in London, Seoul, and Tokyo, where they will showcase their games to an audience of players, press and industry experts, for a chance to win the top prizes. The events are open to the public, so if you would like to meet these games developers, try out their creations, and help choose the winners, sign up on the regional websites. Congratulations to all finalists! * The competition is open to developers from the following European countries and Israel: Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland).

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Google releases source code for Google I/O 2019 for Android

Final Beta update, official Android Q coming soon!

Make stronger decisions with new Google Play Console data

What’s new with Fast Pair

Kotlin named Breakout Project of the Year at OSCON

Android Dev Summit 2019 Registration is Open

What’s new for text in Android Q

Android Q Beta 5 Update

Indie Games Showcase from Google Play - meet the winners!

Moving Android Studio and Android Emulator to 64-bit versions

Improved app quality and discovery on Google Play

Congratulations to the finalists of the Indie Games Showcase from Google Play

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