Android 16 has reached Platform Stability with Beta 3. The API floor is locked, app-facing behaviors are last, and now you can push Android 16-targeted apps to the Play Retailer.
The Android 16 beta now helps Auracast broadcast audio with suitable LE Audio listening to aids on Pixel 9 gadgets, It introduces define textual content, changing excessive distinction textual content, which attracts a bigger contrasting space round textual content to vastly enhance legibility for customers with low imaginative and prescient, and provides the flexibility to check the Native Community Safety function, which provides customers extra management over which apps can entry gadgets on their native community.
Be certain that to check your apps for compatibility now, as the discharge is coming to non-beta customers quickly with modifications to JobScheduler, broadcasts, ART, Intents, accessibility, Bluetooth, and extra.
Android Studio now has Gemini in Android Studio for companies by way of Gemini Code Help to satisfy the privateness, safety, and administration wants of organizations.
With Gemini Code Help, your code stays safe with an information governance coverage, you keep management and possession of your knowledge and IP, and also you profit from generative AI IP indemnification, safeguarding in opposition to copyright infringement claims associated to AI-generated code.
With a Code Help Enterprise license, you’ll be able to hook up with your GitHub, GitLab, or BitBucket repositories to get help personalized to your group’s codebases. Gemini in Android Studio additionally offers tailor-made help for Android builders, with options like construct and sync error assist, Gemini-powered App High quality Insights, and assist with Logcat crashes.
Gemini in Android Studio now helps multimodal inputs, permitting you to connect photographs on to prompts. To do that out, obtain the most recent Android Studio canary.
With the picture attachment icon within the Gemini chat window, you’ll be able to connect JPEG or PNG recordsdata to prompts. You possibly can convert wireframes or mockups into Jetpack Compose code, achieve insights into structure or knowledge stream diagrams, and troubleshoot UI bugs by importing screenshots and asking Gemini for options.
Samsung’s One UI 7 gives larger personalization and an optimized, extra distinguished widget expertise. Widgets put your model and key options entrance and heart on the person’s machine, main to raised person engagement and extra. Google Play now has a devoted widgets search filter to assist extra simply determine apps with widgets, new widget badges on App Element Pages and a curated widgets editorial web page to assist apps with widgets achieve visibility and attain a wider viewers.
We simply completed the Widget Highlight week, overlaying our new widget High quality Tiers, Canonical Layouts, the brand new Figma Widget Design Equipment, Jetpack Look, and the Coding Widgets format video plus codelab that will help you design and construct superb widgets.
Android and Google Play had a bunch of bulletins on the annual Sport Builders Convention (GDC) final month in San Francisco.
Android introduced that Vulkan is now the official graphics API, unlocking options like ray tracing and multithreading. In case your recreation makes use of OpenGL, Android will use ANGLE to translate OpenGL to Vulkan.
The Android Dynamic Efficiency Framework (ADPF) has been up to date to offer longer and smoother gameplay classes. ADPF is designed to work throughout a variety of gadgets and gives built-in assist with recreation engines.
Play Console will embrace Low Reminiscence Killers (LMK) in Android Vitals, offering insights into reminiscence constraints that may trigger your recreation to crash.
There’s a pilot program to simplify bringing PC video games to cellular, with video games corresponding to DREDGE and TABS Cellular rising their cellular viewers utilizing this program.
Google Play is bettering its platform for PC video games, offering higher person experiences and new methods for builders to interact PC gamers.
You should utilize the Play Video games PC SDK for native PC video games on Google Play Video games, offering instruments like in-app buy integration and safety safety. You possibly can distribute by way of the Play Console, the place you’ll be able to handle each cellular and PC recreation builds. There’s a new earnback program that lets you earn as much as a further 15% if you deliver your PC video games to Google Play Video games on PC.
Cellular video games will likely be obtainable on PC by default, with the choice to decide out. Video games may have a playability badge indicating their compatibility with PC. We’re partnering with OEMs to make Google Play Video games accessible from the beginning menu on new gadgets this yr. New options corresponding to customized controls are actually obtainable to assist gamers tailor their setup, and multi-account and multi-instance assist are being added.
As well as, Play Factors will likely be simpler to trace and extra rewarding on PC, with as much as 10x factors boosters, and Google is engaged on an answer that will help you run person acquisition campaigns for each emulated cellular and native PC titles inside Google Play Video games on PC.
We introduced the Android XR developer preview, a unified platform for XR growth utilizing acquainted instruments and Open Requirements. You should utilize Android Studio, Jetpack libraries, and Compose for XR (for simplified UI growth). Unity builders get assist for Unity’s editor and XR packages. Apps will likely be distributed through the Play Retailer. Key options embrace eye, voice, and hand multimodal enter, Android accessibility options, computerized adaptation of your present large-screen suitable apps, Jetpack XR SDK with ARCore, and Unity assist based mostly on OpenXR.
Google is enhancing security and safety on Google Play and Android by offering instruments that make it simpler so that you can construct safe apps.
Listed here are a number of the methods Google is bettering the app ecosystem:
- Play Console pre-review checks now embrace the flexibility to verify privateness coverage hyperlinks and login credential necessities. Extra pre-review checks are deliberate for this yr.
- Notifications in Android Studio warn you to related insurance policies as you code. This yr, the notifications will develop to cowl a wider vary of insurance policies.
- Google is bettering its coverage expertise to present you clearer updates and extra time for substantial modifications.
- The Google Play Developer Assist Neighborhood will likely be expanded to incorporate extra languages, corresponding to Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese.
- Apps utilizing the Play Integrity API options are seeing an 80% drop in unauthorized utilization on common in comparison with different apps.
- Google will improve the Play Integrity API with stronger safety for much more customers and is bettering the know-how that powers the API on all gadgets operating Android 13 (API stage 33) and above.
- Badges will likely be added to extra app classes sooner or later.
- Credential Supervisor API is now in Beta for Digital IDs.
- Google Play Defend dwell risk detection is increasing its safety to focus on malicious purposes that attempt to impersonate monetary apps.
The Google Play group lined how one can prioritize media privateness in your app, recommending requesting solely important permissions, and utilizing the Android Picture Picker as a substitute of requesting broad storage entry. Be clear with customers about why your app wants entry to their pictures and movies if you happen to’re utilizing a customized picker.
#WeArePlay talked about how Reminiscence Lane Video games helps individuals with dementia, and the way they’re providing deeply private video games in a number of languages. Co-founder Bruce was impressed by his mom and co-founder Peter’s mom, who, regardless of having vascular dementia, lit up when previous household pictures.
The creators try for frustration-free recreation design and Generative AI could also be used to create personalised and localized recreation content material, with the aim to supply deeply private video games in a number of languages.
Nevin lined widespread media processing operations with Jetpack Media 3 Transformer, together with widespread enhancing operations corresponding to:
- Transcoding: Re-encode an enter file right into a specified output format.
- Trimming: Set Transformer as much as trim the enter video from a begin to finish level.
- Muting: Mute the audio within the exported video file.
- Resizing: Resize the enter video by scaling it down (or up) to a specified peak and width.
Transformer prioritizes transmuxing (repackaging video streams with out re-encoding) for fundamental video edits the place potential. When not potential, Transformer falls again to transcoding (decoding video samples into uncooked knowledge, then re-encoding them for storage in a brand new container).
Jolanda confirmed the way to implement clean transitions for foldable gadgets getting into tabletop mode utilizing CameraX and Compose. Key takeaways embrace:
- Leveraging Adaptive APIs: Replace dependencies to make the most of the most recent animation and adaptive APIs, together with Compose 1.8 and material3-adaptive.
- Using Rulers: Use Compose 1.7.0’s rulers (accessible through currentWindowAdaptiveInfo()) to find out hinge place for format changes.
- Animating Bounds: Make use of Modifier.animateBounds() inside a LookaheadScope to animate composable bounds throughout mode transitions (flat to tabletop).
- Utilizing Animated Visibility: Think about using AnimatedVisibility to create a dynamic management panel that may be positioned relative to the hinge.
Since Android 16 requires you to make WebViews edge-to-edge, Ash lined finest practices for doing so, corresponding to:
- Should you don’t personal the WebView content material, wrap the WebView and pad it.
- Should you do personal the content material, use the `viewport-fit=cowl` meta tag, CSS variables for protected space insets, and JavaScript to inject padding. Deal with IME insets to keep away from keyboard overlap.
Cyril over at Amo lined how they leveraged Jetpack Compose to create a pleasant person expertise by way of touch-based suggestions utilizing graphics, haptics, and sound. Bump’s implementation of customized audio, shader-based animations, and interactive map components are all constructed with the Android SDK, Jetpack Compose, Kotlin, and Google Play Companies.
Google Play’s April 2025 coverage updates impression Android builders in a number of key areas:
- Information Apps: New insurance policies require Information and Journal apps to finish a self-declaration type, replace Play Retailer listings, commonly replace content material with named sources, and keep away from internet online affiliate marketing/advert income focus.
- Monetary Companies (Line of Credit score): Apps facilitating traces of credit score are actually included beneath private mortgage insurance policies, prohibiting entry to delicate person knowledge and requiring adherence to stricter permission insurance policies.
- Person Knowledge: New finest practices emphasize compliance with knowledge safety legal guidelines (e.g., GDPR) and supply assets for doing so. Common compliance checks are beneficial.
- Photographs & Movies: Reminder that apps accessing pictures and movies require a declaration type by Could 28, 2025, and should solely entry them for direct performance functions.
Christopher, Nam, and Carmen lined how the Android group is working to enhance Android app startup efficiency, specializing in bridging the efficiency hole between preliminary launch and subsequent runs. Key takeaways embrace:
- Baseline Profiles & Dex Optimization: Essential for bettering startup time.
- Keep away from JIT Compilation: Determine and strategically load costly dependencies to reduce just-in-time compilation.
- Perfetto Traces: Use Perfetto to debug efficiency points and confirm optimization modifications.
SDK Runtime
We’ve received two new movies overlaying the SDK Runtime, a brand new strategy to work with third celebration code in your app.
Anatomy of the SDK Runtime covers how the SDK Runtime within the Privateness Sandbox isolates third-party SDKs into their very own sandboxes, enhancing person privateness and app safety. Key takeaways:
- SDKs run in their very own course of, separate from the primary app.
- Android SDK Bundles (ASBs) are the distribution format.
- Improvement targets Android 11+, with Jetpack offering backward compatibility.
- SDKs have restricted permissions and communication.
- Jetpack simplifies inter-process communication.
Introduction to the SDK Runtime covers the options and advantages of the tech each for you and in your app’s customers. The SDK Runtime isolates third-party Software program Improvement Kits (SDKs) — widespread sources of app performance like adverts or analytics — right into a separate surroundings. Advantages of this embrace:
- Enhanced Privateness: Restricts SDK entry to delicate person knowledge.
- Improved Safety: Helps stop malicious SDK conduct and advert fraud.
- Elevated Stability: Reduces app crashes attributable to third-party code.
- Quicker Updates: Permits for faster deployment of SDK safety patches.
Take a look at the brand new runtime to assist construct safer and personal experiences.
The Google Play “Better of 2024” awards highlighted Infinite Painter which decreased inking latency by 5x utilizing the graphics core and enter movement prediction Jetpack libraries.
Compose for Android TV lets you reuse present enterprise logic and structure out of your cellular apps to speed up TV app growth, and this Compose for TV video from Paul exhibits you the way. The beneficial strategy is to separate enterprise logic from UI-specific view fashions, enabling the creation of devoted TV UIs utilizing TV-specific Compose elements (from the TV materials artifact) with focus administration options like `onFocusChanged` and `bringIntoViewSpec`. Constructing a modular structure with shared UI elements, area fashions, and knowledge layers enhances code reuse throughout type elements.
There’s a bunch of recent stuff in AndroidX, headlining:
Media3 model 1.6.0 is now obtainable, which incorporates bug fixes, efficiency enhancements, and new options.
- ExoPlayer now helps HLS interstitials for advert insertion in HLS streams.
- You possibly can allow experimental assist for pre-warming decoders on the
DefaultRenderersFactory. - A brand new
media3-ui-composemodule is accessible for constructing Compose UIs for playback. MediaExtractorCompatis a drop-in substitute for the frameworkMediaExtractorhowever carried out utilizing Media3’s extractors.- You should utilize the brand new
ExperimentalFrameExtractorclass to retrieve video frames. - Dolby Imaginative and prescient streams are actually supported for transcoding/transmuxing on gadgets that assist this format.
Jetpack WindowManager 1.4 is now secure, introducing new options for constructing adaptive apps.
- WindowSizeClass API is up to date to assist customized values.
- Exercise stack pinning offers a strategy to hold an exercise stack all the time on display.
- Pane growth allows you to create a visible separation between two actions in split-screen mode.
- Dialog full-screen dim allows you to select to dim simply the container the place the dialog seems or the complete activity window.
- Enhanced posture assist lets you entry the
WindowInfoTracker#supportedPosturesAPI to find out if a tool helps tabletop mode.
The Well being Join Jetpack SDK is now in beta. The beta launch contains necessary recording strategies and machine sorts for extra correct and insightful knowledge.
New permissions let your app entry Well being Join knowledge whereas operating within the background, if the person grants consent. The PERMISSION_READ_HEALTH_DATA_HISTORY permission allows entry to person knowledge past the default 30-day window.
Well being Join now additionally gives expanded knowledge sorts, corresponding to Train Routes and pores and skin temperature.
Android app builders ought to observe that Lifecycle 2.9.0-alpha08 introduces ViewModelScenario for simpler unit testing of ViewModels. This new software simplifies testing ViewModel lifecycle and state restoration, together with SavedStateHandle performance, and ensures ViewModel.onCleared() is correctly known as. ViewModelScenario can be KMP suitable, facilitating cross-platform growth.
Different Highlights:
androidx.core:core-i18n:1.0.0:
- A big new library designed to simplify internationalization (i18n) in Android apps. It gives improved date/time formatting that respects person settings (in contrast to
android.icu.textual content.MessageFormat) and offers a backport ofandroid.icu.textual content.MessageFormatthat integrates properly with the brand new date/time formatting. That is necessary if you wish to assist numerous locales and person preferences for date and time show.
androidx.webkit:webkit:1.14.0-alpha01:
- Introduces the
PaymentRequestAPI to permit Android native cost apps to be invoked from aWebView, however builders should explicitly allow it and add a<queries>tag to their manifest. It additionally introduces experimental APIs for enhancedWebViewnavigation monitoring andWebViewCompat#saveStateto handle WebView state saving.
androidx.datastore:datastore-:1.2.0-alpha01:
- Provides a datastore-guava module to reveal APIs pleasant to Java and Guava
ListenableFuturecustomers throughGuavaDataStore. Additionally helpsDataStoreutilization throughoutDirectBootmode, requiring creation inside Machine Protected storage.
androidx.put on:wear-phone-interactions:1.1.0:
- Features a crucial bug repair for Put on OS 5 (API 34+) apps concentrating on API 35+. Replace earlier than* concentrating on API 35 to keep away from runtime exceptions.
androidx.dynamicanimation:dynamicanimation:1.1.0:
- The
DynamicAnimationlibrary is now secure.
androidx.exercise:exercise:1.11.0-beta01:
- Added
MediaCapabilitiesAPI toPickVisualMediaRequestto let purposes specify its media capabilities.
androidx.video games libraries:
- Upgrades to Gradle 8.8.1 and Java 17, fixes bugs.
games-frame-pacingcontains varied bug fixes.
Tor, Chet, Romain, Theresa, and Naheed took a deep dive into what Google’s doing round app security, together with the SDK Index, pre-review checks, and Security Labels that will help you construct safe apps and defend customers from suspicious exercise, tying into the Strengthening our app ecosystem weblog publish.
That’s it for this version, with third beta of Android 16, Gemini in Android Studio for Enterprise and Gemini Multimodal, Widgets, GDC bulletins, security and safety updates on Play, Android XR, Media, Digital camera, a ton of AndroidX updates, and rather more.
Verify again quickly in your subsequent replace from the Android developer universe!
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