Welcome to Now in Android, your ongoing guide to what’s new and notable in the world of Android development.
Last week was Privacy Week for Android Developers, our effort to create awareness of how you can help shape the privacy landscape for millions of users. Here is what we covered:
Monday: a new blog post announced the week, providing 3 new important resources:
Tuesday: Terence Zhang covered top tips for designing “private by design” apps. Spoiler alert: follow best practices 🙂
Wednesday: Yacine Rezgui explained in less than 60 seconds how users can share images and videos with your app in just a few lines of code and with no storage permissions using Photo Picker.
Thursday: we explained how you can leverage the recent privacy features to to increase user trust.
Friday: Marcel recapped the week’s content in less than 60s.
Rebecca and Madona unpacked the latest Android foldables and large screens for you to get building for, straight from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and shared how to get started building. Also, don’t miss how Kakaonavi increased foldable adoption by 24.5% after optimizing its app for large screens and how Concepts sees 70% more time spent in app on tablets versus phones.
Madona also shared “What it means to be an Android Google Developer Expert” and many Android GDEs shared their experience. Active in the #AndroidDev community? Become an Android Google Developer Expert.
And then Rebecca hosted a new segment where we went behind the scenes with David Motsonashvili, a Software Engineer on the Firebase team, to learn more about where the idea for App Quality Insights came from. We also explore how crash management has evolved throughout the years with Annyce Davis, VP of Engineering at Meetup and GDE.
Checkout all the videos from the latest Android Show at goo.gle/tas23-playlist.
The MAD Skills series focused on Jetpack Compose layout and modifiers finished with a Live Q&A session where Chris, Jolanda, Simona, and Andrei answered your questions on Compose Layouts and Modifiers.
If you are still unsure about Jetpack Compose, check out how Clue’s developer speed increased 3X with Jetpack Compose.
The summit returned last week on March 14 with updates across Android, Google Play, Ads, YouTube, and Cloud teams on new solutions for game developers that make it easier to build high quality games, scale their business, and reach growing audiences around the world.
- New frame rate metrics in Android vitals
- Game quality AGDK + Crashlytics updates
- Target inactive or churned users with custom store listings
- And more!
Check out the recap blog to learn more about the recent updates in the Android Games world and catch all the sessions at goo.gle/ggds-23
AndroidX releases 🚀
Here are the most notable AndroidX releases since the previous episode:
- RecyclerView 1.3.0: is now stable containing an important fix for a specific case: using a ComposeView inside a RecyclerView. Now the default ViewCompositionStrategy takes care of doing this the right way for you.
- Lifecycle 2.6.0: reached the stable milestone! collectAsStateWithLifecycle() is available for Lifecycle+Compose users (check Manuel’s blog for more), the launchWhen APIs were deprecated, and almost every API was moved to Kotlin!
- Wear Tiles Version 1.2.0-alpha01: is the first alpha for the new wear tiles 1.2.0 version that brings new APIs like onTileResourceRequest and supports new types from the protolayout library.
- Core Core-Ktx Version 1.12.0-alpha01: the first alpha for 1.12.0 comes with new APIs to help developers to easily access locale data or user’s locale preferences.
Articles, documentation and videos 📚🎥
Jose Alcérreca shared how to automate dependency updates in a Compose project and reduce time spent on maintenance with tools like Renovate.
Ben Sagmoe explained how you can bring your video apps to Cars with Google built-in. Covering the requirements, the supported devices, the implementation and testing.
WorkManager is the primary tool for Android developers when dealing with background tasks. In this article TJ covers how to use WorkManager in multi-module apps.
Handling configuration changes has been part of Android since day 1, but it is not trivial and with Jetpack Compose things change. Don’t miss a major update on our developer documentation.
Alex details the latest on the Privacy Sandbox initiative on Android and their upcoming testing plans via the Developer Preview Program and the recently launched Beta program. Sign up now to start testing!
That’s it for this week with the Privacy Week for Android Developers, Lifecycle 2.6.0 and RecyclerView 1.3.0 reaching stable, #TheAndroidShow from the Mobile World Congress, Automating Dependencies, Google for Games Developer Summit, and more.
