Now in Android #88

Welcome to Now in Android, your ongoing guide to what’s new and notable in the world of Android development.

Most of the content of this post is available in the form of a video or podcast, so feel free to watch or listen rather than read on. (Or do all three to help you remember! There won’t be a quiz.)

We are thrilled to announce the stable release of Android Studio Giraffe. In this Android Studio release, we have upgraded the IntelliJ platform to 2022.3, including a brand new visual look and feel in Android Studio, improvements to Live Edit, Compose animation previews, a new Device Explorer, a new SDK upgrade assistant, ability to use Kotlin DSL in your Gradle build scripts and much more. Read on to learn more about how Android Studio Giraffe can help supercharge your developer productivity.

You can learn more about this release in our blogpost and video.

The Kotlin compiler is being rewritten for Kotlin 2.0. The new compiler implementation–codenamed K2 is set to bring with it some major improvements, especially when it comes to build speed, compiling Kotlin code up to twice as fast as the original compiler.

With Kotlin 1.9, K2 is now available in Beta for JVM targets, including Android projects. K2 already works with Jetpack Compose and we have a roadmap to improve support in other tools, including Android Studio, KSP, and compiler plugins.

To help stabilize the new compiler and make sure you’re ready for Kotlin 2.0, we encourage you to try compiling your projects with the new compiler. We’re looking forward to your feedback.

Check out this blogpost for more information on the K2 compiler.

Live Edit introduces a new way to edit your app’s Compose UI by instantly deploying code changes to the running application on a physical device or emulator. This means that you can immediately see the effects of code changes on your device. Gone are the days of switching between writing and building. With Live Edit, you can focus on writing code longer without any interruptions.

Live Edit is now available as a stable feature in Android Studio Giraffe. Try it out and let us know what you think!

See this video for more information.

Since the previous episode, there has been an AndroidX release worth highlighting.

Paging 3.2.0 marks an important milestone: the first stable release of the Compose APIs! The new paging-testing artifact lets you test each layer of Paging in isolation, while new debug logging helps you better understand what exactly Paging is doing.

On July 27th, we released the beta version of Credential Manager. With a finalized API surface, it’s primed and ready for production use. This new Jetpack library makes user authentication a breeze, offering a seamless way to combine traditional sign-in methods with the new passkeys authentication mechanism.

Health Connect is an Android API that gives users a simpler way to consolidate and share their health and fitness data across applications. With Health Connect, users can opt to share their health and fitness metrics between their favorite apps. And for developers, Health Connect helps streamline workflows and reduce API complexities.

Recently we launched the Media Developer Center, your go-to place for all things related to Android media use cases. Whether you’re looking to capture, edit, play, or share, the Media Developer Center is your ultimate hub. Nevin, provides a comprehensive insight into this newly launched resource.

From foldable innovations to seamless connectivity, Google and Samsung have continued to work together to create helpful experiences across Android phones, tablets, smartwatches and more. In the blog post Maru explains how to make your app look great on a variety of devices and screens.

We’re introducing four major updates to help users find high-quality large screen apps on Play: refreshed app listing pages, ranking and quality improvements, streamlined store navigation, and a split-screen search experience.

Learn how Deezer managed to increase their user base by improving the multi-device support.

That’s it for this week with Android Studio Giraffe, K2 Compiler, Compose Live Edit and more!

Check back soon for the next update from the Android developer universe! 💫

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