Author Archives: Android Developers

A Smoother Ride: Android Emulator Stability and Performance Updates

Posted by Neville Sicard-Gregory – Senior Product Manager, Android Studio


Looking for a more stable, reliable, and performant Emulator? Download the latest version of Android Studio or ensure your Emulator is up to date in the SDK Manager.

A split screen shows Kotlin code on the left and the corresponding Android app display on the right in Android Studio. The app displays the Google Play Store, Photos, YouTube, Gmail, and Chrome icons.

We know how critical the stability, reliability, and performance of the Android Emulator is to your everyday work as an Android developer. After listening to valuable feedback about stability, reliability, and performance, the Android Studio team took a step back from large feature work on the Android Emulator for six months and started an initiative called Project Quartz. This initiative was made up of several workstreams aimed at reducing crashes, speeding up startup time, closing out bugs, and setting up better ways to detect and prevent issues in the future.

Improved stability and reliability

A key goal of Project Quartz aimed to reduce Emulator crashes, which can frustrate and block developers, decreasing their productivity. We focused on fixing issues causing backend and UI crashes and freezes, updated the UI framework, updated our hypervisor framework, and our graphics libraries, and eliminated tech debt. This included:

    • Moving to a newer version of Qt, the cross-platform framework for building the graphical user interfaces of the Android Emulator, and making it stable on all platforms (as of version 34.2.13/ This was also a required change to ensure things like Google Maps and the location settings UI continued to work in the Android Emulator.
    • Updating gfxstream, the graphics rendering system used in the Android Emulator, to improve our graphics layer.
    • Adding more than 600 end-to-end tests to the existing pytests test suite.

As a result, we have seen 30% fewer crashes in the latest stable version of Android Studio, as reported by developers who have opted-in to sharing crash details with us. Along with additional end-to-end testing, this means a more stable, reliable, and higher quality experience with fewer interruptions while using the Android Emulator to test your apps.

A horizontal bar graph showing performance times of different versions of the Android emulator in milliseconds

This chart illustrates the reduction in reported crashes by stable versions of the Android Emulator (newer versions are at the top and shorter is better).

We have also enhanced our opt-in telemetry and logging to better understand and identify the root causes of crashes, and added more testing to our pre-launch release process to improve our ability to detect potential issues prior to release.

Improved release quality

We also implemented several measures to improve release quality, including increasing the number and frequency of end-to-end, automated, and integration tests on macOS, Microsoft Windows, and Linux. Now, more than 1,100 end-to-end tests are ran in postsubmit, up from 500 tests in the past implementation, on all supported operating system platforms . These tests cover various scenarios, including (among other features) different Android Emulator snapshot configurations, diverse graphics card considerations , networking and Bluetooth functionality, and performance benchmarks between Android Emulator system image versions.

This comprehensive testing ensures these critical components function correctly and translates to a more reliable testing environment for developers. As a result, Android app developers can accurately assess their app's behavior in a wider range of scenarios.

Reduced open issues and bugs

It was also important for us to reduce the number of open issues and bugs logged for the Android Emulator by addressing their root cause and ensuring we cover more of the use cases you run into in production. During Project Quartz, we reduced our open issues by 43.5% from 4,605 to 2,605. 17% of these were actively fixed during Quartz and the remaining were closed as either obsoleted or previously fixed (e.g. in an earlier version of the Android Emulator) or duplicates of other issues.

Next Steps

While these improvements are exciting, it's not the end. We will continue to build on the quality improvements from Project Quartz to further enhance the Android Emulator experience for Android app developers.

As always, your feedback has and continues to be invaluable in helping us make the Android Emulator and Android Studio more robust and effective for your development needs. Sharing your metrics and crashdumps is crucial in helping us understand what specifically causes your crashes so we can prioritize fixes.

You can opt-in by going to Settings, then Appearance and Behavior, then System Settings, then Data Sharing, and selecting the checkbox marked ‘Send usage statistics to Google.'

The Android Studio settings menu displays the Data Sharing settings page, where 'Send usage statistics to Google' option is selected.

Be sure to download the latest version of the Android Emulator alongside Android Studio to experience these improvements.

As always, your feedback is important to us – check known issues, report bugs, suggest improvements, and be part of our vibrant community on LinkedIn, Medium, YouTube, or X. Together, we can create incredible Android experiences for users worldwide!

Unlock global growth with Google Play’s tax and compliance initiatives

Posted by Aditya Pathak – Product Manager, Google Play

We know how complex it can be to navigate the ever-changing landscape of commerce and payments, especially when it comes to global tax and regulatory compliance. In just two years, we've seen a significant increase in the number of new regulations impacting Google Play developers.

By partnering with Google Play, you're not just accessing a global marketplace serving over 190 countries; you're joining a powerful ecosystem built on security and trust. We understand the challenges these regulatory changes present, and we're here to support your growth every step of the way. That's why at Google Play, our teams work tirelessly behind the scenes to make compliance easier for you, providing a safe, trusted, and thriving marketplace for you and your users.

Scaling a trusted ecosystem globally

    • Simplified Compliance: We have tools and resources to help you navigate international regulations, including consumer protection and payment compliance, so you can focus on building innovative apps and reaching a wider audience.
    • Security and Trust: We prioritize user safety with the best of Google's technology. Our Play Protect service scans billions of apps daily, and we prevented over $4 billion in fraudulent and abusive transactions in 2022 and 2023 combined. We also continue to invest in innovative features like passwordless risk-based authentication for purchases in Korea that helps prevent fraudulent purchases. This commitment to security builds consumer trust and confidence in Play and the broader Android ecosystem, which ultimately helps all developers succeed.

Unifying a platform for growth and efficiency

We're committed to investing in a seamless and efficient experience for developers on Google Play. Our platform helps you grow your business; here's how:

    • Flexible Tax Platform: We're simplifying your tax management by streamlining processes, providing clear guidance, and automating where possible so you can focus on building great apps. For example, in response to recent regulations, we're helping apply lower withholding tax rates to qualifying developers located in India, directly boosting their take-home earnings.
    • Streamlined Onboarding: Our flexible onboarding process guides you through various global compliance requirements, ensuring a smooth and efficient start.
    • Effortless Accounting: Gain clear insights into your earnings and transactions with our powerful tools and tailored reports, empowering you to make informed business decisions.
    • Enhanced User Conversion: We're always finding ways to make it easier for users to subscribe to your service, buy your app or make in-app purchases. For example, we're helping more users store their payment information so they can make purchases with a single tap. We're also adding experimentation features to help you test buy flows and optimize user conversions.

We're dedicated to supporting your growth in an ever-changing regulatory landscape and are constantly working to make Google Play the best platform for developers to thrive. Stay tuned for updates on new features, tools, and resources designed to help you grow your business and navigate the evolving apps and games landscape.



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Passkeys Spotlight Week begins November 18th

Posted by Joseph Lewis – Technical Writer, Android Developer Relations

Tired of headaches with passwords? Ready for a future where online authentication is both faster and more secure? Then mark your calendars for Passkeys Week, November 18-22! Passkeys are an easier and more secure alternative to passwords, and are increasingly becoming the industry standard. Google is proud to support passkeys across Chrome, Android and beyond.

Part of our Spotlight Weeks series, this is your opportunity to dive deep into the world of passkeys – the revolutionary technology poised to replace passwords for good. Whether you're an Android or web developer, a security researcher, or just curious about the future of online identity, this week has something for you.

What are passkeys? They're a new type of credential that are far more secure than passwords and much easier to use. Imagine logging in with your device lock you already have set up, such as a fingerprint scan or a face scan, instead of typing out a complex string of characters. No password is used or stored on a server that could be compromised, keeping you safe from phishing attacks. And since there's no password, there' s no arcane string of characters to remember. That's the power of passkeys.

What you'll get out of Passkeys Spotlight Week

    • Gain expert insights: Join a video roundtable with Google identity experts to hear how passkeys are transforming the sign-in experience. Ask your questions on social media tagged with #PasskeysWeek, or submit your questions using our form.
    • Sharpen your skills: Explore informative blog posts and practical code samples to learn how to integrate passkeys into your own Android apps and websites.
    • Discover cross-platform solutions: See how passkeys work seamlessly across different operating systems and devices for a unified login experience.
    • Stay ahead of the curve: Get the latest updates on passkey advancements and learn about modern identity integration solutions.

We're showcasing content designed to enhance your developer experience and help you get started with adopting passkeys. These items will include:

    • In-depth blog posts covering various aspects of passkey implementation and best practices.
    • Practical code samples to help you get started with passkeys integration.
    • A video roundtable where we answer your questions about passkeys, answered by Google experts.
    • Case studies from developers who have already implemented passkeys.

How to participate

Passkeys Spotlight Week will happen entirely online at web.dev, developer.chrome.com and developer.android.com, and across Android and Chrome's Developer’s social media channels:

Follow us for the latest updates, spread the word about Passkeys Spotlight Week, and use #PasskeysWeek on your favorite social media platforms to ask questions and share your passkeys projects with the community. Check the Android Identity developer page on Monday, November 18, 2024 to read our next blog post with full details!

Don't miss this opportunity to learn from the best and be part of the passwordless revolution. Join us for Passkeys Spotlight Week and help shape the future of online authentication!

#TheAndroidShow: live from Droidcon, including the biggest update to Gemini in Android Studio and more SDK releases for Android!

Posted by Matthew McCullough – Vice President, Product Management, Android Developer

We just dropped our Fall episode of #TheAndroidShow, on YouTube and on developer.android.com, and this time are live from Droidcon in London, giving you the latest in Android Developer news including the biggest update to Gemini in Android Studio as well as sharing that there will be more frequent SDK releases for Android, including two next year. Let’s dive in!



Gemini in Android Studio: now helping you at every stage of the development cycle

AI has the ability to accelerate your development experience, and help you be more productive. That's why we introduced Gemini in Android Studio, your AI-powered development companion, designed to make it easier and faster for you to build high quality Android apps, faster. Today, we're launching the biggest set of updates to Gemini in Android Studio since launch: now for the first time, Gemini brings the power of AI with features at every stage of the development lifecycle, directly into your Android Studio IDE experience.



More frequent Android SDK releases starting next year

Android has always worked to get innovation in the hands of users faster. In addition to our annual platform releases, we’ve invested in Project Treble, Mainline, Google Play services, monthly security updates, and the quarterly releases that help power Pixel's popular feature drop updates. Building off the success those quarterly Pixel releases have had towards bringing innovation faster to Pixel users, Android will have more frequent SDK releases going forward, with two releases planned in 2025 with new developer APIs. These releases will help to drive faster innovation in apps and devices, with higher stability and polish for users and developers. Stay informed on upcoming releases for the 2025 calendar.



Make the investment in adaptive, for Large Screens: 20% increased app spend

Your users, especially in the premium segment, don’t just buy a phone anymore, they buy into a whole ecosystem of devices. So the experiences you build should follow your users seamlessly across the many screens they own. Take large screens, for instance – foldables, tablets, ChromeOS Devices: there are now over 300 million active Android large-screen devices. This summer, Samsung released their new foldables - the Galaxy Z Fold6 and Z Flip6, and at Google we released our own - the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. We’re also investing in a number of platform features to improve how users interact with these devices, like the developer preview of Desktop Windowing that we’ve been working on in collaboration with Samsung - optimizing these large screen devices for productivity. High quality apps optimized for large screens have several advantages on Play as well: like improved visibility in the Play Store and eligibility for featuring in curated collections and editorial articles. Apps now get separate ratings and reviews for different form factors, making positive feedback more visible.

And it’s paying off for those that make the investment: we’ve seen that using a tablet, flip, or fold increases app spend by ~20%. Flipaclip is proof of this: they’ve seen a 54% growth in tablet users in the past four months. It has never been easier to build for large screens - with Compose APIs and Android Studio support specifically for building adaptive UIs.



Kotlin Multiplatform for sharing business logic across Android and iOS

Many of you build apps for multiple platforms, requiring you to write platform-specific code or make compromises in order to reuse code across platforms. We’ve seen the most value in reducing duplicated code for business logic. So earlier this year, we announced official support for Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) for shared business logic across Android and iOS. KMP, developed by JetBrains, reduces development time and duplicated code, while retaining the flexibility and benefits of native programming.

At Google, we’ve been migrating Workspace apps, starting with the Google Docs app, to use KMP for shared business logic across Android, iOS and Web. In the community there are a growing number of companies using KMP and getting significant benefits. And it’s not just apps - we’ve seen a 30% increase in the number of KMP libraries developed this year.

To make it easier for you to leverage KMP in your apps, we’ve been working on migrating many of our Jetpack libraries to take advantage of KMP. For example, Lifecycle, ViewModel, and Paging are KMP compatible libraries. Meanwhile, libraries like Room, DataStore, and Collections have KMP support, so they work out-of-the-box on Android and iOS. We’ve also added a new template to Android Studio so you can add a shared KMP module to your existing Android app and begin sharing business logic across platforms. Kickstart your Kotlin Multiplatform journey with this comprehensive guide.


Watch the Fall episode of #TheAndroidShow

That’s a wrap on this quarter’s episode of #TheAndroidShow. A special thanks to our co-hosts for the Fall episode, Simona Milanović and Alejandra Stamato! You can watch the full show on YouTube and on developer.android.com/events/show.

Have an idea for our next episode of #TheAndroidShow? It’s your conversation with the broader community, and we’d love to hear your ideas for our next quarterly episode - you can let us know on X or LinkedIn.

FlipaClip optimizes for large screens and sees a 54% increase in tablet users

Posted by Miguel Montemayor – Developer Relations Engineer

FlipaClip is an app for creating dynamic and engaging 2D animations. Its powerful toolkit allows animators of all levels to bring their ideas to life, and its developers are always searching for new ways to help its users create anything they can imagine.

Increasing tablet support was pivotal in improving FlipaClip users’ creativity, giving them more space and new methods of animating the stories they want to tell. Now, users on these devices can more naturally bring their visions to life thanks to Android’s intuitive features, like stylus compatibility and unique large screen menu interfaces.

Large screens are a natural canvas for animation

FlipaClip initially launched as a phone app, but as tablets became more mainstream, the team knew it needed to adapt its app to take full advantage of larger screens because they are more natural animating platforms. After updating the app, tablet users quickly became a core revenue-generating audience for FlipaClip, representing more than 40% of the app’s total revenue.

“We knew we needed to prioritize the large screen experience,” said Tim Meson, the lead software engineer and co-founder of FlipaClip. “We believe the tablet experience is the ideal way to use FlipaClip because it gives users more space and precision to create.”

The FlipaClip team received numerous user requests to optimize styluses on tablets, like pressure sensitivity and tilt for styluses and new brush types. So it gave their users exactly what they wanted. Not only did they implement stylus support, but they also redesigned the large screen drawing area, allowing for more customization with moveable tool menus and the ability to hide extra tools.

Now, unique menu interfaces and stylus support provide a more immersive and powerful creative experience for FlipaClip’s large screen users. By implementing many of the features its users requested and optimizing existing workspaces, FlipaClip increased its US tablet users by 54% in just four months. The quality of the animations made by FlipaClip artists also visibly increased, according to the team.


We knew we needed to prioritize the large screen experience...because it gives users more space and precision to create - Tim Meson; Lead Software Engineer and Co-founder of FlipaClip

Improving large screen performance

One of the key areas the FlipaClip team focused on was achieving low-latency drawing, which is critical for a smooth and responsive experience, especially with a stylus. To help with this, the team created an entire drawing engine from the ground up using Android NDK. This engine also improved the overall app responsiveness regardless of the input method.

“Focusing on GPU optimizations helped create more responsive brushes, a greater variety of brushes, and a drawing stage better suited for tablet users with more customization and more on-screen real estate,” said Tim.

Previously, FlipClip drawings were rendered using CPU-backed surfaces, resulting in suboptimal performance, especially on lower-end devices. By utilizing the GPU for rendering and consolidating touch input with the app’s historical touch data, the FlipaClip team significantly improved responsiveness and fluidity across a range of devices.

“The improved performance enabled us to raise canvas size limits closer to 2K resolution,” said Tim. “It also resolved several reported application-not-responding errors by preventing excessive drawing attempts on the screen.”

After optimizing for large screens and reducing their crash rate across device types, FlipaClip’s user satisfaction improved, with a 15% improvement in their Play Store rating for large screen devices. The performance enhancements to the drawing engine were particularly well received among users, leading to better engagement and overall positive feedback.

Using Android Vitals, a tool in the Google Play Console for monitoring the technical quality of Android apps, was invaluable in identifying performance issues across the devices FlipaClip users were on. This helped its engineers pinpoint specific devices lacking drawing performance and provided critical data to guide their optimizations.

FlipaClip UI examples across large screen devices

Listening to user feedback

Large screen users are Android’s fastest-growing audience, reaching over 300 million users worldwide. Allowing users to enjoy their favorite apps across device types while making use of the larger screen on tablets, means a more engaging experience for users to love.

“One key takeaway for us was always to take the time to review user feedback and app stability reports,” said Tim. “From addressing user requests for additional stylus support to pinpointing specific devices to improve drawing performance, these insights have been invaluable for improving the app and addressing pain points of large screen users.”

The FlipaClip team noted that developing for Android stood out in several ways compared to other platforms. One key difference is the libraries provided by the Android team, which are continuously updated and improved, allowing its engineers to seamlessly address and resolve any issues without requiring users to upgrade their Android OS.

“Libraries like Jetpack Compose can be updated independently of the device's system version, which is incredibly efficient,” said Tim. “Plus, Android documentation has gotten a lot better over the years. The documentation for large screens is a great example. The instructions are more thorough, and all the code examples and codelabs make it so much easier to understand.”

FlipaClip engineers plan to continue optimizing the app’s UI for larger screens and improve its unique drawing tools. The team also wants to introduce more groundbreaking animation tools, seamless cross-device syncing, and tablet-specific gestures to improve the overall animation experience on large screen devices.

Get started

Learn how to improve your UX by optimizing for large screens.

Updates to power your growth on Google Play

Posted by Paul Feng – Vice President of Engineering, Product and UX, Google Play

Our annual Playtime event series kicks off this week and we’re excited to share the latest product updates to help your business thrive. We’re sharing new ways to grow your audience, optimize revenue, and protect your business in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

Make sure to also check out news from #TheAndroidShow to learn more about the biggest update to Gemini in Android Studio since launch that will help boost your team’s developer productivity.

Growing your audience with enhanced discovery features

To help people discover apps and games they'll love, we're continuously improving our tools and personalizing app discovery so you can reach and engage your ideal audience.

Enhanced content formats: To make your video content more impactful, we’re making enhancements to how it's displayed on the Play Store. Portrait videos on your store listing now have a full-screen experience to immerse users and drive conversions with a prominent "install" button. Simply keep creating amazing portrait videos for your store listing, and we'll handle the rest.

Our early results are promising: portrait videos drive +7% increase in total watch time, a +9% increase in video completion count, and a +5% increase in conversions.

Captivate users with full-screen portrait videos on your store listing
Captivate users with full-screen portrait videos on your store listing

We’ve also launched new features to create a more engaging and tailored experience for people exploring the Play Store.

    • Personalized query recommendations: To help users start their search journeys right, we’ve introduced personalized search query recommendations on Search Home. This feature is currently available in English, with expanded support for more languages coming soon this year.
Personalized search queries help tailor search results to user’s interests
Personalized search queries help tailor search results to user’s interests

    • Interest pickers: Multi-select interest filters allow people to share their preferences so they can get more helpful recommendations tailored to their interests. Earlier this year, we announced this for games, and now these filters are also available for apps.

Optimizing your revenue with Google Play Commerce

We want to make it effortless for people to buy what you're selling, so we're focused on helping our 2.5 billion users in over 190 markets have a seamless and secure purchase experience. Our tools support you and your users during every step of the journey, from payment setup, to the purchase flow, to ensuring transactions are secure and compliant.

Proactive payment setup: To help more buyers be purchase ready, we’ve been proactively encouraging people to set up payment methods in advance, both within the Play Store and during Android device setup, and even during Google account creation. Our efforts have doubled the number of purchase-ready users this year, now reaching over half a billion users. And we’re already seeing results from this approach - In September alone, we’ve seen an almost 3% increase in global conversion rates, which means more people are completing purchases, which translates directly to higher revenue potential for you from your apps and games.

Expanded payment options: Google Play already offers users over 300 local payment methods across 65+ markets, and we’re regularly adding new payment methods. US users can now use Cash App eWallet alongside credit cards, PayPal, direct carrier billing, and gift cards and users in Poland can pay with Blik Banking.

Purchase flow recommendations: Our new algorithmic recommendation engine helps people discover relevant in-app purchases they’re likely to buy. Simply select products to feature in Play Console, and we'll recommend a popular or related option at different moments in the purchase journey, helping users find what they need. Our early results show an average of 3% increase in spend.

Purchase flow recommendations in Google Play
Purchase flow recommendations helps people discover relevant in-app purchases

Cart abandonment reminders: If a user is browsing a product in your app or game, but hasn’t yet made a decision to purchase, we’ll remind them about it later when they browse the Play Store. These automatic, opt-out reminders help nudge users to complete their purchase.

Cart abandonment reminders in Google Play
Cart abandonment reminders help users complete their purchase

Secure bio authentication: Users can now enjoy a faster and more secure checkout experience by choosing on-device biometrics (fingerprint or face recognition) to verify their purchases, eliminating the need to enter their account password. This year, we’ve seen adoption triple, as more users choose bioauth to make their first purchase.

Protecting your business with the Play Integrity API

Everything we do at Google Play has safety and security at its core. That’s why we’re continuing to invest in more ways to reinforce user trust, protect your business, and safeguard the ecosystem. This includes actively combating bad actors who try to deceive users or spread malware, and giving you tools to combat abuse.

The Play Integrity API can help you detect and respond to potential abuse such as fraud, bots, cheating, or data theft, ensuring everyone experiences your apps and games as intended. Apps that use Play Integrity features are seeing 80% less unauthorized usage on average compared to unprotected apps.

Here's what's new with the Play Integrity API:

    • Hardware-backed security signals: In the coming months, you can opt-in to improved Play Integrity API verdicts backed by hardware security and other signals on Android 13+ devices. This means faster, more reliable, and more privacy-friendly app and device verification, making it significantly harder and more costly for attackers to bypass.
    • New app access risk feature: Now out of beta, this feature allows you to detect and respond to apps that can capture the screen or control the device, so you can protect your users from scams or malicious activity.

Those are the latest updates from Google Play! We're always enhancing our tools to help address the specific challenges and opportunities of different app categories, from games and media to entertainment and social.

We're excited to see how you leverage both our new and existing features to grow your business. Check out how Spotify and SuperPlay are already taking advantage of features like Play Points and Collections to achieve powerful results:




More frequent Android SDK releases: faster innovation, higher quality and more polish

Posted by Matthew McCullough – Vice President, Product Management, Android Developer

Android has always worked to get innovation into the hands of users faster. In addition to our annual platform releases, we’ve invested in Project Treble, Mainline, Google Play services, monthly security updates, and the quarterly releases that help power Pixel Drops.

Going forward, Android will have more frequent SDK releases with two releases planned in 2025 with new developer APIs. These releases will help to drive faster innovation in apps and devices, with higher stability and polish for users and developers.

Two Android releases in 2025

Next year, we’ll have a major release in Q2 and a minor release in Q4, both of which will include new developer APIs. The Q2 major release will be the only release in 2025 to include behavior changes that can affect apps. We’re planning the major release for Q2 rather than Q3 to better align with the schedule of device launches across our ecosystem, so more devices can get the major release of Android sooner.

The Q4 minor release will pick up feature updates, optimizations, and bug fixes since the major release. It will also include new developer APIs, but will not include any app-impacting behavior changes.

Outside of the major and minor Android releases, our Q1 and Q3 releases will provide incremental updates to help ensure continuous quality. We’re actively working with our device partners to bring the Q2 release to as many devices as possible.

2025 SDK release timeline showing a features only update in Q1 and Q3, a major SDK release with behavior changes, APIs, and features in Q2, and a minor SDK release with APIs and features in Q4

What this means for your apps

With the major release coming in Q2, you’ll need to do your annual compatibility testing a few months earlier than in previous years to make sure your apps are ready. Major releases are just like the SDK releases we have today, and can include behavior changes along with new developer APIs – and to help you get started, we’ll soon begin the developer preview and beta program for the Q2 major release.

The minor release in Q4 will include new APIs, but, like the incremental quarterly releases we have today, will have no planned behavior changes, minimizing the need for compatibility testing. To differentiate major releases (which may contain planned behavior changes) from minor releases, minor releases will not increment the API level. Instead, they'll increment a new minor API level value, which will be accessed through a constant that captures both major and minor API levels. A new manifest attribute will allow you to specify a minor API level as the minimum required SDK release for your app. We’ll have an initial version of support for minor API levels in the upcoming Q2 developer preview, so please try building against the SDK and let us know how this works for you.

When planning your targeting for 2026, there’s no change to the target API level requirements and the associated dates for apps in Google Play; our plans are for one annual requirement each year, and that will be tied to the major API level only.

How to get ready

In addition to compatibility testing on the next major release, you'll want to make sure to test your builds and CI systems with SDK's supporting major and minor API levels – some build systems (including the Android Gradle build) might need adapting. Make sure that you're compiling your apps against the new SDK, and use the compatibility framework to enable targetSdkVersion-gated behavior changes for early testing.

Meta is a great example of how to embrace and test for new releases: they improved their velocity towards targetSdkVersion adoption by 4x. They compiled apps against each platform Beta and conducted thorough automated and smoke tests to proactively identify potential issues. This helped them seamlessly adopt new platform features, and when the release rolled out to users, Meta’s apps were ready - creating a great user experience.

What’s next?

As always, we plan to work closely with you as we move through the 2025 releases. We will make all of our quarterly releases available to you for testing and feedback, with over-the-air Beta releases for our early testers on Pixel and downloadable system images and tools for developers.

Our aim with these changes is to enable faster innovation and a higher level of quality and polish across releases, without introducing more overhead or costs for developers. At the same time, we’re welcoming an even closer collaboration with you throughout the year. Stay tuned for more information on the first developer preview of Android 16.

The shift in platform releases highlights Android's commitment to constant evolution and collaboration. By working closely with partners and listening to the needs of developers, Android continues to push the boundaries of what's possible in the mobile world. It's an exciting time to be part of the Android ecosystem, and I can't wait to see what the future holds!

Gemini in Android Studio, now helping you across the development lifecycle

Posted by Sandhya Mohan – Product Manager, Android Studio

This is Our Biggest Feature Release Since Launch!

AI can accelerate your development experience, and help you become more productive. That's why we introduced Gemini in Android Studio, your AI-powered coding companion. It’s designed to make it easier for you to build high quality Android apps, faster. Today, we're releasing the biggest set of updates to Gemini in Android Studio since launch, and now Gemini brings the power of AI to every stage of the development lifecycle, directly within the Android Studio IDE experience. And for more updates on how to grow your apps and games businesses, check out the latest updates from Google Play.

Download the latest version of Android Studio in the canary channel to take advantage of all these new features, and read on to unpack what's new.



Gemini Can Now Write, Refactor, and Document Android Code

Gemini goes beyond just guidance. It can edit your code, helping you quickly move from prototype to implementation, implement common design patterns, and refactor your code. Gemini also streamlines your workflow with features like documentation and commit message generation, allowing you to focus more time on writing code.

Moving image demonstrating Gemini writing code for an Android Composable in real time in Android Studio

Coding features we are launching include:

    • Gemini Code Transforms - modify and refactor code using custom prompts.

      using Gemini to modify code in Android Studio

    • Commit message generation - analyze changes and propose VCS commit messages to streamline version control operations.

      using Gemini to analyze changes and propose VCS commit messages in Android Studio

    • Rethink and Rename - generate intuitive names for your classes, methods, and variables. This can be invoked while you’re coding, or as a larger refactor action applied to existing code.

      using Gemini to generate intuitive names for variables while you're coding in Android Studio

    • Prompt library - save and manage your most frequently used prompts. You can quickly recall them when you need them.

      save your frequently used prompts for future use with Gemini in Android Studio

    • Generate documentation - get documentation for selected code snippets with a simple right click.

      generating code documation in Android Studio

Integrating AI into UI Tools

It’s never been easier to build with Compose now that we have integrated AI into Compose workflows. Composable previews help you visualize your composables during design time in Android Studio. We understand that manually crafting mock data for the preview parameters can be time-consuming. Gemini can now help auto-generate Composable previews with relevant context using AI, simplifying the process of visualizing your UI during development.

Visualize your composables during design time in Android Studio

We are continuing to experiment with Multimodal support to speed up your UI development cycle. Coming soon, we will allow for image attachment as context and utilizing Gemini's multimodal understanding to make it easier to create beautiful and engaging user interfaces.

Deploy with Confidence

Gemini's intelligence can help you release higher quality apps with greater confidence. Gemini can analyze, test code, and suggest fixes — and we are continuing to integrate AI into the IDE’s App Quality Insights tool window by helping you analyze crashes reported by Google Play Console and Firebase Crashlytics. Now, with Ladybug Feature Drop, you can generate deeper insights by using your local code context. This means that you will fix bugs faster and your users will see fewer crashes.

Generate insights using the IDE's App Quality Insights tool window

Some of the features we are launching include:

    • Unit test scenario generation generates unit test scenarios based on local code context.

    generate unit test scenarios based on local code context in Android Studio

      • Build / sync error insights now provides improved coverage for build and sync errors.

        build sync error insights are now avaiable in Android Studio

      • App Quality Insights explains and suggests fixes for observed crashes from Android Vitals and Firebase Crashlytics, and now allows you to use local code context for improved insights.

        save your frequently used prompts for future use with Gemini in Android Studio

    A better Gemini in Android Studio for you

    We recently surveyed many of you to see how AI-powered code completion has impacted your productivity, and 86% of respondents said they felt more productive. Please continue to provide feedback as you use Gemini in your day-to-day workflows. In fact, a few of you wanted to share some of your tips and tricks for how to get the most out of Gemini in Android Studio.



    Along with the Gemini Nano APIs that you can integrate with your own app, Android developers now have access to Google's leading edge AI technologies across every step of their development journey — with Gemini in Android Studio central to that developer experience.

    Get these new features in the latest versions of Android Studio

    These features are all available to try today in the Android Studio canary channel. We expect to release many of these features in the upcoming Ladybug Feature Drop, to be released in the stable channel in late December — with the rest to follow shortly after.

      • Gemini Code Transforms - Modify and refactor your code within the editor
      • Commit message generation - Automatically generate commit messages with Gemini
      • Rethink and Rename - Get help renaming your classes, methods, and variables
      • Prompt library - Save and recall your most commonly used prompts
      • Compose Preview Generation - Generate previews for your composables with Gemini
      • Generate documentation - Have Gemini help you document your code
      • Unit test scenario generation - Generate unit test scenarios
      • Build / sync error insights - Ask Gemini for help in troubleshooting build and sync errors
      • App Quality Insights - Insights on how you can fix crashes from Android Vitals and Firebase Crashlytics

    As always, Google is committed to the responsible use of AI. Android Studio won't send any of your source code to servers without your consent — which means you'll need to opt in to enable Gemini's developer assistance features in Android Studio. You can read more on Gemini in Android Studio's commitment to privacy.

    Try enabling Gemini in your project and tell us what you think on social media with #AndroidGeminiEra. We're excited to see how these enhancements help you build amazing apps!

    Set a reminder: tune in for our Fall episode of #TheAndroidShow on October 31, live from Droidcon!

    Posted by Anirudh Dewani – Director, Android Developer Relations

    In just a few days, on Thursday, October 31st at 10AM PT, we’ll be dropping our Fall episode of #TheAndroidShow, on YouTube and on developer.android.com!

    In our quarterly show, this time we’ll be live from Droidcon in London, giving you the latest in Android Developer news with demos of Jetpack Compose and more. You can set a reminder to watch the livestream on YouTube, or click here to add to your calendar.


    In our Fall episode, we’ll be taking the lid off the biggest update to Gemini in Android Studio, so you don’t want to miss out! We also had a number of recent wearable, foldable and large screen device launches and updates, and we’ll be unpacking what you need to know to get building for these form factors.

    Get your #AskAndroid questions answered live!

    And we’ve assembled a team of experts from across Android to answer your #AskAndroid questions on building excellent apps, across devices - share your questions now and tune in to see if they are answered live on the show!

    #TheAndroidShow is your conversation with the Android developer community, this time hosted by Simona Milanović and Alejandra Stamato. You'll hear the latest from the developers and engineers who build Android. Don’t forget to tune in live on October 31 at 10AM PT, live on YouTube and on developer.android.com/events/show!

    CameraX update makes dual concurrent camera even easier

    Posted by Donovan McMurray – Developer Relations Engineer

    CameraX, Android's Jetpack camera library, is getting an exciting update to its Dual Concurrent Camera feature, making it even easier to integrate this feature into your app. This feature allows you to stream from 2 different cameras at the same time. The original version of Dual Concurrent Camera was released in CameraX 1.3.0, and it was already a huge leap in making this feature easier to implement.

    Starting with 1.5.0-alpha01, CameraX will now handle the composition of the 2 camera streams as well. This update is additional functionality, and it doesn’t remove any prior functionality nor is it a breaking change to your existing Dual Concurrent Camera code. To tell CameraX to handle the composition, simply use the new SingleCameraConfig constructor which has a new parameter for a CompositionSettings object. Since you’ll be creating 2 SingleCameraConfigs, you should be consistent with what constructor you use.

    Nothing has changed in the way you check for concurrent camera support from the prior version of this feature. As a reminder, here is what that code looks like.

    // Set up primary and secondary camera selectors if supported on device.
    var primaryCameraSelector: CameraSelector? = null
    var secondaryCameraSelector: CameraSelector? = null
    
    for (cameraInfos in cameraProvider.availableConcurrentCameraInfos) {
        primaryCameraSelector = cameraInfos.first {
            it.lensFacing == CameraSelector.LENS_FACING_FRONT
        }.cameraSelector
        secondaryCameraSelector = cameraInfos.first {
            it.lensFacing == CameraSelector.LENS_FACING_BACK
        }.cameraSelector
    
        if (primaryCameraSelector == null || secondaryCameraSelector == null) {
            // If either a primary or secondary selector wasn't found, reset both
            // to move on to the next list of CameraInfos.
            primaryCameraSelector = null
            secondaryCameraSelector = null
        } else {
            // If both primary and secondary camera selectors were found, we can
            // conclude the search.
            break
        }
    }
    
    if (primaryCameraSelector == null || secondaryCameraSelector == null) {
        // Front and back concurrent camera not available. Handle accordingly.
    }
    

    Here’s the updated code snippet showing how to implement picture-in-picture, with the front camera stream scaled down to fit into the lower right corner. In this example, CameraX handles the composition of the camera streams.

    // If 2 concurrent camera selectors were found, create 2 SingleCameraConfigs
    // and compose them in a picture-in-picture layout.
    val primary = SingleCameraConfig(
        cameraSelectorPrimary,
        useCaseGroup,
        CompositionSettings.Builder()
            .setAlpha(1.0f)
            .setOffset(0.0f, 0.0f)
            .setScale(1.0f, 1.0f)
            .build(),
        lifecycleOwner);
    val secondary = SingleCameraConfig(
        cameraSelectorSecondary,
        useCaseGroup,
        CompositionSettings.Builder()
            .setAlpha(1.0f)
            .setOffset(2 / 3f - 0.1f, -2 / 3f + 0.1f)
            .setScale(1 / 3f, 1 / 3f)
            .build()
        lifecycleOwner);
    
    // Bind to lifecycle
    ConcurrentCamera concurrentCamera =
        cameraProvider.bindToLifecycle(listOf(primary, secondary));
    

    You are not constrained to a picture-in-picture layout. For instance, you could define a side-by-side layout by setting the offsets and scaling factors accordingly. You want to keep both dimensions scaled by the same amount to avoid a stretched preview. Here’s how that might look.

    // If 2 concurrent camera selectors were found, create 2 SingleCameraConfigs
    // and compose them in a picture-in-picture layout.
    val primary = SingleCameraConfig(
        cameraSelectorPrimary,
        useCaseGroup,
        CompositionSettings.Builder()
            .setAlpha(1.0f)
            .setOffset(0.0f, 0.25f)
            .setScale(0.5f, 0.5f)
            .build(),
        lifecycleOwner);
    val secondary = SingleCameraConfig(
        cameraSelectorSecondary,
        useCaseGroup,
        CompositionSettings.Builder()
            .setAlpha(1.0f)
            .setOffset(0.5f, 0.25f)
            .setScale(0.5f, 0.5f)
            .build()
        lifecycleOwner);
    
    // Bind to lifecycle
    ConcurrentCamera concurrentCamera =
        cameraProvider.bindToLifecycle(listOf(primary, secondary));
    

    We’re excited to offer this improvement to an already developer-friendly feature. Truly the CameraX way! CompositionSettings in Dual Concurrent Camera is currently in alpha, so if you have feature requests to improve upon it before the API is locked in, please give us feedback in the CameraX Discussion Group. And check out the full CameraX 1.5.0-alpha01 release notes to see what else is new in CameraX.