Get ready for YouTube Brandcast 2026 at Lincoln Center. Host Trevor Noah joins CEO Neal Mohan and a powerhouse lineup of creators to demonstrate why YouTube is the futur…
Here’s how to change your Google Account username (and how to change your Gmail address) in a few simple steps.
Google launches AI Works for Britain upskilling initiative to help the public move from basic prompts to progression-boosting applications of AI.
If you tuned into episode 105 of the Search Off the Record podcast, you might have heard us diving deep into a topic that is close to our hearts (and our servers): the inner workings of Googlebot.
Just a short note this time!
Posted by Andrew Lewis, Software Engineer
We are continuing to expand the media3-ui-compose-material3 module to help you build Compose UIs for playback.
We've added a new Player Composable that combines a ContentFrame with customizable playback controls, giving you an out-of-the-box player widget with a modern UI.
This release also adds a ProgressSlider Composable for displaying player progress and performing seeks using dragging and tapping gestures. For playback speed management, a new PlaybackSpeedControl is available in the base media3-ui-compose module, alongside a styled PlaybackSpeedToggleButton in the Material 3 module.
We'll continue working on new additions like track selection utils, subtitle support and more customization options in the upcoming Media3 releases. We're eager to hear your feedback so please share your thoughts on the project issue tracker.
Format support: ExoPlayer now supports extracting Dolby Vision Profile 10 and Versatile Video Coding (VVC) tracks in MP4 containers, and we've introduced MPEG-H UI manager support in the decoder_mpeghextension. The IAMF extension now seamlessly supports binaural output, either through the decoder viaiamf_tools or through the Android OS Spatializer, with new logic to match the output layout of the speakers.
Ad playback: Improvements to reliability, improved HLS interstitial support forX-PLAYOUT-LIMIT and X-SNAP, and with the latest IMA SDK dependency you can control whether ad click-through URLs open in custom tabs with setEnableCustomTabs.
Session: MediaSessionService now extends LifecycleService, allowing apps to access the lifecycle scoping of the service.
One of our key focus areas this year is on playback efficiency and performance. Media3 1.10 includes experimental support for scheduling the core playback loop in a more efficient way. You can try this out by enabling experimentalSetDynamicSchedulingEnabled() via the ExoPlayer.Builder. We plan to make further improvements in future releases so stay tuned!
For developers building media editing experiences, we've made speed adjustments more robust. EditedMediaItem.Builder.setFrameRate()can now set a maximum output frame rate for video. This is particularly helpful for controlling output size and maintaining performance when increasing media speed with setSpeed().
FrameExtractor has been removed from the main media3-inspector module, so please migrate your code to use the new media3-inspector-framemodule and update your imports toandroidx.media3.inspector.frame.FrameExtractor.
We have also moved theLottieOverlayeffect to a separate media3-effect-lottie module. As a reminder, this gives you a straightforward way to apply vector-based Lottie animations directly to video frames.
Monzo is a UK digital bank with 15 million customers and growing. As the app scaled, the engineering team identified app startup time as a critical area for improvement but worried it would require significant changes to their codebase.
By fully enabling R8 optimizations, Monzo achieved a massive 35% reduction in their Application Not Responding (ANR) rate. This simple change proved that impactful optimizations don't always require complex engineering efforts.
Monzo identified R8 full mode as an easy fix worth trying; and it worked, improving performance across the board:
Many Android apps use an outdated default configuration file which disables most functionality of the R8 optimizer. The main change Monzo made to unlock these performance improvements was to replace the proguard-android.txt default file with proguard-android-optimize.txt. This change removes the -dontoptimize instruction and allows R8 to properly do its job.
buildTypes {
release {
isMinifyEnabled = true
isShrinkResources = true
proguardFiles(
getDefaultProguardFile("proguard-android-optimize.txt"),
)
}
}
After making this change, it's worth looking at your Keep configuration files. These files tell R8 which parts of your code to leave alone (usually because they're called dynamically or by external libraries). Tidying up unnecessary Keep rules means R8 can do more.
To further enhance the user experience, Monzo implemented Baseline Profiles, specifically targeting scroll and rendering performance on their main feed. This strategy ensured that the most common user journeys—opening the app and scrolling the feed—were fully optimized. The impact on rendering was substantial: P90 scroll performance became 71% faster, and P95 scroll performance improved by 87%. Now scrolling the app is smoother than before.
Monzo built this into their release process to maintain these improvements over time. "We trigger the baseline profile generation every week day (before running our nightly builds) and commit the latest changes once completed," Neumayer explains.
Monzo's experience shows what's possible when you stay up to date with Android build-tooling recommendations. While legacy apps often struggle with complex reflection usage, Monzo found the transition straightforward by documenting their Keep Rules properly. "We always add a comment explaining why Keep Rules are in place, so we know when it's safe to remove the rules," Neumayer notes.
Neumayer's advice for other teams? Regularly check your practices against current standards: "Take a look at the latest recommendations from Google around app performance and check if you're following all the latest advice."
To get started and learn more about R8, visit https://d.android.com/r8
Benjamin Franklin’s scientific legacy and diplomatic career as seen through original Royal Society documents.
 |
| Example of a secondary calendar owned by the dwelling.com organization, with [email protected] as owner |
 |
Example of a personal secondary calendar (not owned by an organization), with [email protected] as owner |
Android is for everyone. It’s built on a commitment to an open and safe platform. Users should feel confident installing apps, no matter where they get them from. However, our recent analysis found over 90 times more malware from sideloaded sources than on Google Play. So as an extra layer of security, we are rolling out Android developer verification to help prevent malicious actors from hiding behind anonymity to repeatedly spread harm. Over the past several months, we’ve worked closely with the community to improve the design so we account for the many ways people use Android to balance openness with safety.
Today, we’re starting to roll out Android developer verification to all developers in both the new Android Developer Console and Play Console. This allows you to complete your verification and register your apps before user-facing changes begin later this year.
While verification tools are rolling out now, the experience for users downloading your apps will not change until later this year. The user side protections will first go live in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand this September, before expanding globally in 2027. We’ve shared this timeline early to ensure you have ample time to complete your verification.
Following this deadline, for the vast majority of users, the experience of installing apps will stay exactly the same. It’s only when a user tries to install an unregistered app that they’ll require ADB or advanced flow, helping us keep the broader community safe while preserving the flexibility for our power users.
Developers can still choose where to distribute their apps. Most users’ download experience will not change
To balance the need for safety with our commitment to openness, we’ve improved the verification experience based on your feedback. We’ve streamlined the developer experience to be more integrated with existing workflows and maintained choice for power users.
You’ll see your app's registration status in Android Studio when you generate a signed App Bundle or APK.
The Android developer verification page in your Play Console will show the registration status for each of your apps.
We’re rolling this out carefully and working closely with developers, users, and our partners. In April, we’ll introduce Android Developer Verifier, a new Google system service that will be used to check if an app is registered to a verified developer.
We’re committed to an Android that is both open and safe. Check out our developer guides to get started today.
