We’ve heard from many folk that they want to learn Flutter, but don’t know where to start. So we have some great news for you — we’re giving away a free book for the next three months, along with a book club to help track your progress and answer questions.
Flutter Apprentice is written to build on mobile development fundamentals. It takes you through your first fully-featured Flutter app, including designing a complex UI, as well as more advanced concepts such as persistence, state management, and cloud storage with Firebase. The book even covers publishing on both iOS and Android platforms.
Flutter Apprentice comes from Razeware, the team behind the raywenderlich.com books, videos and tutorials. The book normally costs $60 to purchase, but you’ll have free access to Flutter Apprentice from today, October 6, 2021 through January 6, 2022.
Flutter Apprentice is a practical book, with lots of examples to follow and code that you can put to use in your own apps. And it’s based on the very latest Flutter 2.5 release and the latest features in the Dart language. Whether you’re an experienced developer looking to deepen your understanding of Flutter’s more advanced features, or you’re new to app development and interested in adding Flutter to your front-end development toolkit, we think you’ll find plenty of useful content.
Learn Together
We’re also excited to host the Flutter Apprentice Book Club, a weekly opportunity to hear live discussion and have your questions answered by the book’s authors and community experts. We’ll be partnering with Flutteristas and other prominent leaders in the Flutter community to host the book club. Join us each Wednesday at 12pm EST / 9am PST on the Flutter Community YouTube channel for summaries, and discussions.
Stay tuned for pop quizzes, chances to win your very own Dash plushie, AMAs with the book’s authors and more.
Google Workspace Marketplace is proud to announce the availability for developers to display pricing for their applications published in the Google Workspace Marketplace, and the date their application listing was last updated.
Launched over 11 years ago, Google Workspace Marketplace has been helping developers connect with the more than 3 billion people who use Google Workspace—with a stunning 4.8 billion apps installed to date. That incredible demand is fueling innovation in the ecosystem, and we now have more than 5300 public apps available in the Google Workspace Marketplace, plus thousands more private apps that customers have built for themselves.
App Pricing
For developers, you can now specify the app pricing choosing from Free, Paid with a Free trial, Paid with free features or Paid. The app pricing can be updated in the Google Workspace Marketplace SDK - Store Listing tab. We encourage you to specify this in order to provide more information about your Marketplace application for Workspace administrators and end users to evaluate and install your app.
Developers can select which app pricing model is available to users
Pricing will now be shown in the application information in Google Workspace Marketplace
App listing update
When a developer updates the app listing or configuration in the Google Workspace Marketplace SDK, administrators and users are now able to see when the application listing was last updated by the developer.
When the application listing was last updated will now be shown in the application details in Google Workspace Marketplace
Editor’s choice
We have also added a new Editor’s choice section in the Google Workspace Marketplace. This new section has three curated categories; Work from everywhere, these apps help your organization be more productive, Business essentials, these apps help increase workflow productivity, and Apps to discover, these apps are new and innovative. You can find out more about the eligibility for these categories here.
New “Editor’s choice” section contains three curated categories in Google Workspace Marketplace
If you’d like to stay informed about updates like these and others to the Google Workspace platform please subscribe to the developer newsletter. And find us at Next ‘21, where we have sessions, demos, and labs covering the latest updates to the Google Workspace platform.
Google Workspace Marketplace is proud to announce the availability for developers to display pricing for their applications published in the Google Workspace Marketplace, and the date their application listing was last updated.
Launched over 11 years ago, Google Workspace Marketplace has been helping developers connect with the more than 3 billion people who use Google Workspace—with a stunning 4.8 billion apps installed to date. That incredible demand is fueling innovation in the ecosystem, and we now have more than 5300 public apps available in the Google Workspace Marketplace, plus thousands more private apps that customers have built for themselves.
App Pricing
For developers, you can now specify the app pricing choosing from Free, Paid with a Free trial, Paid with free features or Paid. The app pricing can be updated in the Google Workspace Marketplace SDK - Store Listing tab. We encourage you to specify this in order to provide more information about your Marketplace application for Workspace administrators and end users to evaluate and install your app.
Developers can select which app pricing model is available to users
Pricing will now be shown in the application information in Google Workspace Marketplace
App listing update
When a developer updates the app listing or configuration in the Google Workspace Marketplace SDK, administrators and users are now able to see when the application listing was last updated by the developer.
When the application listing was last updated will now be shown in the application details in Google Workspace Marketplace
Editor’s choice
We have also added a new Editor’s choice section in the Google Workspace Marketplace. This new section has three curated categories; Work from everywhere, these apps help your organization be more productive, Business essentials, these apps help increase workflow productivity, and Apps to discover, these apps are new and innovative. You can find out more about the eligibility for these categories here.
New “Editor’s choice” section contains three curated categories in Google Workspace Marketplace
If you’d like to stay informed about updates like these and others to the Google Workspace platform please subscribe to the developer newsletter. And find us at Next ‘21, where we have sessions, demos, and labs covering the latest updates to the Google Workspace platform.
Google is proud to announce the Google Forms API! The Forms API is currently available in Restricted Beta, with Open Beta expected to follow in Q4.
Launched in 2008, Google Forms enables easy creation and distribution of forms, surveys, and quizzes. Forms is used for a wide variety of use cases across business operations, customer management, event planning and logistics, education, and more.
Bringing Automation to Google Forms
The new Google Forms API provides programmatic access for managing forms and acting on responses, empowering developers to build powerful integrations on top of Forms. The API supports two key use cases:
Automating form creation and editing:The API enables developers to automate form creation and editing. This is especially powerful when dealing with large volumes of forms that need to be auto-generated from question banks or other data.
Reacting to incoming responses: The API also allows developers to build automations for acting on incoming responses. Examples include developing real-time dashboards or visualizations and triggering business workflows based on response data.
Example Use Cases
Education Automation Integrations
Integrations with Learning Management Systems
Custom form/quiz generation from question banks
Student tracking with real-time dashboards
Customer Management and Support
Auto-generate surveys / forms based on customer data
Trigger notifications and processes based on responses from customers
Data Analysis and Visualization
Create custom visualizations with response data
Leverage push notifications to update in realtime
Google Forms API Functionality
The API provides the following specific functionality.
Form Schema and Metadata
Create and Update
Create new forms and quizzes
Edit existing forms
Add questions, point values, correct answers
Read Form Metadata
Read forms content and metadata, including:
Questions and answer options
Correct answers
Point values
Feedback
Form Responses
Read Responses Read responses to forms, including:
Answers to each question
Response submission time
Grades and feedback
Push Notifications
Notifications via Cloud PubSub
Subscribe to real-time form updates via Cloud Pub/Sub:
Receive either push or pull notifications when forms change
Get notified when a form is edited or when a form response is submitted
For the complete Forms API reference documentation visit:
Zapier , a leading workflow automation platform, will leverage the new Google Forms API to deliver a better experience for Zapier and Google Workspace users. Today, thousands of businesses use Zapier to connect Google Forms to 4k+ applications to automate tasks and key workflows.
To date, Zapier has used the Google Drive and Google Sheets API to deliver this integration. Now, a dedicated Forms API will provide a more stable and purpose-driven platform to build from.
The most common use case for Zapier’s integration with Google Forms is to send Form submission data to an app of the user’s choice within Zapier’s ecosystem whenever one is submitted. For example, a user can automatically create a Google Calendar event for a meeting booked via a Google Form.
Doing this today requires setting up “watches” via the Google Drive API on the spreadsheet that is tied to the Google Form a user wishes to integrate with Zapier. While this implementation is functional, it puts significant pressure on the Drive endpoint, which carries strict rate limits.
When a change to the Google Sheet is registered by the Drive API, Zapier then uses the Sheets API to identify the new rows on the spreadsheet that are tied to the Google Form and reads the required data.
With the new Forms API, Zapier will be able to achieve the same functionality through the Pub/Sub notification system to track new responses and the Forms API to find, read, and send the necessary data to third-party apps via Zapier.
This new implementation will result in faster and more reliable automations between Google Forms and the 4000+ apps in Zapier’s app directory.
Zzish, an innovator in the education industry, is leveraging the new Google Forms API in their Quizalize product to empower educators to personalize their teaching for every student.
Zzish will use the Forms API to help teachers easily convert between Google Forms quizzes and quizzes in Quizalize. This will enable teachers to search Quizalize's database of 500,000 standards-aligned quizzes and use them as Google Forms. Teachers will also be able to easily deploy their Google Forms as a fun classroom game in Quizalize.
Google Forms API Launch Roadmap
We anticipate promoting the API to Open Beta in Q4 2021, with GA following in 2022.
Become a Forms API Early Adopter!
The Forms API is currently in Restricted Beta. We encourage you to apply here to be an early adopter to get started with the API today! We’ll also send you important updates about Open Beta and improvements to the API. To keep up to date with all the APIs of your favorite Google Apps, please subscribe to the Google Workspace Developer Newsletter.
Google is proud to announce the Google Forms API! The Forms API is currently available in Restricted Beta, with Open Beta expected to follow in Q4.
Launched in 2008, Google Forms enables easy creation and distribution of forms, surveys, and quizzes. Forms is used for a wide variety of use cases across business operations, customer management, event planning and logistics, education, and more.
Bringing Automation to Google Forms
The new Google Forms API provides programmatic access for managing forms and acting on responses, empowering developers to build powerful integrations on top of Forms. The API supports two key use cases:
Automating form creation and editing:The API enables developers to automate form creation and editing. This is especially powerful when dealing with large volumes of forms that need to be auto-generated from question banks or other data.
Reacting to incoming responses: The API also allows developers to build automations for acting on incoming responses. Examples include developing real-time dashboards or visualizations and triggering business workflows based on response data.
Example Use Cases
Education Automation Integrations
Integrations with Learning Management Systems
Custom form/quiz generation from question banks
Student tracking with real-time dashboards
Customer Management and Support
Auto-generate surveys / forms based on customer data
Trigger notifications and processes based on responses from customers
Data Analysis and Visualization
Create custom visualizations with response data
Leverage push notifications to update in realtime
Google Forms API Functionality
The API provides the following specific functionality.
Form Schema and Metadata
Create and Update
Create new forms and quizzes
Edit existing forms
Add questions, point values, correct answers
Read Form Metadata
Read forms content and metadata, including:
Questions and answer options
Correct answers
Point values
Feedback
Form Responses
Read Responses Read responses to forms, including:
Answers to each question
Response submission time
Grades and feedback
Push Notifications
Notifications via Cloud PubSub
Subscribe to real-time form updates via Cloud Pub/Sub:
Receive either push or pull notifications when forms change
Get notified when a form is edited or when a form response is submitted
For the complete Forms API reference documentation visit:
Zapier , a leading workflow automation platform, will leverage the new Google Forms API to deliver a better experience for Zapier and Google Workspace users. Today, thousands of businesses use Zapier to connect Google Forms to 4k+ applications to automate tasks and key workflows.
To date, Zapier has used the Google Drive and Google Sheets API to deliver this integration. Now, a dedicated Forms API will provide a more stable and purpose-driven platform to build from.
The most common use case for Zapier’s integration with Google Forms is to send Form submission data to an app of the user’s choice within Zapier’s ecosystem whenever one is submitted. For example, a user can automatically create a Google Calendar event for a meeting booked via a Google Form.
Doing this today requires setting up “watches” via the Google Drive API on the spreadsheet that is tied to the Google Form a user wishes to integrate with Zapier. While this implementation is functional, it puts significant pressure on the Drive endpoint, which carries strict rate limits.
When a change to the Google Sheet is registered by the Drive API, Zapier then uses the Sheets API to identify the new rows on the spreadsheet that are tied to the Google Form and reads the required data.
With the new Forms API, Zapier will be able to achieve the same functionality through the Pub/Sub notification system to track new responses and the Forms API to find, read, and send the necessary data to third-party apps via Zapier.
This new implementation will result in faster and more reliable automations between Google Forms and the 4000+ apps in Zapier’s app directory.
Zzish, an innovator in the education industry, is leveraging the new Google Forms API in their Quizalize product to empower educators to personalize their teaching for every student.
Zzish will use the Forms API to help teachers easily convert between Google Forms quizzes and quizzes in Quizalize. This will enable teachers to search Quizalize's database of 500,000 standards-aligned quizzes and use them as Google Forms. Teachers will also be able to easily deploy their Google Forms as a fun classroom game in Quizalize.
Google Forms API Launch Roadmap
We anticipate promoting the API to Open Beta in Q4 2021, with GA following in 2022.
Become a Forms API Early Adopter!
The Forms API is currently in Restricted Beta. We encourage you to apply here to be an early adopter to get started with the API today! We’ll also send you important updates about Open Beta and improvements to the API. To keep up to date with all the APIs of your favorite Google Apps, please subscribe to the Google Workspace Developer Newsletter.
Posted by Vikrant Rana, Product Manager, and Badi Azad, Group Product Manager
Summary
Google Identity strives to be the best stewards for Google Account users who entrust us to protect their data. At the same time, we want to help our developer community build apps that give users amazing experiences. Together, Google and developers can provide users three important ways to manage sharing their data:
Give users control in deciding who has access to their account data
Make it easier and safer for users to share their Google Account data with your app when they choose to do so
Make it clear to users the specific data they are sharing with apps
What we are doing today
In service of that stewardship, today we are announcing an OAuth consent experience that simplifies how users can share data with apps. This experience also improves the consent conversion for apps that use incremental authorization, which requests only one scope. Users can now easily share this kind of request with a single tap.
Previous Screen New Screen
A quick recap
Let’s summarize a few past improvements so you have a full picture of the work we have been doing on the OAuth consent flow.
In mid-2019, we significantly overhauled the consent screen to give users fine-grained control over the account data they chose to share with a given app. In that flow, when an app requested access to multiple Google resources, the user would see one screen for each scope.
In July 2021, we consolidated these multiple-permission requests into a single screen, while still allowing granular data sharing control for users. Our change today represents a continuation of improvements on that experience.
The Identity team will continue to gather feedback and further enhance the overall user experience around Google Identity Services and sharing account data.
What do developers need to do?
There is no change you need to make to your app. However, we recommend using incremental authorization and requesting only one resource at the time your app needs it. We believe that doing this will make your account data request more relevant to the user and therefore improve the consent conversion. Read more about incremental authorization in our developer guides.
If your app requires multiple resources at once, make sure it can handle partial consent gracefully and reduce its functionality appropriately as per the OAuth 2.0 policy.
Developers worldwide are creating open-source tools and tutorials; however, they have difficulty getting them discovered. The content published often spanned on many different sites—from GitHub to Medium. Therefore Google decided to create a space where the best projects related to Google technologies can be highlighted in one place—introducing the Dev Library, a curated archive of projects and articles built specifically using Google technologies.
Dev Library as a platform showcases blog posts and open source tools with easy-to-use navigation for these product areas: Machine Learning, Flutter, Firebase, Angular, Cloud, and Android.
What makes the Dev Library unique?
Not all the articles or projects submitted by you, get on the site! A team of Google experts look for accuracy and relevancy in each featured piece, so you know when you view the content on the site, it has the stamp of approval from Google.
How does it help me?
Visibility. Developers can have a hard time promoting and publicizing their learnings, despite extensive expertise. Dev Library is one such way to reach out to the world and say, "Hey! I have created this amazing project. Would you like to check it out"?
In addition, you also get to network with fellow contributors who are also using the Dev Library to showcase their projects.
To celebrate the efforts of our contributors, we created dedicated author pages for each person, allowing them to collate their projects in one place.
What content can I expect to see on the Dev Library? To demonstrate the breadth of content on the site, here are some examples of published content pieces and video interviews with the developers who authored these posts:
A blood cell detection code sample using TensorFlow's Object Detection API and interview with author Sayak Paul
Developers who know how to write well. Often we have witnessed developers with an entire portfolio of projects and knowledge bombs, still struggling to get it out there. But we need more developers writing about their work. Their struggles. Their code blocks. How their project was built up. And much more.
With the Dev Library, we somehow want to bring in that difference.
Upskill more developers to write well, market better, and reach out to a global audience waiting for long-form answers!
How can I support the Dev Library? There are two ways you can help us grow the Developer Library:
If you have great content that you would like to see published on the Dev Library, please submit it for review here.
The team welcomes feedback, so if you have anything you’d like to see added or changed on the Dev Library site, please complete this short feedback form or file an issue on GitHub.
We can’t wait to receive your submissions and feedback!
Let Dev Library bring to you an amazing place to submit your open-source work.
Google Workspace offers a broad set of tools and capabilities that empowers creators and developers of all experience levels to build a wide range of custom productivity solutions. For professional developers looking to integrate their own app experiences into Workspace, the platform enables deep integrations with frameworks like Google Workspace Add-ons and Chat apps, as well as deep access to the full suite of Google Workspace apps via numerous REST APIs. And for citizen developers on the business side or developers looking to build solutions quickly and easily, tools like Apps Script and AppSheet make it simple to customize, extend, and automate workflows directly within Google Workspace.
At Next ‘21 we have 7 sessions you won’t want to miss that cover the breadth of the platform. From no-code and low-code solutions to content for developers looking to publish in the Google Workspace Marketplace and reach the more than 3 billion users in Workspace, Next ‘21 has something for everyone.
Erika Trautman, Director Product Management, Google Cloud
Join us for an interactive demo and see the latest Google Workspace innovations in action. As the needs of our users shifted over the past year, we’ve delivered entirely new experiences to help people connect, create, and collaborate—across Gmail, Drive, Meet, Docs, and the rest of the apps. You’ll see how Google Workspace meets the needs of different types of users with thoughtfully designed experiences that are easy to use and easy to love, Then, we’ll go under the hood to show you the range of ways to build powerful integrations and apps for Google Workspace using tools that span from no-code to professional grade.
Steven Bazyl, Developer Relations Engineer, Google Cloud
Google Workspace offers a comprehensive developer platform to support every developer who’s on a journey to customize and enhance Google Workspace. In this session, take a deeper dive into the new tools, technologies, and advances across the Google Workspace developer platform that can help you create even better integrations, extensions, and workflows. We’ll focus on updates for Google Apps Script, Google Workspace Add-ons, Chat apps, APIs, AppSheet, and Google Workspace Marketplace.
David Grabner, Product Lead, Apps & Integrations, Miro
Integrations make Google Workspace the hub for your work and give users more value by bringing all their tools into one space. Our ecosystem allows users to connect industry-leading software and custom-built applications with Google Workspace to centralize important information from the tools you use every day. And integrations are not limited to Gmail, Docs, or your favorite Google apps – they’re also available for Chat. With Chat apps, users can seamlessly blend conversations with automation and timely information to accelerate teamwork directly from within a core communication tool.
In this session, we’ll briefly review the Google Workspace platform and how Miro and Atlassian are helping organizations centralize their work and keep important information a mouse click or a tap away.
Aspi Havewala, Global Head of Digital Workplace, Verizon
Organizations small and large are seeing their needs grow increasingly diverse as they pursue digital transformation projects. Many of our customers are empowering their workforces by allowing them to build advanced workflows and customizations using Google Apps Script. It’s a powerful low-code development platform included with Google Workspace that makes it fast and easy to build custom business solutions for your favorite Google Workspace applications – from macro automations to custom functions and menus. In this session, we’ll do a quick overview of the Apps Script platform and hear from customers who are using it to enable their organizations.
Paula Bell, Business Process Analyst, Kentucky Power Company, American Electric Power
Building business apps has become something anyone can do. Don’t believe us? Join this session to learn how Paula Bell, who self describes as a person with “zero coding experience” built a series of mission-critical apps on AppSheet that revolutionized how Kentucky Power, a branch of American Electric Power, runs their field operations.
Mike Procopio, Senior Staff Software Engineer, Google Cloud
Millions of Google Workspace users are looking for new ways to reclaim time and work smarter within Google Workspace. AppSheet, Google Workspace’s first-party extensibility platform, will be announcing several new features that will allow people to automate and customize their work within their Google Workspace environment – all without having to write a line of code.
Join this session to learn how you can use these new features to work smarter in Google Workspace.
For organizations focused on growth, finding new ways that employees can use technology to work smarter and innovate is key to their success. But enabling employees to create their own solutions comes at a cost that IT is keenly aware of. The threats of external hacks, data leaks, and shadow IT make it difficult for IT to find a solution that gives them the control and visibility they need, while still empowering their workforce. AppSheet was built with these challenges in mind.
Join our session to learn how you can use AppSheet to effectively govern your workforce and reduce security threats, all while giving employees the tools to make robust, enterprise-grade applications.
To learn more about these sessions and to register, visit the Next ‘21 website and also check out my playlist of Next ‘21 content.
Today we’re pushing the source to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and officially releasing the latest version of Android. Keep an eye out for Android 12 coming to a device near you starting with Pixel in the next few weeks and Samsung Galaxy, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Tecno, Vivo, and Xiaomi devices later this year.
As always, thank you for your feedback during Android 12 Beta! More than 225,000 of you tested our early releases on Pixel and devices from our partners, and you sent us nearly 50,000 issue reports to help improve the quality of the release. We also appreciate the many articles, discussions, surveys, and in-person meetings where you voiced your thoughts, as well as the work you’ve done to make your apps compatible in time for today’s release. Your support and contributions are what make Android such a great platform for everyone.
We’ll also be talking about Android 12 in more detail at this year’s Android Dev Summit, coming up on October 27-28. We’ve just released more information on the event, including a snapshot of the technical Android sessions; read on for more details later in the post.
What’s in Android 12 for developers?
Here’s a look at some of what’s new in Android 12 for developers. Make sure to check out the Android 12 developer site for details on all of the new features.
A new UI for Android
Material You - Android 12 introduces a new design language called Material You, helping you to build more personalized, beautiful apps. To bring all of the latest Material Design 3 updates into your apps, try an alpha version of Material Design Components and watch for support for Jetpack Compose coming soon.
Redesigned widgets - We refreshed app widgets to make them more useful, beautiful, and discoverable. Try them with new interactive controls, responsive layouts for any device, and dynamic colors to create a personalized but consistent look. More here.
Notification UI updates - We also refreshed notification designs to make them more modern and useful. Android 12 also decorates custom notifications with standard affordances to make them consistent with all other notifications. More here.
Stretch overscroll - To make scrolling your app’s content more smooth, Android 12 adds a new “stretch” overscroll effect to all scrolling containers. It’s a natural scroll-stop indicator that’s common across the system and apps. More here.
App launch splash screens - Android 12 also introduces splash screens for all apps. Apps can customize the splash screen in a number of ways to meet their unique branding needs. More here.
Performance
Faster, more efficient system performance - We reduced the CPU time used by core system services by 22% and the use of big cores by 15%. We’ve also improved app startup times and optimized I/O for faster app loading, and for database queries we’ve improved CursorWindow by as much as 49x for large windows.
Optimized foreground services - To provide a better experience for users, Android 12 prevents apps from starting foreground services while in the background. Apps can use a new expedited job in JobScheduler instead. More here.
More responsive notifications - Android 12’s restriction on notification trampolines helps reduce latency for apps started from a notification. For example, the Google Photos app now launches 34% faster after moving away from notification trampolines. More here.
Performance class - Performance Class is a set of device capabilities that together support demanding use-cases and higher quality content on Android 12 devices. Apps can check for a device’s performance class at runtime and take full advantage of the device’s performance. More here.
Faster machine learning - Android 12 helps you make the most of ML accelerators and always get the best possible performance through the Neural Networks API. ML accelerator drivers are also now updatable outside of platform releases, through Google Play services, so you can take advantage of the latest drivers on any compatible device.
Privacy
Privacy Dashboard - A new dashboard in Settings gives users better visibility over when your app accesses microphone, camera, and location data. More here.
Approximate location - Users have even more control over their location data, and they can grant your app access to approximate location even if it requests precise location. More here.
Microphone and camera indicators - Indicators in the status bar let users know when your app is using the device camera or microphone. More here.
Microphone and camera toggles - On supported devices, new toggles in Quick Settings make it easy for users to instantly disable app access to the microphone and camera. More here.
Nearby device permissions - Your app can use new permissions to scan for and pair with nearby devices without needing location permission. More here.
Better user experience tools
Rich content insertion - A new unified API lets you receive rich content in your UI from any source: clipboard, keyboard, or drag-and-drop. For back-compatibility, we’ve added the unified API to AndroidX. More here.
Support for rounded screen corners - Many modern devices use screens with rounded corners. To deliver a great UX on these devices, you can use new APIs to query for corner details and then manage your UI elements as needed. More here.
AVIF image support - Android 12 adds platform support for AV1 Image File Format (AVIF). AVIF takes advantage of the intra-frame encoded content from video compression to dramatically improve image quality for the same file size when compared to older image formats, such as JPEG.
Compatible media transcoding - For video, HEVC format offers significant improvements in quality and compression and we recommend that all apps support it. For apps that can’t, the compatible media transcoding feature lets your app request files in AVC and have the system handle the transcoding. More here.
Easier blurs, color filters and other effects - new APIs make it easier to apply common graphics effects to your Views and rendering hierarchies. You can use RenderEffect to apply blurs, color filters, and more to RenderNodes or Views. You can also create a frosted glass effect for your window background using a new Window.setBackgroundBlurRadius() API, or use blurBehindRadius to blur all of the content behind a window.
Enhanced haptic experiences - Android 12 expands the tools you can use to create informative haptic feedback for UI events, immersive and delightful effects for gaming, and attentional haptics for productivity. More here.
New camera effects and sensor capabilities - New vendor extensions let your apps take advantage of the custom camera effects built by device manufacturers—bokeh, HDR, night mode, and others. You can also use new APIs to take full advantage of ultra high-resolution camera sensors that use Quad / Nona Bayer patterns. More here.
Better debugging for native crashes - Android 12 gives you more actionable diagnostic information to make debugging NDK-related crashes easier. Apps can now access detailed crash dump files called tombstones through the App Exit Reasons API.
Android 12 for Games - With Game Mode APIs, you can react to the players' performance profile selection for your game - like better battery life for a long commute, or performance mode to get peak frame rates. Play as you download will allow game assets to be fetched in the background during install, getting your players into gameplay faster.
Get your apps ready for Android 12
Now with today’s public release of Android 12, we’re asking all Android developers to finish your compatibility testing and publish your updates as soon as possible, to give your users a smooth transition to Android 12.
To test your app for compatibility, just install it on a device running Android 12 and work through the app flows looking for any functional or UI issues. Review the Android 12 behavior changes for all apps to focus on areas where your app could be affected. Here are some of the top changes to test:
Privacy dashboard — Use this new dashboard in Settings to check your app’s accesses to microphone, location, and other sensitive data, and consider providing details to users on the reasons. More here.
Microphone & camera indicators — Android 12 shows an indicator in the status bar when an app is using the camera or microphone. Make sure this doesn’t affect your app’s UI. More here.
Microphone & camera toggles — Try using the new toggles in Quick Settings to disable microphone and camera access for apps and ensure that your app handles the change properly. More here.
Clipboard read notification — Watch for toast notifications when your app reads data from the clipboard unexpectedly. Remove unintended accesses. More here.
Stretch overscroll — Try your scrolling content with the new “stretch” overscroll effect and ensure that it displays as expected. More here.
App splash screens — Launch your app from various flows to test the new splash screen animation. If necessary, you can customize it. More here.
Keygen changes — Several deprecated BouncyCastle cryptographic algorithms are removed in favor of Conscrypt versions. If your app uses a 512-bit key with AES, you’ll need to use one of the standard sizes supported by Conscrypt. More here.
Remember to test the libraries and SDKs in your app for compatibility. If you find any SDK issues, try updating to the latest version of the SDK or reaching out to the developer for help.
Tune in to Android Dev Summit to learn about Android 12 and more!
The #AndroidDevSummit is back! Join us October 27-28 to hear about the latest updates in Android development, including Android 12. This year’s theme is excellent apps, across devices; tune in later this month to learn more about the development tools, APIs and technology to help you be more productive and create better apps that run across billions of devices, including tablets, foldables, wearables, and more.
We’ve just released more information on the event, including a snapshot of the 30+ technical Android sessions; you can take a look at some of those sessions here, and start planning which talks you want to check out. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be asking you to share your top #AskAndroid questions, to be answered live by the team during the event.
The show kicks off at 10 AM PT on October 27 with The Android Show, a 50-minute technical keynote where you’ll hear all the latest news and updates for Android developers. You can learn more and sign up for updates here.
The Flutter Meetup Network (FMN) is an international network of Meetup groups united by their enthusiasm for Flutter. The FMN program mission is to foster a thriving worldwide community of Flutter developers by empowering community organizers to educate and inspire local communities with engaging events.
Meetups – and similar developer community groups - are a great resource. As Flutter has grown in popularity over the past few years, over 100 Meetup groups have sprung up organically around the world to celebrate and educate their members about Flutter. The volunteers who run these groups have hosted many awesome events and workshops.
We, in the Flutter team, see and appreciate these amazing communities. ? The Flutter Meetup Network (FMN) is now being launched to support these groups officially. Network members will have access to various resources (more details available soon!), making it easier to plan and host Flutter-themed events.
Meetups have many benefits, aside from networking. When stuck on an issue in your current Flutter project, chances are good that you can find a developer in your local Flutter Meetup who has solved a similar problem. Or, maybe they know the perfect package for your needs.
We are thrilled to support our amazing and passionate organizers and can’t wait to see what the Flutter Meetup Network does moving forward.
