In our latest film for #WeArePlay, which celebrates the people behind apps and games, we meet Michael and Shalom - a mother and son duo driven by a passion for sharing and teaching African languages. Discover how their app, Nkenne, goes beyond language learning—serving as a powerful tool for preserving cultural heritage and reconnecting people with their African language and culture.
What inspired you to create Nkenne?
Michael: Nkenne which means "of the mother," really came from a personal place. I wanted to learn Igbo, my native language from Nigeria, but there weren’t many resources out there that made it easy or accessible. My mom, Shalom, raised me in the U.S., and while I grew up hearing bits of Igbo, there wasn’t enough time or structure for me to fully learn it. During the pandemic, when everything paused, I realized how much I wanted to connect with my heritage, and that’s when the idea sparked. We realized that not just Igbo, but many African languages were becoming less common, even among those who speak them. So, we saw this as an opportunity to preserve these languages and help others reconnect with their roots.
You’ve mentioned the goal of preserving African languages. How does Nkenne contribute to their preservation?
Shalom: African languages are considered low-resource because they don't have as much digital content, formal documentation, or readily available learning tools. With Nkenne, we’re helping to change that. We’re not just teaching the languages, we’re documenting them, building lessons, and creating a resource for future generations. Many people in Nigeria, for example, don’t speak their native languages anymore. By creating Nkenne, we’re essentially building a digital library of African languages.
How does Nkenne integrate both language learning and cultural education? Why is it important to teach both?
Michael: Understanding the cultural meaning behind a language makes learning richer. It’s not just vocabulary—it’s about connecting people with the culture behind it. We include blogs, podcasts, and lessons that dive into the traditions and customs tied to the language, so people understand not just the words, but the history and meaning behind them.
Shalom: Yes, learning a language without the cultural context leaves gaps. For instance, in Nigeria, using your left hand to hand someone an item is considered rude— we teach these cultural nuances in the app to help the user truly grasp the culture.
What’s next for Nkenne?
Michael: We're focused on expanding our language offerings to 30 by the end of 2025, including more African languages and Creole dialects from around the world. We're also working on enhancing our AI capabilities for language translation.
Shalom: We’re also deepening the community experience, adding more social features where users can connect, share, and practice together. It’s about building not just a language-learning platform, but a space where people from the diaspora and beyond can truly connect with their heritage.
Posted by Francesco Romano – Developer Relations Engineer on Android, and Fahd Imtiaz – Product Manager, Android Developer
To empower tablet users to get more done, we're enhancing freeform windowing, allowing them to run multiple apps simultaneously and resize windows for optimal multitasking. Today, we're excited to share that desktop windowing on Android tablets is available in developer preview.
For app developers, the concept of Android apps running in freeform windows has already existed with solutions like Samsung DeX and ChromeOS. Updating your apps to support adaptive layouts, more robust multitasking, and adaptive inputs will ensure your apps work well on large screens across the Android ecosystem.
Let’s explore how to optimize your apps for desktop windowing and deliver the optimal experience to users.
What is desktop windowing?
Desktop windowing allows users to run multiple apps simultaneously and resize app windows, offering a more flexible and desktop-like experience. This, along with a refreshed System UI and new APIs, allows users to be even more productive and creates a more seamless, desktop-like experience on tablets.
In Figure 1, you can see the anatomy of the screen with desktop windowing enabled. Things to make note of:
Users can run multiple apps side-by-side, simultaneously
Taskbar is fixed and shows the running apps, users can pin apps for quick access
New header bar with window controls at the top of each window which apps can customize
Figure 1: Desktop windowing on a Pixel Tablet.
Note: Images are examples and subject to change
How can users invoke desktop windowing?
By default, apps open in full screen on Android tablets. To run the apps as a desktop window on Pixel Tablet, press and hold the window handle at the top in the middle of the screen and drag it within the UI, as seen in Figure 2.
Once you are in the desktop space, all future apps will be launched as desktop windows as well.
Figure 2. Press, hold, and drag the window handle to enter desktop windowing.
Note: Images are examples and subject to change
You can also invoke desktop windowing from the menu that shows up below the window handle when you tap/click on it or use the keyboard shortcut meta key (Windows, Command, or Search) + Ctrl + Down.
You can exit desktop windowing and display an app as full screen by closing all active windows or by grabbing the window handle at the top of the window and dragging the app to the top of the screen. You can also use the meta + H keyboard shortcut to run apps as full screen again.
To return to the desktop, move a full screen app to the desktop space by using the methods mentioned above, or simply tap on the desktop space tile in the Recents screen.
What does this mean for app developers?
Desktop windowing on Android tablets creates new opportunities for your apps, particularly around productivity and multitasking. The possibility to resize and reposition multiple app windows allows users to easily compare documents, reference information while composing emails, and multitask efficiently.
By optimizing for desktop windowing, you can deliver unique user experiences to match the growing demand for tablet-based productivity. At the same time, you'll enhance the overall user experience on tablets, making your apps more versatile and adaptable to different scenarios.
If your app already meets the Tier 2 (Large Screens optimized) quality bar in the Large screen app quality guidelines, then there is minimal additional optimization required! If your app has not been optimized for large screens yet, updating it according to the Large screen app quality guidelines becomes even more crucial in the context of desktop windowing. Let’s see why:
Freeform resizing enables users to resize apps to their preference for maximized productivity. Considering this, developers should note:
Apps with locked orientation are freely resizable. That means, even if an activity is locked to portrait orientation, users can still resize the app to landscape orientation window. In a future update, apps declared as non-resizable will have their UI scaled while keeping the same aspect ratio.
Adaptive layouts: By adapting your UI, apps have an opportunity to effortlessly handle a wide range of window sizes, from compact to expanded screen layouts. In desktop windowing, apps can be resized down to a minimum size of 386dp x 352dp, so make sure to leverage window size classes to adjust your app's layout, content, and interactions to adapt to different window dimensions.
State management: With freeform resizing, configuration changes happen each time the window resizes, so your app should either handle these configuration changes gracefully or make sure you are preserving the app state when the OS initiates the re-creation of the app. As a reminder, users can change the screen density while your app is running, so it’s best to ensure that your app can handle screen density configuration changes as well.
Figure 3. Apps with locked orientation are freely resizable.
Desktop windowing takes productivity on tablets to the next level with multiple apps running simultaneously. Similar to split screen, Desktop windowing encourages users to have multiple windows open. Considering this, developers should note:
Multitasking support: For enhanced productivity, users can have two or more apps open simultaneously, and they expect to easily share content between apps, so add support for drag and drop gestures. Also, ensure your app continues to function correctly even when not in focus, and if your app uses exclusive resources like camera or microphone, the app needs to handle resource loss gracefully when other apps acquire the resource.
Multi-instance support: Users can run multiple instances of your app side-by-side; for example, a document editor application may allow users to start new documents while still being able to reference the already open documents. Apps can set this new Multi-instance property to declare that System UI should be shown for this app to allow it to be launched as multiple instances. Also note that in desktop windowing, new tasks open in a new window, so double-check the user journey if your app starts multiple tasks.
Figure 4. Start another instance of Chrome by dragging a tab out of the app window.
Note: Images are examples and subject to change
With desktop windowing, input methods beyond touch and insets handling become even more important for a seamless user experience.
More input methods (keyboard, mouse): Users are more likely to use your app with a variety of input methods like external keyboards, mice, and trackpads. Check that users can interact smoothly with your app using keyboard and mouse peripherals or through the emulator. Developers can add support for app shortcuts and publish them using the keyboard shortcuts API, which allows users to easily view the supported app shortcuts through a standardized surface on Android devices.
Today we’re announcing a developer preview that provides you with an early opportunity to experience and test desktop windowing. You can try it out on Pixel Tablet before it’s released to AOSP more broadly. The preview is available today. Update your Pixel Tablet to the latest Android 15 QPR1 Beta 2 release to try out desktop windowing. If you don’t have a Pixel Tablet handy, access the Pixel Tablet emulator in Android Studio Preview, and select the Android 15.0 (Google APIs Tablet) target. Once your device is set up, select Enable freeform windows option in Developer options to explore the capabilities of desktop windowing and how your app behaves within this new environment.
By optimizing your apps for desktop windowing on Pixel Tablet, you are not only enhancing the app experience on that specific device but also future-proofing your apps for the broader Android ecosystem where freeform windowing will become prevalent. We're excited about the windows of opportunities enabled by desktop windowing, and we look forward to seeing how you adapt your apps for an enhanced user experience.
We're committed to improving the desktop windowing experience through future updates. Make sure to test your app and give us feedback. Say tuned for more developer guides and resources!
Posted by Francesco Romano – Developer Relations Engineer on Android, and Fahd Imtiaz – Product Manager, Android Developer
To empower tablet users to get more done, we're enhancing freeform windowing, allowing them to run multiple apps simultaneously and resize windows for optimal multitasking. Today, we're excited to share that desktop windowing on Android tablets is available in developer preview.
For app developers, the concept of Android apps running in freeform windows has already existed with solutions like Samsung DeX and ChromeOS. Updating your apps to support adaptive layouts, more robust multitasking, and adaptive inputs will ensure your apps work well on large screens across the Android ecosystem.
Let’s explore how to optimize your apps for desktop windowing and deliver the optimal experience to users.
What is desktop windowing?
Desktop windowing allows users to run multiple apps simultaneously and resize app windows, offering a more flexible and desktop-like experience. This, along with a refreshed System UI and new APIs, allows users to be even more productive and creates a more seamless, desktop-like experience on tablets.
In Figure 1, you can see the anatomy of the screen with desktop windowing enabled. Things to make note of:
Users can run multiple apps side-by-side, simultaneously
Taskbar is fixed and shows the running apps, users can pin apps for quick access
New header bar with window controls at the top of each window which apps can customize
Figure 1: Desktop windowing on a Pixel Tablet.
Note: Images are examples and subject to change
How can users invoke desktop windowing?
By default, apps open in full screen on Android tablets. To run the apps as a desktop window on Pixel Tablet, press and hold the window handle at the top in the middle of the screen and drag it within the UI, as seen in Figure 2.
Once you are in the desktop space, all future apps will be launched as desktop windows as well.
Figure 2. Press, hold, and drag the window handle to enter desktop windowing.
Note: Images are examples and subject to change
You can also invoke desktop windowing from the menu that shows up below the window handle when you tap/click on it or use the keyboard shortcut meta key (Windows, Command, or Search) + Ctrl + Down.
You can exit desktop windowing and display an app as full screen by closing all active windows or by grabbing the window handle at the top of the window and dragging the app to the top of the screen. You can also use the meta + H keyboard shortcut to run apps as full screen again.
To return to the desktop, move a full screen app to the desktop space by using the methods mentioned above, or simply tap on the desktop space tile in the Recents screen.
What does this mean for app developers?
Desktop windowing on Android tablets creates new opportunities for your apps, particularly around productivity and multitasking. The possibility to resize and reposition multiple app windows allows users to easily compare documents, reference information while composing emails, and multitask efficiently.
By optimizing for desktop windowing, you can deliver unique user experiences to match the growing demand for tablet-based productivity. At the same time, you'll enhance the overall user experience on tablets, making your apps more versatile and adaptable to different scenarios.
If your app already meets the Tier 2 (Large Screens optimized) quality bar in the Large screen app quality guidelines, then there is minimal additional optimization required! If your app has not been optimized for large screens yet, updating it according to the Large screen app quality guidelines becomes even more crucial in the context of desktop windowing. Let’s see why:
Freeform resizing enables users to resize apps to their preference for maximized productivity. Considering this, developers should note:
Apps with locked orientation are freely resizable. That means, even if an activity is locked to portrait orientation, users can still resize the app to landscape orientation window. In a future update, apps declared as non-resizable will have their UI scaled while keeping the same aspect ratio.
Adaptive layouts: By adapting your UI, apps have an opportunity to effortlessly handle a wide range of window sizes, from compact to expanded screen layouts. In desktop windowing, apps can be resized down to a minimum size of 386dp x 352dp, so make sure to leverage window size classes to adjust your app's layout, content, and interactions to adapt to different window dimensions.
State management: With freeform resizing, configuration changes happen each time the window resizes, so your app should either handle these configuration changes gracefully or make sure you are preserving the app state when the OS initiates the re-creation of the app. As a reminder, users can change the screen density while your app is running, so it’s best to ensure that your app can handle screen density configuration changes as well.
Figure 3. Apps with locked orientation are freely resizable.
Desktop windowing takes productivity on tablets to the next level with multiple apps running simultaneously. Similar to split screen, Desktop windowing encourages users to have multiple windows open. Considering this, developers should note:
Multitasking support: For enhanced productivity, users can have two or more apps open simultaneously, and they expect to easily share content between apps, so add support for drag and drop gestures. Also, ensure your app continues to function correctly even when not in focus, and if your app uses exclusive resources like camera or microphone, the app needs to handle resource loss gracefully when other apps acquire the resource.
Multi-instance support: Users can run multiple instances of your app side-by-side; for example, a document editor application may allow users to start new documents while still being able to reference the already open documents. Apps can set this new Multi-instance property to declare that System UI should be shown for this app to allow it to be launched as multiple instances. Also note that in desktop windowing, new tasks open in a new window, so double-check the user journey if your app starts multiple tasks.
Figure 4. Start another instance of Chrome by dragging a tab out of the app window.
Note: Images are examples and subject to change
With desktop windowing, input methods beyond touch and insets handling become even more important for a seamless user experience.
More input methods (keyboard, mouse): Users are more likely to use your app with a variety of input methods like external keyboards, mice, and trackpads. Check that users can interact smoothly with your app using keyboard and mouse peripherals or through the emulator. Developers can add support for app shortcuts and publish them using the keyboard shortcuts API, which allows users to easily view the supported app shortcuts through a standardized surface on Android devices.
Today we’re announcing a developer preview that provides you with an early opportunity to experience and test desktop windowing. You can try it out on Pixel Tablet before it’s released to AOSP more broadly. The preview is available today. Update your Pixel Tablet to the latest Android 15 QPR1 Beta 2 release to try out desktop windowing. If you don’t have a Pixel Tablet handy, access the Pixel Tablet emulator in Android Studio Preview, and select the Android 15.0 (Google APIs Tablet) target. Once your device is set up, select Enable freeform windows option in Developer options to explore the capabilities of desktop windowing and how your app behaves within this new environment.
By optimizing your apps for desktop windowing on Pixel Tablet, you are not only enhancing the app experience on that specific device but also future-proofing your apps for the broader Android ecosystem where freeform windowing will become prevalent. We're excited about the windows of opportunities enabled by desktop windowing, and we look forward to seeing how you adapt your apps for an enhanced user experience.
We're committed to improving the desktop windowing experience through future updates. Make sure to test your app and give us feedback. Say tuned for more developer guides and resources!
Posted by Diego Zavala and Jason Lucibello – Product Managers
In 2023, we introduced Credential Manager for Android. Credential Manager creates a unified experience for passkeys, Sign in with Google, and passwords, allowing seamless sign-in and eliminating the need for users to type in usernames or passwords.
Fig 1. Sample app showing Credential Manager dialog in a sign-in flow with a passkey, a password, and a Sign in with Google options
To bring Credential Manager’s benefits to more Android users and simplify developers’ integration efforts, APIs that were previously deprecated will continue their phased removals and shutdowns. These APIs include:
Developers with apps that still use these APIs should migrate to Credential Manager as soon as possible. Credential Manager supports all authentication features included in these legacy APIs, as well as streamlined journeys for users and modernizes the experience with passkey support and streamlined user journeys. Developers looking to implement authorization functionality for Google Accounts, such as scoped access to a service like Google Drive, should continue to use the AuthorizationClient API.
Current status of APIs as of September 2024, update plans, and recommended migration guides.
Deprecated: API is still in the SDK and functional, but will be removed and fully shut down in the future. Developers are recommended to migrate to Credential Manager at this time.
Removed: API is still functional for users, but is no longer included in the SDK. New app versions compiled with the most recent SDK would fail in the build process if your code still utilizes the removed API. If your app still relies on any of these APIs, you should migrate to Credential Manager as soon as possible.
Fully shut down: API is no longer functional, and it will fail when a request is sent by an app.
Credential Manager offers streamlined, more secure auth journeys
Credential Manager delivers multiple advantages to users and developers over the deprecated APIs:
1. Easier, more secure sign-ins with passkeys: Passkeys are an alternative to passwords that provide an easier and more secure authentication experience, based on industry standards. Credential Manager brings support for passkeys to Android apps.
2. Frictionless, one-tap sign-in: Users select their preferred saved credential from the options offered, without needing to remember or type username or passwords.
3. Unified UI across all credentials: Credential Manager’s one-tap sign-in works with passkeys, Sign in with Google, and passwords. It deduplicates methods for the same account, so users no longer need to remember which method they last used, or which one is the “right” method.
4. Extended support for password managers: Users benefit from using the credentials stored in their preferred password manager on Credential Manager flows, and can even enable multiple password managers at the same time! Passwords managers not only protect users’ credentials, but they also provide additional action and protections to keep users safe, such as upgrading passwords to passkeys, alerting users to password reuse, and containing usage to affiliated apps and domains.
5. Simplified development: Developers can consolidate their sign-in logic into a single, modern API, reducing development overhead and maintenance efforts. New authentication functionality will be released through Credential Manager going forward.
Adopting Credential Manager is an intuitive upgrade for developers
For developers previously using our deprecated APIs, the transition to Credential Manager is smooth and intuitive. Developers like X (formerly known as Twitter), Pinterest have already experienced the benefits of the upgrade. X shared with us that Credential Manager’s unified approach made migration and maintenance effortless, while Pinterest expressed a smooth process for both users and engineers with Credential Manager.
Developers can use the following guides to make adopting Credential Manager even easier:
Your input is very valuable to us as we continue to refine and improve our authentication services. Please keep providing us feedback on the issue tracker and share your experience integrating Credential Manager!
The team at SAP Mobile Start were early adopters of the Compose adaptive APIs. It took their developers only five minutes to integrate the NavigationSuiteScaffold from the new Compose Material 3 adaptive library, rapidly adapting the app’s navigation UI to different window sizes.
Each of the new components in the library, NavigationSuiteScaffold, ListDetailPaneScaffold and SupportingPaneScaffold are adaptive: based on the window size and posture, different components are displayed to the user based on which one is most appropriate in the current context. This helps build UI that adapts to a wide variety of window sizes instead of just stretching layouts.
For an overview of the components, check out the dedicated I/O session and our new documentation pages to get started.
In this post, we’re going to take a more detailed look at the layering of the new library so you have a better understanding of how customisable it is, to fit a wide variety of use cases you might have.
Similar to Compose itself, the adaptive libraries are layered into multiple dependencies, so that you can choose the appropriate level of abstraction for your application.There are four new artifacts as part of the adaptive libraries:
For the core building blocks for building adaptive UI, including computing the window size class and the current posture, add androidx.compose.material3.adaptive:adaptive:1.0.0
For implementing multi-pane layouts, add androidx.compose.material3.adaptive:adaptive-layout:1.0.0
For standalone navigators for the multi-pane scaffold layouts, add androidx.compose.material3.adaptive:adaptive-navigation:1.0.0
For implementing adaptive navigation UI, add androidx.compose.material3:material3-adaptive-navigation-suite:1.3.0
The libraries have the following dependencies:
New library dependency graph
To explore this layering more, let’s start with the highest level example with the most built-in functionality using a NavigableListDetailPaneScaffold from androidx.compose.material3.adaptive:adaptive-navigation:
val navigator = rememberListDetailPaneScaffoldNavigator<Any>()
NavigableListDetailPaneScaffold(
navigator = navigator,
listPane ={// List pane},
detailPane ={// Detail pane},)
This snippet of code gives you all of our recommended adaptive behavior out of the box for a list-detail layout: determining how many panes to show based on the current window size, hiding and showing the correct pane when the window size changes depending on the previous state of the UI, and having the back button conditionally bring the user back to the list, depending on the window size and the current state.
This encapsulates a lot of behavior – and this might be all you need, and you don’t need to go any deeper!
However, there may be reasons why you may want to tweak this behavior, or more directly manage the state by hoisting parts of it in a different way.
Remember, each layer builds upon the last. This snippet is at the outermost layer, and we can start unwrapping the layers to customize it where we need.
Let’s go one level deeper with NavigableListDetailPaneScaffold and drop down one layer. Behavior won’t change at all with these direct inlinings, since we are just inlining the default behavior at each step:
(Fun fact: You can follow along with this directly in Android Studio and for any other component you desire. If you choose Refactor > Inline function, you can directly replace a component with its implementation. You can’t delete the original function in the library of course.)
val navigator = rememberListDetailPaneScaffoldNavigator<Any>()
BackHandler(
enabled = navigator.canNavigateBack(BackNavigationBehavior.PopUntilContentChange)){
navigator.navigateBack(BackNavigationBehavior.PopUntilContentChange)}
ListDetailPaneScaffold(
directive = navigator.scaffoldDirective,
value = navigator.scaffoldValue,
listPane ={// List pane},
detailPane ={// Detail pane},)
With the first inlining, we see the BackHandler that NavigableListDetailPaneScaffold includes by default. If using ListDetailPaneScaffold directly, back handling is left up to the developer to include and hoist to the appropriate place.
This also reveals how the navigator provides two pieces of state to control the ListDetailPaneScaffold:
directive —- how the panes should be arranged in the ListDetailPaneScaffold, and
value —- the current state of the panes, as calculated from the directive and the current navigation state.
These are both controlled by the navigator, and the next unpeeling shows us the default arguments to the navigator for directive and the adapt strategy, which is used to calculate value:
val navigator = rememberListDetailPaneScaffoldNavigator<Any>(
scaffoldDirective = calculatePaneScaffoldDirective(currentWindowAdaptiveInfo()),
adaptStrategies = ListDetailPaneScaffoldDefaults.adaptStrategies(),)
BackHandler(
enabled = navigator.canNavigateBack(BackNavigationBehavior.PopUntilContentChange)){
navigator.navigateBack(BackNavigationBehavior.PopUntilContentChange)}
ListDetailPaneScaffold(
directive = navigator.scaffoldDirective,
value = navigator.scaffoldValue,
listPane ={// List pane},
detailPane ={// Detail pane},)
The directive controls the behavior for how many panes to show and the pane spacing, based on currentWindowAdaptiveInfo, which contains the size and posture of the window.
This can be customized with a different directive, to show two panes side-by-side at a smaller medium width:
val navigator = rememberListDetailPaneScaffoldNavigator<Any>(
scaffoldDirective = calculatePaneScaffoldDirectiveWithTwoPanesOnMediumWidth(currentWindowAdaptiveInfo()),
adaptStrategies = ListDetailPaneScaffoldDefaults.adaptStrategies(),)
By default, showing two panes at a medium width can result in UI that is too narrow, especially for complex content. However, this can be a good option to use the window space more optimally by showing two panes for less complex content.
The AdaptStrategy controls what happens to panes when there isn’t enough space to show all of them. Right now, this always hides panes for which there isn’t enough space.
This directive is used by the navigator to drive its logic and, combined with the adapt strategy to determine the scaffold value, the resulting target state for each of the panes.
The scaffold directive and the scaffold value are then passed to the ListDetailPaneScaffold, driving the behavior of the scaffold.
This layering allows hoisting the scaffold state away from the display of the scaffold itself. This layering also allows custom implementations for controlling how the scaffold works and for hoisting related state. For example, if you are using a custom navigation solution instead of the navigator, you could drive the ListDetailPaneScaffold directly with state derived from your custom navigation solution.
The layering is enforced in the library with the different artifacts:
androidx.compose.material3.adaptive:adaptive contains the underlying methods to calculate the current window adaptive info
androidx.compose.material3.adaptive:adaptive-layout contains the layouts ListDetailPaneScaffold and SupportingPaneScaffold
androidx.compose.material3.adaptive:adaptive-navigation contains the navigator APIs (like rememberListDetailPaneScaffoldNavigator)
Therefore, if you aren’t going to use the navigator and instead use a custom navigation solution, you can skip using androidx.compose.material3.adaptive:adaptive-navigation and depend on androidx.compose.material3.adaptive:adaptive-layout directly.
When adding the Compose Adaptive library to your app, start with the most fully featured layer, and then unwrap if needed to tweak behavior. As we continue to work on the library and add new features, we’ll keep adding them to the appropriate layer. Using the higher-level layers will mean that you will be able to get these new features most easily. If you need to, you can use lower layers to get more fine-grained control, but that also means that more responsibility for behavior is transferred to your app, just like the layering in Compose itself.
Try out the new components today, and send us your feedback for bugs and feature requests.
Posted by Alex Vanyo – Developer Relations Engineer
SAP Mobile Start is an app that centralizes access to SAP's mobile business suite, a hub for users to keep track of their companies’ processes and data so they can efficiently manage their daily to-dos while on the move.
Recently, SAP Mobile Start developers prioritized building an adaptive app that looks great across devices, including tablets and foldables, to create a more seamless user experience. Using Jetpack Compose and Material 3 design, the team efficiently implemented intuitive, user-friendly features to increase accessibility across its users’ preferred devices.
Adaptive design across devices
With over 300 million daily active users on foldables, tablets, and Chromebooks today, building apps that adapt to varied screen sizes is important for providing an optimal user experience. But simply stretching the UI to fit different screen sizes can drastically alter it from its original form, obscuring the interface and impairing the user experience.
“We focused on situations where we could make better use of available space on large screens,” said Laura Bergmann, UX designer for SAP. “We wanted to get rid of screens that are stretched from edge to edge, full-screen drill-downs or dialogs, and use space more efficiently.”
Now, after optimizing for different devices, SAP Mobile Start dynamically adjusts its layouts by swapping components and showing or hiding content based on the available window size instead of stretching UI elements to match a device's screen.
The SAP team also implemented canonical layouts, common UI designs that split a screen into panes according to its size. By separating content into panes, SAP’s users can manage their business workflows more productively. Depending on the window size class, the supporting pane adjusts the UI without additional custom logic. For example, compact windows typically utilize one pane, while larger windows can utilize multiple.
“Adopting the new canonical layouts from Google helped us focus more on designing unique app capabilities for SAP’s business scenarios,” said Laura. “With the available navigational elements and patterns, we can now channel our efforts into creating a more engaging user experience without reinventing the wheel.”
SAP developers started by implementing supporting panes to create multi-pane layouts that efficiently utilize on-screen space. The first place developers added supporting panes was on the app’s “To-Do” details page. To-dos used to be managed in a single pane, making it difficult to review the comments and tickets simultaneously. Now, tickets and comments are reviewed in primary and secondary panes on the same screen using SupportingPaneScaffold.
Fast implementation using Compose Material 3 Adaptive library
SAP Mobile Start is built entirely with Jetpack Compose, Android’s modern declarative toolkit for building native UI. Compose helped SAP developers build new UI faster and easier than ever before thanks to composables, reusable code blocks for building common UI components. The team also used Compose Navigation to integrate seamless navigation between composables, optimizing travel between new UI on all screens.
It took developers only five minutes to integrate the NavigationSuiteScaffold from the new Compose Material 3 adaptive library, rapidly adapting the app’s navigation UI to different window sizes, switching between a bottom navigation bar and a vertical navigation rail. It also eliminated the need for custom logic, which previously determined the navigation component based on various window size classes. The NavigationSuiteScaffold also reduced the custom navigation UI logic code by 59%, from 379 lines to 156.
“Jetpack Compose simplified UI development,” said Aditya Arora, lead Android developer. “Its declarative nature, coupled with built-in support for Material Design and dark theme, significantly increased our development efficiency. By simply describing the desired UI, we've reduced code complexity and improved maintainability.”
SAP developers used live edit and layout inspector in Android Studio to test and optimize the app for large screens. These features were “total game changers” for the SAP team because they helped iterate and inspect layout issues faster when optimizing for new screens.
With its @PreviewScreenSizes annotation and device streaming powered by Firebase, Jetpack Compose also made testing the app's UI across various screen sizes easier. SAP developers look forward to Compose Screenshot Testing being completed, which will further streamline UI testing and ensure greater visual consistency within the app.
Using Jetpack Compose, SAP developers also quickly and easily implemented new Material 3 design concepts from the Compose M3 Adaptive library. Material 3 design emphasizes personalizing the app experience, improving interactions with modern visual aesthetics.
Compose's flexibility made replacing the standard Material Theme with their own custom Fiori Horizon Theme simple, ensuring a consistent visual appearance across SAP apps. “As early adopters of the Compose M3 Adaptive library, we collaborated with Google to refine the API,” said Aditya. “Since our app is completely Compose-based, leveraging the new Compose Material 3 Adaptive library was a piece of cake.”
As large-screen devices like tablets, foldables, and Chromebooks become more popular, building layouts that adapt to varied screen sizes becomes increasingly crucial. For SAP Mobile Start developers, reimagining their app across devices using Jetpack Compose and Material 3 design guidelines was simple. Using Android’s collection of tools and resources, creating adaptive UIs for all the new form factors hitting the market today is faster and easier than ever.
“Optimizing for large screens is crucial. The market for tablets, foldables, and Chromebooks is booming. Don't miss out on this opportunity to improve your user experience and expand your app's reach,” said Aditya.
Posted by Terence Zhang – Developer Relations Engineer and Lisie Lillianfeld - Product Manager
TalkBack is Android’s screen reader in the Android Accessibility Suite that describes text and images for Android users who have blindness or low vision. The TalkBack team is always working to make Android more accessible. Today, thanks to Gemini Nano with multimodality, TalkBack automatically provides users with blindness or low vision more vivid and detailed image descriptions to better understand the images on their screen.
Increasing accessibility using Gemini Nano with multimodality
Advancing accessibility is a core part of Google’s mission to build for everyone. That’s why TalkBack has a feature to describe images when developers didn’t include descriptive alt text. This feature was powered by a small ML model called Garcon. However, Garcon produced short, generic responses and couldn’t specify relevant details like landmarks or products.
The development of Gemini Nano with multimodality was the perfect opportunity to use the latest AI technology to increase accessibility with TalkBack. Now, when TalkBack users opt in on eligible devices, the screen reader uses Gemini Nano’s new multimodal capabilities to automatically provide users with clear, detailed image descriptions in apps including Google Photos and Chrome, even if the device is offline or has an unstable network connection.
“Gemini Nano helps fill in missing information,” said Lisie Lillianfeld, product manager at Google. “Whether it’s more details about what’s in a photo a friend sent or the style and cut of clothing when shopping online.”
Going beyond basic image descriptions
Here’s an example that illustrates how Gemini Nano improves image descriptions: When Garcon is presented with a panorama of the Sydney, Australia shoreline at night, it might read: “Full moon over the ocean.” Gemini Nano with multimodality can paint a richer picture, with a description like: “A panoramic view of Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge from the north shore of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.”
“It's amazing how Nano can recognize something specific. For instance, the model will recognize not just a tower, but the Eiffel Tower,” said Lisie. “This kind of context takes advantage of the unique strengths of LLMs to deliver a helpful experience for our users.”
Using an on-device model like Gemini Nano was the only feasible solution for TalkBack to provide automatically generated detailed image descriptions for images, even while the device is offline.
“The average TalkBack user comes across 90 unlabeled images per day, and those images weren't as accessible before this new feature,” said Lisie. The feature has gained positive user feedback, with early testers writing that the new image descriptions are a “game changer” and that it’s “wonderful” to have detailed image descriptions built into TalkBack.
Balancing inference verbosity and speed
One important decision the Android accessibility team made when implementing Gemini Nano with multimodality was between inference verbosity and speed, which is partially determined by image resolution. Gemini Nano with multimodality currently accepts images in either 512 pixels or 768 pixels.
“The 512-pixel resolution emitted its first token almost two seconds faster than 768 pixels, but the output wasn't as detailed,” said Tyler Freeman, a senior software engineer at Google. “For our users, we decided a longer, richer description was worth the increased latency. We were able to hide the perceived latency a bit by streaming the tokens directly to the text-to-speech system, so users don’t have to wait for the full text to be generated before hearing a response.”
A hybrid solution using Gemini Nano and Gemini 1.5 Flash
TalkBack developers also implemented a hybrid AI solution using Gemini 1.5 Flash. With this server-based AI model, TalkBack can provide the best of on-device and server-based generative AI features to make the screen reader even more powerful.
When users want more details after hearing an automatically generated image description from Gemini Nano, TalkBack gives the user an option to listen to more by running the image through Gemini Flash. When users focus on an image, they can use a three-finger tap to open the TalkBack menu and select the “Describe Image” option to send the image to Gemini 1.5 Flash on the server and get even more details.
By combining the unique advantages of both Gemini Nano's on-device processing with the full power of cloud-based Gemini 1.5 Flash, TalkBack provides blind and low-vision Android users a helpful and informative experience with images. The “describe image” feature powered by Gemini 1.5 Flash launched to TalkBack users on more Android devices, so even more users can get detailed image descriptions.
Compact model, big impact
The Android accessibility team recommends developers looking to use the Gemini Nano with multimodality prototype and test on a powerful, server-side model first. There developers can understand the UX faster, iterate on prompt engineering, and get a better idea of the highest quality possible using the most capable model available.
While Gemini Nano with multimodality can include missing context to improve image descriptions, it’s still best practice for developers to provide detailed alt text for all images on their apps or websites. If the alt text is not provided, TalkBack can help fill in the gaps.
The Android accessibility team’s goal is to create inclusive and accessible features, and leveraging Gemini Nano with multimodality to provide vivid and detailed image descriptions automatically is a big step towards that. Furthermore, their hybrid approach towards AI, combining the strengths of both Gemini Nano on device and Gemini 1.5 Flash in the server, showcases the transformative potential of AI in promoting inclusivity and accessibility and highlights Google's ongoing commitment to building for everyone.
This blog post is part of our series: Spotlight Week on Android 15, where we provide resources — blog posts, videos, sample code, and more — all designed to help you prepare your apps and take advantage of the latest features in Android 15. You can read more in the overview of Spotlight Week: Android 15, which will be updated throughout the week.
Posted by Aaron Labiaga- Android Developer Relations Engineer
By now, you’ve probably heard the news: Android 15 was just released earlier today to AOSP. To celebrate, we’re kicking off a new series called “Spotlight Week” where we’ll shine a light on technical areas across Android development and equip you with the tools you need to take advantage of each area.
The Android 15 "Spotlight Week" will provide resources — blog posts, videos, sample code, and more — all designed to help you prepare your apps and take advantage of the latest features. These changes strive to improve the Android ecosystem, but updating the OS comes with potential app compatibility implications and integrations that require detailed guidance.
Here’s what we’re covering this week in our Spotlight Week on Android 15:
Android 15 goes to AOSP: big news for the Android world as the latest release - Android 15 - moves to AOSP.
The Android 15 summary page outlines what a developer needs to know about what is new in the release, behavioral changes affecting all apps, and changes applicable only when targeting the new SDK level 35.
Edge-to-edge (Tuesday, September 3): To kick-off the week, a change that will most likely be impacting your app, Edge-to-Edge are APIs that lays out your app to optimize for screen real estate. It will be enforced for all apps targeting Android 15, making the status bar and navigation bar transparent, for a more high-quality experience. Understand how these changes will affect your app by reading the documentations linked. Learn how to work around these changes by reading the Insets handling tips for Android 15's edge-to-edge enforcement blog post.
Building for the future of Android, an in-depth video (Wednesday, Sept 4)
Foreground services and a live Android 15 Q&A (Thursday, September 5):Foreground services changes are coming in Android 15, and we’re introducing a new foreground service type, updating the exemption scenarios that allow a foreground service to start from the background, and updating the max duration of certain foreground service types. These changes are intended to improve user experience by preventing apps from misusing foreground service that may drain a user’s battery. Plus we’ll have a live Q&A.
Passkeys and Picture-in-Picture (Friday, September 6):Passkeys enable a more streamlined and secured means of authenticating your users. Learn more about passkeys through our sample code and about the updates made to further simplify the login process in Android 15. Plus, we're highlighting a Picture-in-Picture sample code that is applicable to apps with video functionality.
That’s just a taste of what we’re covering in our Spotlight Week on Android 15. Keep checking back to this blog post for updates, where we’ll be adding links and more throughout the week. Plus, follow Android Developers on X and Android by Google at Linkedin throughout the week to hear even more about Android 15.
Posted by Aaron Labiaga- Android Developer Relations Engineer
By now, you’ve probably heard the news: Android 15 was just released earlier today to AOSP. To celebrate, we’re kicking off a new series called “Spotlight Week” where we’ll shine a light on technical areas across Android development and equip you with the tools you need to take advantage of each area.
The Android 15 "Spotlight Week" will provide resources — blog posts, videos, sample code, and more — all designed to help you prepare your apps and take advantage of the latest features. These changes strive to improve the Android ecosystem, but updating the OS comes with potential app compatibility implications and integrations that require detailed guidance.
Here’s what we’re covering this week in our Spotlight Week on Android 15:
Android 15 goes to AOSP: big news for the Android world as the latest release - Android 15 - moves to AOSP.
The Android 15 summary page outlines what a developer needs to know about what is new in the release, behavioral changes affecting all apps, and changes applicable only when targeting the new SDK level 35.
Edge-to-edge (Tuesday, September 3): To kick-off the week, a change that will most likely be impacting your app, Edge-to-Edge are APIs that lays out your app to optimize for screen real estate. It will be enforced for all apps targeting Android 15, making the status bar and navigation bar transparent, for a more high-quality experience. Understand how these changes will affect your app by reading the documentations linked. Learn how to work around these changes by reading the Insets handling tips for Android 15's edge-to-edge enforcement blog post.
Building for the future of Android, an in-depth video (Wednesday, Sept 4)
Foreground services and a live Android 15 Q&A (Thursday, September 5):Foreground services changes are coming in Android 15, and we’re introducing a new foreground service type, updating the exemption scenarios that allow a foreground service to start from the background, and updating the max duration of certain foreground service types. These changes are intended to improve user experience by preventing apps from misusing foreground service that may drain a user’s battery. Plus we’ll have a live Q&A.
Passkeys and Picture-in-Picture (Friday, September 6):Passkeys enable a more streamlined and secured means of authenticating your users. Learn more about passkeys through our sample code and about the updates made to further simplify the login process in Android 15. Plus, we're highlighting a Picture-in-Picture sample code that is applicable to apps with video functionality.
That’s just a taste of what we’re covering in our Spotlight Week on Android 15. Keep checking back to this blog post for updates, where we’ll be adding links and more throughout the week. Plus, follow Android Developers on X and Android by Google at Linkedin throughout the week to hear even more about Android 15.
Posted by Matthew McCullough – VP of Product Management, Android Developer
Today we're releasing Android 15 and making the source code available at the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Android 15 will be available on supported Pixel devices in the coming weeks, as well as on select devices from Samsung, Honor, iQOO, Lenovo, Motorola, Nothing, OnePlus, Oppo, realme, Sharp, Sony, Tecno, vivo, and Xiaomi in the coming months.
We're proud to continue our work in open source through the AOSP. Open source allows anyone to build upon and contribute to Android, resulting in devices that are more diverse and innovative. You can leverage your app development skills in Android Studio with Jetpack Compose to create applications that thrive across the entire ecosystem. You can even examine the source code for a deeper understanding of how Android works.
Starting today, we're kicking off a new educational series called Spotlight Weeks, where we dive into technical topics across Android, beginning with a week of content on Android 15. Check out what we'll be covering throughout the week, as well as today's deep dive into edge-to-edge.
Improving your developer experience
While most of our work to improve your productivity centers around tools like Android Studio, Jetpack Compose, and the Android Jetpack libraries, each new Android platform release includes quality-of-life updates to improve the development experience. For example, Android 15 gives you new insights and telemetry to allow you to further tune your app experience, so you can make changes that improve the way your app runs on any platform release.
The ApplicationStartInfo API helps provide insight into your app startup including the startup reason, time spent in launch phases, start temperature, and more.
The StorageStats.getAppBytesByDataType([type]) API gives you new insights into how your app is using storage, including apk file splits, ahead-of-time (AOT) and speedup related code, dex metadata, libraries, and guided profiles.
The PdfRenderer APIs now include capabilities to incorporate advanced features such as rendering password-protected files, annotations, form editing, searching, and selection with copy. Linearized PDF optimizations are supported to speed local PDF viewing and reduce resource use. The Jetpack PDF library uses these APIs to simplify adding PDF viewing capabilities to your app, with planned support for older Android releases.
Android 15 adds new Canvas drawing capabilities, including Matrix44 to help manipulate the Canvas in 3D and clipShader/clipOutShader to enable complex shapes by intersecting either the current shader or a difference of the current shader.
Improving typography and internationalization
Android helps you make beautiful apps that work well across the global diversity of the Android ecosystem.
You can now create a FontFamily instance from variable fonts in Android 15 without having to specify wght and ital axes using the buildVariableFamily API; the text renderer will automatically adjust the values of the wght and ital axes to match the displaying text with compatible fonts.
The font file in Android 15 for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) languages, NotoSansCJK, is now a variable font, opening up new possibilities for creative typography.
JUSTIFICATION_MODE_INTER_CHARACTER in Android 15 improves justification for languages that use white space for segmentation such as Chinese and Japanese.
Camera and media improvements
Each Android release helps you bring superior media and camera experiences to your users.
For screens that contain both HDR and SDR content, Android 15 allows you to control the HDR headroom with setDesiredHdrHeadroom to prevent SDR content from appearing too washed-out.
Android 15 supports intelligently adjusting audio loudness and dynamic range compression levels for apps with AAC audio content that contains loudness metadata so that audio levels can adapt to user devices and surroundings. To enable, instantiate a LoudnessCodecController with the audio session ID from the associated AudioTrack.
Low Light Boost in Android 15 adjusts the exposure of the Preview stream in low-light conditions, enabling enhanced image previews, scanning QR codes in low light, and more.
Advanced flash strength adjustments in Android 15 enable precise control of flash intensity in both SINGLE and TORCH modes while capturing images.
Android 15 extends Universal MIDI Packets support to virtual MIDI apps, enabling composition apps to control synthesizer apps as a virtual MIDI 2.0 device just like they would with an USB MIDI 2.0 device.
Improving the user experience
We continue to refine the Android user experience with every release, while working to improve performance and battery life. Here is just some of what Android 15 brings to make the experience more intuitive, performant, and accessible.
Users can save their favorite split-screen app combinations for quick access and pin the taskbar on screen to quickly switch between apps for better large screen multitasking on Android 15; making sure your app is adaptive is more important than ever.
Android 15 enables TalkBack to support Braille displays that are using the HID standard over both USB and secure Bluetooth to help Android support a wider range of Braille displays.
On supported Android 15 devices, NfcAdapter allows apps to request observe mode as well as register filters, enabling one-tap transactions in many cases across multiple NFC capable apps.
Apps can declare a property to allow your Application or Activity to be presented on the small cover screens of supported flippable devices.
Android 15 greatly enhances AutomaticZenRules to allow apps to further customize Attention Management (Do Not Disturb) rules by adding types, icons, trigger descriptions, and the ability to trigger ZenDeviceEffects.
Android 15 now includes OS–level support for app archiving and unarchiving. Archiving removes the APK and any cached files, but persists user data and returns the app as displayable through the LauncherApps APIs, and the original installer can restore it upon a request to unarchive.
Privacy and security are at the core of everything we do, and we work to make meaningful improvements to protect your apps and our users with each platform release.
Private space in Android 15 lets users create a separate space on their device where they can keep sensitive apps away from prying eyes, under an additional layer of authentication. Some types of apps such as medical apps, launcher apps, and app stores may need to take additional steps to function as expected in a user's private space.
Android 15 adds support for apps to detect that they are being recorded so that you can inform the user that they're being recorded if your app is performing a sensitive operation.
PendingIntent creators block background activity launches by default in Android 15 to help prevent apps from accidentally creating a PendingIntent that could be abused by malicious actors.
Get your apps, libraries, tools, and game engines ready!
If you develop an SDK, library, tool, or game engine, it's particularly important to prepare any necessary updates immediately to prevent your downstream app and game developers from being blocked by compatibility issues and allow them to target the latest SDK features. Please let your developers know if updates are needed to fully support Android 15.
Testing your app involves installing your production app using Google Play or other means onto a device or emulator running Android 15. Work through all your app's flows and look for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing. Here are several changes to consider that apply even if you don't yet target Android 15:
Package stopped state changes - Android 15 updates the behavior of the package FLAG_STOPPED state to keep apps stopped until the user launches or indirectly interacts with the app.
Support for 16KB page sizes - Beginning with Android 15, 16 KB page size support will be available on select devices as a developer option. Additionally, Android Studio also offers an emulator system image with 16 KB support through the SDK manager. If your app or library uses the NDK, either directly or indirectly through a library, you can use the developer option in the QPR beta or the Android 15 emulator system image to test and fix applications to prepare for Android devices with 16 KB page sizes in the near future.
Removed legacy emoji font file - Some Android 15 devices such as Pixel will no longer have the bitmap NotoColorEmojiLegacy.ttf file included for compatibility since Android 13 and will only have the default vector file.
Please thoroughly exercise libraries and SDKs that your app is using during your compatibility testing. You may need to update to current SDK versions or reach out to the developer for help if you encounter any issues.
We’re working to make updates faster and smoother with each platform release by prioritizing app compatibility. In Android 15 we’ve made most app-facing changes opt-in until your app targets SDK version 35. This gives you more time to make any necessary app changes.
To make it easier for you to test the opt-in changes that can affect your app, based on your feedback we’ve made many of them toggleable again this year. With the toggles, you can force-enable or disable the changes individually from Developer options or adb. Check out how to do this, here.
App compatibility toggles in Developer Options
To help you migrate your app to target Android 15, the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant within the latest Android Studio Koala Feature Drop release now covers android 15 API changes and walks you through the steps to upgrade your targetSdkVersion.
Android SDK upgrade assistant in Android Studio Koala feature drop
Get started with Android 15
If you have a supported Pixel device, you will receive the public Android 15 over the air update when it becomes available. If you don't want to wait, you can get the most recent quarterly platform release (QPR) beta by joining the Android 15 QPR beta program at any time.
If you're already in the QPR beta program on a Pixel device that supports the next Android release, you'll likely have been offered the opportunity to install the first Android 15 QPR beta update. If you want to opt-out of the beta program without wiping your device, don't install the beta and instead wait for an update to the release version when it is made available on your Pixel device. Once you've applied the stable release update, you can opt out without a data wipe as long as you don't apply the next beta update.
Stay tuned for the next five days of our Spotlight Week on Android 15, where we'll be covering topics like edge-to-edge, passkeys, updates to foreground services, picture-in-picture, and more. Follow along on our blog, X, LinkedIn or YouTube channels. Thank you again to everyone who participated in our Android developer preview and beta program. We're looking forward to seeing how your apps take advantage of the updates in Android 15.
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Posted by Diego Zavala and Jason Lucibello – Product Managers
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Posted by Terence Zhang – Developer Relations Engineer and Lisie Lillianfeld - Product Manager
Posted by Aaron Labiaga- Android Developer Relations Engineer
Posted by Matthew McCullough – VP of Product Management, Android Developer
