Category Archives: Android Developers Blog

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Android 14 is live in AOSP

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Today we're releasing Android 14 and pushing the Android 14 source to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Android 14 is designed to improve your productivity as developers while enhancing performance, privacy, security, and customization for users.

Android 14 is rolling out to select Pixel devices starting today, and will be available later this year on some of your favorite devices from Samsung Galaxy, iQOO, Nothing, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, Sony, Tecno, vivo and Xiaomi.

Thank you for taking the time to take Android 14 for an early spin though our developer preview and beta programs, sharing your feedback, and making sure your apps deliver a great experience on Android 14. Making Android work well for each and every one of the billions of Android users is a collaborative process between us, Android hardware manufacturers, and you, our developer community.

This post covers a selection of Android 14 changes that have the most developer impact. For a complete list of all of the Android 14 changes, visit the Android 14 developer site.

Performance and Efficiency

A big focus of Android 14 was on improving the performance and efficiency of the platform.

Freezing cached applications

Prior to Android 14, cached applications were allowed to run somewhat unconstrained. In Android 14, we freeze cached applications after a short period of time, giving them 0 CPU time. In Android 14 Beta populations, we see that cached processes consume up to 50% less CPU cycles as compared to Android 13 public devices. Thus, background work is disallowed outside of conventional Android app lifecycle APIs such as foreground services, JobScheduler, or WorkManager.

Optimized broadcasts

To keep frozen applications frozen longer (i.e. not get CPU time), we adjusted how apps receive context-registered broadcasts once they go into a cached state; they may be queued, and repeating ones, such as BATTERY_CHANGED, may be merged into one broadcast.

Faster app launches

With cached app and broadcast optimizations In Android 14, we were able to increase long-standing limits on the maximum number of cached applications in the platform, leading to a reduction in cold app starts that scales by the RAM present on the device. On 8GB devices, the beta group saw 20% fewer cold app starts, and on 12GB devices it was over 30% fewer. Cold startups are slow compared to warm startups and they are expensive in terms of power. This work effectively improves both power usage and overall app startup times.

Reduced memory footprint

Improving the Android Runtime (ART) has a huge impact on the Android user-experience. Code size is one of the key metrics we look at; smaller generated files are better for memory (both RAM and storage). In Android 14, ART includes optimizations that reduce code size by an average of 9.3% without impacting performance.

Customization

Customization is at the core of Android's DNA, and Android 14 continues our commitment to enabling Android users to tune their experience around their individual needs, including enhanced accessibility and internationalization features.

Bigger fonts with non-linear scaling – Starting in Android 14, users will be able to scale up their font to 200%. Previously, the maximum font size scale on Pixel devices was 130%. A non-linear font scaling curve is automatically applied to ensure that text that is already large enough doesn’t increase at the same rate as smaller text. Learn more here.

Image showing the differences between font with no scaling at 100% on the left, standard scaling at 200% in the middle, and non-linear scaling at 200% on the right

Per-app language preferences – You can dynamically update your app's localeConfig with LocaleManager.setOverrideLocaleConfig to customize the set of languages displayed in the per-app language list in Android Settings. IMEs can now use LocaleManager.getApplicationLocales to know the UI language of the current app to update the keyboard language. Starting with Android Studio Giraffe and AGP 8.1, you can configure your app to support Android 13's per-app language preferences automatically.

Regional preferences – Regional preferences enable users to personalize temperature units, the first day of the week, and numbering systems.

Grammatical Inflection – The Grammatical Inflection API allows you to more easily add support for users who speak languages that have grammatical gender. To show personalized translations, you just need to add translations inflected for each grammatical gender for impacted languages and integrate the API.

New media capabilities


Ultra HDR for images - Android 14 adds support for 10-bit high dynamic range (HDR) images, with support for the Ultra HDR image format. The format is fully backward-compatible with JPEG, allowing apps to seamlessly interoperate with HDR images.

Zoom, Focus, Postview, and more in Camera Extensions - Android 14 upgrades and improves Camera Extensions, allowing apps to handle longer processing times, enabling improved images using compute-intensive algorithms like low-light photography on supported devices.

Lossless USB audio - Android 14 devices can support lossless audio formats for audiophile-level experiences over USB wired headsets.

New graphics capabilities

Custom meshes with vertex and fragment shaders - Android 14 adds support for custom meshes, which can be defined as triangles or triangle strips, and can, optionally, be indexed. These meshes are specified with custom attributes, vertex strides, varying, and vertex/fragment shaders written in AGSL.

Hardware buffer renderer for Canvas - Android 14 introduces HardwareBufferRenderer to assist in using Android's Canvas API to draw with hardware acceleration into a HardwareBuffer, which is particularly helpful when your use case involves communication with the system compositor through SurfaceControl for low-latency drawing.

Developing across form factors

Android 14 builds on the work done in Android 12L and 13 to support tablets and foldable form factors including a taskbar supporting enhanced multitasking, large-screen optimized system apps and notification UI, activity embedding, enhanced letterboxing, improved media projection, and more. Our app quality guidance for large screens along with additional learning opportunities around building for large screens and foldables can help optimize your app across all Android surfaces, while the large screen gallery contains design patterns and inspiration for social and communications, media, productivity, shopping, and reading apps.

Improving your productivity

Android 14 contains many updates focused on making your development experience more consistent, fun, and productive. Many of these updates are being made available on older platform releases using a combination of Google Play system updates, Jetpack libraries, and Google Play services, so you can reach more users with them.

OpenJDK 17 Support - Thanks to Google Play system updates (Project Mainline), over 600M devices are enabled to receive the latest Android Runtime (ART) updates that ship with Android 14. Learn more here.

Credential Manager and Passkeys support - Credential Manager is a new Jetpack API that supports multiple sign-in methods, such as username and password, passkeys, and federated sign-in solutions (such as Sign-in with Google) in a single API, simplifying your integration. Using Google Play services, Credential Manager is supported back to Android 4.4 (API level 19). Read more here.

Health Connect - Health Connect is a user controlled on-device repository for user health and fitness data that makes it easier than ever to support an integrated health and fitness experience across apps and connected devices. Health Connect is part of the Android platform and receives updates via Google Play system updates without requiring a separate download, and is available to older devices as an app on the Google Play store. Read about Health Connect and more in What's new in Android Health.

Superior system sharesheets - To make it easy to give your app's users a rich, consistent, sharing experience, the system sharesheets in Android 14 are configurable with custom actions and improved ranking.

More consistent and reliable foreground services- We've collaborated with hardware manufacturers such as Samsung to create both a more consistent developer experience and a more reliable user experience. To this end, Android 14 has a new requirement to declare foreground service types and request type-specific permissions and we have Google Play policies to enforce appropriate use of these APIs. We've also added a new user-initiated data transfer job type, making the experience of managing large user-initiated uploads and downloads smoother by leveraging JobScheduler's constraints (e.g. network constraints such as unmetered WiFi).

User experience

Predictive Back - Android 14 introduces new Predictive Back system animations – cross-activity and cross-task – to join the back-to-home animation introduced in Android 13. The system animations remain behind a developer option to allow time for additional polish and for more apps to opt-into Predictive Back; Material and Jetpack Predictive Back animations are available to users today.

Privacy and security

 
Data sharing updates – Users will see a new section in the location runtime permission dialog that highlights when an app shares location data with third parties, where they can get more information and control the app’s data access.

Partial access to photos and videos – When your app targeting SDK 34 requests any of the visual media permissions introduced in SDK 33 (READ_MEDIA_IMAGES / READ_MEDIA_VIDEO), Android 14 users can now grant your app access to only selected photos and videos. To adapt your app to this change, we recommend following our recent best practices.

Background activity launching – Android 10 (API level 29) and higher place restrictions on when apps can start activities when running in the background. To further reduce instances of unexpected interruptions, apps targeting Android 14 need to grant privileges to start activities in the background when sending a PendingIntent or when binding a service.

Block installation of apps targeting older SDK versions – To protect against malware that targets older API levels to bypass security and privacy protections, apps with a targetSdkVersion lower than 23 cannot be installed on Android 14.

Runtime receivers – Apps targeting Android 14 must indicate if dynamic Context.registerReceiver() usage should be treated as "exported" or "unexported", a continuation of the manifest-level work from previous releases. Learn more here.

Secure full screen Intent notifications – Since full-screen intent notifications are designed for extremely high-priority notifications demanding the user's immediate attention, Android 14 limits the apps granted this permission on app install to those that provide calling and alarms only. Your app can now launch the settings page where users can grant the permission.

Safer dynamic code loading – Apps targeting Android 14 require dynamically loaded files to be marked as read-only. Learn more here.

Safer implicit intents – For apps targeting Android 14, creating a mutable pending intent with an implicit intent will throw an exception, preventing them from being able to be used to trigger unexpected code paths. Apps need to either make the pending intent immutable or make the intent explicit. Learn more here.

App compatibility

We’re working to make updates faster and smoother with each platform release by prioritizing app compatibility. In Android 14 we’ve made most app-facing changes opt-in until your app targets SDK version 34 to give you more time to make any necessary app changes, and we’ve updated our tools and processes to help you get ready sooner.

Easier testing and debugging of changes – To make it easier for you to test the opt-in changes that can affect your app, we’ll make 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 the details here.

image of app compatibility toggles in Developer Options
App compatibility toggles in Developer Options.

Get your apps, libraries, tools, and game engines ready!

Now is the time to finish your final compatibility testing and publish any necessary updates to ensure a smooth app experience.

If you develop an SDK, library, tool, or game engine, it's even more important to release any necessary updates now to prevent your downstream app and game developers from being blocked by compatibility issues and allow them to target the latest SDK features. Please make sure to let your developers know if updates are needed to fully support Android 14.

Testing your app involves installing your production app onto a device running Android 14; you can use Google Play or other means. Work through all the app's flows and look for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing. Each release of Android contains changes to the platform that improve privacy, security, and the overall user experience, and these changes can affect your apps. Here are some top changes to test:

Remember to exercise libraries and SDKs that your app is using in your compatibility testing. You may need to update to current SDK versions or reach out to the developer for help.

Once you’ve published the compatible version of your current app, you can start the process to update your app's targetSdkVersion. Review the behavior changes that apply when your app targets Android 14 and use the compatibility framework to help detect issues quickly.

Get started with Android 14

If you have a supported Pixel device, and are not enrolled in the Android Beta program, you will receive the public Android 14 OTA update as it becomes available (it may take a week or longer as this is a phased rollout dependent on device type and carrier). If you are currently enrolled in the Android Beta program running Android 14, you likely have received and installed the beta of the next Android 14 quarterly platform release (QPR1).

System images for Pixel devices are available here for manual download and flash, and you can get the latest 64-bit Android Emulator system images via the Android Studio SDK Manager. If you're looking for the Android 14 source, you'll find it here in the Android Open Source Project repository under the Android 14 branches.

For the best development experience with Android 14, we recommend that you use the latest release of Android Studio Hedgehog. Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:

  • Try the new features and APIs. Report issues in our tracker on the feedback page.
  • Test your current app for compatibility – learn whether your app is affected by default behavior changes in Android 14. Install your app onto a device or emulator running Android 14 and extensively test it.
  • Test your app with opt-in changes – Android 14 has opt-in behavior changes that only affect your app when it’s targeting the new platform. It’s important to understand and assess these changes early. To make it easier to test, you can toggle the changes on and off individually.
  • Update your app with the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant – Android Studio Hedgehog now filters and identifies the specific Android 14 API changes that are relevant to your app, and walks you through the steps to upgrade your targetSdkVersion with the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant.
Screengrab of Android SDK Upgrade Assistant on Google Pixel Fold

Thank you again for participating in our Android developer preview and beta program! We're looking forward to seeing how your apps take advantage of the updates in Android 14.

Java and OpenJDK are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Kakao Games increased FPS stability to 96% through Android Adaptability

Posted by Dohyun Kim, Developer Relations Engineer, Android Games

Finding the balance between graphics quality and performance

Ares: Rise of Guardians is a mobile-to-PC sci-fi MMORPG developed by Second Dive, a game studio based in Korea known for its expertise in developing action RPG series and published by Kakao Games. Set in a vast universe with a detailed, futuristic background, Ares is full of exciting gameplay and beautifully rendered characters involving combatants wearing battle suits. However, because of these richly detailed graphics, some users’ devices struggled to handle the gameplay without affecting the performance.

For some users, their device would overheat after just a few minutes of gameplay and enter a thermally throttled state. In this state, the CPU and GPU frequency are reduced, affecting the game’s performance and causing the FPS to drop. However, as soon as the decreased FPS improved the thermal situation, the FPS would increase again and the cycle would repeat. This FPS fluctuation would cause the game to feel janky.

Adjust the performance in real time with Android Adaptability

To solve this problem, Kakao Games used Android Adaptability and Unity Adaptive Performance to improve the performance and thermal management of their game.

Android Adaptability is a set of tools and libraries to understand and respond to changing performance, thermal, and user situations in real time. These include the Android Dynamic Performance Framework’s thermal APIs, which provide information about the thermal state of a device, and the PerformanceHint API, which help Android choose the optimal CPU operating point and core placement. Both APIs work with the Unity Adaptive Performance package to help developers optimize their games.

Android Adaptability and Unity Adaptive Performance work together to adjust the graphics settings of your app or game to match the capabilities of the user’s device. As a result, it can improve performance, reduce thermal throttling and power consumption, and preserve battery life.

Moving image of gameplay from Ares: Rise of Guardians

Results

After integrating adaptive performance, Ares was better able to manage its thermal situation, which resulted in less throttling. As a result, users were able to enjoy a higher frame rate, and FPS stability increased from 75% to 96%.

In the charts below, the blue line indicates the thermal warning level. The bottom line (0.7) indicates no warning, the midline (0.8) is throttling imminent, and the upper line (0.9) is throttling. As you can see in the first chart, before implementing Android Adaptability, throttling happened after about 16 minutes of gameplay. In the second chart, you can see that after integration, throttling didn’t occur until around 22 minutes.

Graph showing high graphic quality setting measuring thermal headroom against thermal warning level in frames-per-second

Graph showing enabled android adaptability measuring thermal headroom against thermal warning level in frames-per-second

Kakao Games also wanted to reduce device heating, which they knew wasn’t possible with a continuously high graphic quality setting. The best practice is to gradually lower the graphical fidelity as device temperature increases to maintain a constant framerate and thermal equilibrium. So Kakao Games created a six-step change sequence with Android Adaptability, offering stable FPS and lower device temperatures. Automatic changes in fidelity are reflected in the in-game graphic quality settings (resolution, texture, shadow, effect, etc.) in the settings menu. Because some users want the highest graphic quality even if their device can’t sustain performance at that level, Kakao Games gave them the option to manually disable Unity Adaptive Performance.

Get started with Android Adaptability

Android Adaptability and Unity Adaptive Performance is now available to all Android game developers using the Android provider on most Android devices after API level 30 (thermal) and 31 (performance Hint API). Developers are able to use the Android provider from the Adaptive Performance 5.0.0 version. The thermal APIs are integrated with Adaptive Performance to help developers easily retrieve device thermal information and the performance Hint API is called every Update() automatically without any additional work.

Learn how Android Adaptability and Unity Adaptive Performance can help you stabilize your game’s FPS and reduce thermal throttling.

Studio Bot expands to 170+ international markets!

Posted by Isabella Fiterman – Product Marketing Manager, and Sandhya Mohan – Product Manager

At this year’s Google I/O, one of the most exciting announcements for Android developers was the introduction of Studio Bot, an AI-powered coding assistant which can be accessed directly in Android Studio. Studio Bot can accelerate your ability to write high-quality Android apps faster by helping generate code for your app, answering your questions, finding relevant resources— all without ever having to leave Android Studio. After our announcement you told us how excited you were about this AI-powered coding companion, and those of you outside of the U.S were eager to get your hands on it. We heard your feedback, and expanded Studio Bot to over 170 countries and territories in the canary release channel of Android Studio.

Ask Studio Bot your Android development questions

Studio Bot is powered by artificial intelligence and can understand natural language, so you can ask development questions in your own words. While it’s now available in most countries, it is designed to be used in English. You can enter your questions in Studio Bot’s chat window ranging from very simple and open-ended ones to specific problems that you need help with. Here are some examples of the types of queries it can answer:

How do I add camera support to my app?


I want to create a Room database.

Can you remind me of the format for javadocs?

What's the best way to get location on Android?

Studio Bot remembers the context of the conversation, so you can also ask follow-up questions, such as “Can you give me the code for this in Kotlin?” or “Can you show me how to do it in Compose?”


Moving image showing a user having conversation with Studio Bot

Designed with privacy in mind

Studio Bot was designed with privacy in mind. You don’t need to send your source code to take advantage of Studio Bot’s features. By default, Studio Bot’s responses are purely based on conversation history, and you control whether you want to share additional context or code for customized responses. Much like our work on other AI projects, we stick to a set of AI Principles that hold us accountable.

Focus on quality

Studio Bot is still in its early days, and we suggest validating its responses before using them in a production app. We’re continuing to improve its Android development knowledge base and quality of responses so that it can better support your development needs in the future. You can help us improve Studio Bot by trying it out and sharing your feedback on its responses using the thumbs up and down buttons.

Try it out!

Download the latest canary release of Android Studio and read more about how you can get started with Studio Bot. You can also sign up to receive updates on Studio Bot as the experience evolves.

Notes from Google Play: Keeping our platform safe

Posted by Jacqueline Hart, Director, Trusted Experiences, Developer Enablement

Hi there,

With millions of Android apps to choose from, users are increasingly focused on the privacy and security of the titles they download. That’s why it’s so important to build user trust with delightful, high-quality app experiences built on a secure foundation.

I’m Jacqueline Hart and I lead the team that helps developers navigate our policies. We’re also responsible for reviewing apps on Google Play to make sure they are safe for users.

In this edition of Notes from Google Play, I’d like to share how we’re working to improve your policy experience and how we’re helping strengthen user trust by highlighting your app’s approach to privacy and security.

Over the past few months, we’ve shared updates on our key privacy and security initiatives to help you prepare for changes and use new tools and resources, including enhanced account data transparency and controls in your app’s Data safety section and new Android 14 functionality. Now, I’m pleased to share the next phase of features, tools, and updates that we’ve been working on to help keep our platform safe and trustworthy.

Giving you a better policy experience

A few months ago, we announced that we’re redesigning the App content page in Google Play Console to make your outstanding tasks clearer, and now we’re adding more information to help you:

  • Spot deadlines with a new timeline view for new and updated declarations
  • Understand why your app is in-scope for a particular declaration
  • Find relevant policy issues alongside each declaration, helping you identify and fix issues more quickly

Later this year, we plan to show not just existing declarations, but also upcoming declaration requirements and deadlines to give you more time to plan.

Clearly see outstanding declaration-related tasks in our redesigned App content page. 
Example is illustrative and subject to change

We’re also getting you critical information about third-party SDKs, including a new notice on Google Play SDK Index to help you make more informed decisions about which version of an SDK may cause your app to violate Google Play policies.

And now we’re bringing more critical information right into Play Console. Previously, you could only learn about SDK-related policy issues affecting your apps through an Inbox message or email. Later this year, we’ll bring this information to you right on the Policy status page so you can see any issues in one place and stay on top of your app’s policy status.

Soon, you can learn about SDK-related policy issues on the Policy status page in Play Console.
Example is illustrative and subject to change

We’re also making it easier to find out if your app is impacted by our Target API requirements, which requires you to build for the latest versions of Android so you can make use of our latest security updates and platform enhancements. Since early August, you may have seen information outlining any potential impact on your app on the Policy status page, including resources to help you learn what to do to stay compliant.

To give you further support, we’re launching more ways to improve the experience. These include the new Developer Help Community, where you can ask your peers about everything from Play Console to the latest policy changes, and the Google Play Strike Removal program, which helps eligible developers get certain enforcement strikes removed after passing a related Play Academy training course. We launched the program as a pilot last year and have seen a successful reduction in repeat violations, so now we’re making it available to all developers.

Building user trust with the Data safety section
Security plays an important role in helping users decide whether an app is right for them. Recently, we announced account data transparency and controls in the Data safety section to help build user trust. If you haven’t completed your updated Data safety form yet, watch our two-minute video to learn how before the December 7, 2023 deadline. Users will begin to see your new information in your store listing in early 2024.
Provide data deltion options in Play Console by Dec 7, 2023
Soon, you can learn about SDK-related policy issues on the Policy status page in Play Console. 
Example is illustrative and subject to change.

To help users feel confident about their downloads in sensitive app categories, we’re soon adding a new Play Store banner for the VPN app category to emphasize the importance of reviewing an app’s Data safety section before installing.

When users search for “VPN” apps in Google Play, they’ll see a banner that encourages them to look for a shield icon in the app’s Data safety section, which indicates that the app has completed an independent security review. VPN developers such as NordVPN, Google One and ExpressVPN are early adopters of this program. We encourage and anticipate additional VPN app developers to undergo independent security testing, bringing even more transparency to users. Users can learn more about the independent security validation process and see VPN apps that have been independently validated by tapping “Learn more” to go to the App Validation Directory.
Independent Security Review - VPN apps with this badge in the Data safety section have been independently validated against a global security standard.
We're rolling out a Play Store new banner to build user confidence in the VPN app category. 
Example is illustrative and subject to change.

If you are a VPN developer and interested in learning more about this feature, please submit this form.

Looking ahead

Our team at Google is prioritizing new ways to give users even more confidence in the quality and security of the apps and games they download, establishing Google Play as the most trusted app marketplace. This includes efforts like our new developer verification process for new Play Console accounts.

We’ve got a lot more to come, but I’m excited to share these updates with you now, and I hope they help you continue to thrive on our platform. As always, thanks for partnering with us to make Google Play a safe, trustworthy platform.

Jacqueline Hart

Grow user acquisition and store conversions with the updated Play Store Listing Certificate course

Posted by Rob Simpson, Product Manager - Google Play & Joe Davis, Manager - Google Play Academy

Since we launched the Google Play Store Listing Certificate in 2021, our no-cost, self-paced training courses have helped thousands of developers in over 80 countries increase their app installs. Over the course of the training, developers learn essential mobile marketing best practices, including how to leverage Play Console growth tools like store listing experiments (SLEs) and custom store listings (CSLs).

Today, we’re excited to release a major update to our self-paced training, covering all the latest CSL and SLE features, as well as real-world examples showing how you might use them to drive user growth. We’re also releasing video study guide series to help you lock in your new knowledge ahead of the exam.

Built for app growth marketers, take Google Play Academy's online growth marketing training and get certified in Google Play Store Listing best practices!
Videos: Google Play Store Listing Certificate Study Guide

What’s new: New features in custom store listings and store listing experiments

The new course content focuses on custom store listings and store listing experiments. For the unfamiliar, custom store listings allow you to show different versions of your title’s Play Store content to different people. For example, you might create versions tailored to users in different countries where feature availability varies, or an experience just for users who have lapsed or churned.

Custom store listings can help you convey the most effective messaging for different users. Based on an internal comparative analysis, CSLs can help increase an app or game’s monthly active users (MAUs) by an average of over 3.5%1.

Store listing experiments, on the other hand, offer a way to explore what icons, descriptions, screenshots (and more) convert the best for your title on the Play Store.

These are features you can use today! Google Play Academy’s training now includes four new courses on custom store listings, four updated existing courses, and nine new study guide videos.

Finding app and career growth

Here’s what some developers, entrepreneurs and marketers have said about their experience after getting trained up and certified:




Learning best practices for store listing experiments allowed me to know more about our audience. Something that simple as using the proper icon increased acquisitions of one of our games by approximately 60%

Adrian Mojica 
Marketing Creative, GameHouse (Spain) 





The knowledge I gained empowered me to make more informed decisions and learn effective strategies. The credibility I got from the certificate has opened new doors in my career. 

Roshni Kumari 
Student & Campus Ambassador (India)


Play Academy increased efficiency in mentoring relationships by 50%, and we've seen a 30% increase in our game launch speed overall. 

Kimmie Vu
Chief Marketing Officer, Rocket Game Studio (Vietnam)


Top tips to prepare for your certificate exam

  1. Take the training and watch the study guide videos
    2. Take the online training on Google Play Academy to learn best practices to help create a winning store listing, then lock in your knowledge with the new video study guides. You’ll learn key skills to help you drive growth with high-quality and policy-compliant store listings.

  2. Pass the exam and get certified
    3. After the training, take the exam to get an industry-recognized certificate. You will also be invited to join Google Developer Certification Directory, where you can network with other Google-certified developers.

  3. Get started with custom store listings and experiments
    4. Time to put your new skills into action. Start with 2-3 custom store listings for markets important to your app or game, such as users in certain countries or lapsed or churned users. Or test a new icon or short description.

Start your learning journey on Google Play Academy today!


1 Source: Internal Google data [Nov 2022] comparing titles that use CSL to those that do not.

#WeArePlay | Meet Ingrid from Sweden. More stories from around the world.

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

Another month, another reason to celebrate trailblazing creators behind some of the most innovative apps and games. From an equestrian training platform in Sweden to a chilled out fishing game in the Republic of Korea, let’s take a look at some of the exciting #WeArePlay stories of founders and their creations.


Ingrid is a big fan of horseback riding and has always loved the social aspect of the sport. But when she wanted to take her passion online, she was surprised to be unable to find sports platforms specifically tailored to equestrians. So, Ingrid and her co-founders, Totta and Erika, took matters into their own hands, pooling their collective experiences in marketing, programming and economics to create Ridely: a platform that aims to democratize the access to trainers and content about riding. Since then, they’ve partnered up with the US Equestrian Federation and are “constantly innovating and looking at ways to develop the app further and improve our members’ horse riding experience” – in fact, they’re currently working on creating expert programs, monthly riding challenges and adding a social feed to spark discussion and create community.


#WeArePlay Joahnes & Meiky Gaco Games Solo, Indonesia g.co/play/weareplay Google Play
Now to the other side of the world, Indonesia. Johanes always had a wild imagination and a head brimming with ideas, which is why he originally aspired to be an author. However, when he found himself captivated by role playing games, he decided to channel his storytelling into the gaming genre instead. Collaborating with graphic artist Meiky, the pair brainstormed their anime-inspired fantasy adventure RPG Epic Conquest. Even without conscious marketing efforts, the game proved to be a big hit, spawning the follow-up Epic Conquest 2 – with more sequels currently in the works.


#WeArePlay Young-Gon Nexelon Soengnam, Republic of Korea g.co/play/weareplay Google Play

Next up, Young-Gon from the Republic of Korea. An old hand in the industry, Young-Gon has been involved in gaming for over two decades. However, it was in 2017 that he decided to launch his own studio, Nexelon, with the goal of reaching audiences abroad. In his popular title, Fishing Life, he “wanted to create a fishing game that was soothing, uncomplicated to play and that really showcased the underwater world”, depicting the calming nature of angling as a hobby with gently whooshing waves and scenes of tranquil lakes and mountains. And he’s continuing this theme of serenity with his upcoming release – an eco-sci fi game where players explore other planets for resources to restore a polluted Earth.


#WeArePlay Sergej, Victoria & Michall Nordcurrent Vilnius, Lithuania g.co/play/weareplay Google Play
Last up, dream team Victoria, her husband Michail, and his brother Sergej from Lithuania. They had their sights set on making games since childhood. They were still at university when they released their very first title, swiftly using the revenue to form their own studio, Nordcurrent. In their popular game Cooking Fever, players are put to the test to rapidly prepare different dishes – inspired by cuisines from around the world. They recently added a pancake flipping restaurant option and also plan live culinary events around themed celebrations, such as Valentine’s Day.

Discover more of the amazing #WeArePlay stories around the world and share your favorites.



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Latest ARTwork on hundreds of millions of devices

Posted by Serban Constantinescu, Product Manager

Wouldn’t it be great if each update improved start-up times, execution speed, and memory usage of your apps? Google Play system updates for the Android Runtime (ART) do just that. These updates deliver performance improvements, the latest security fixes, and unify the core OpenJDK APIs across hundreds of millions of devices, including all Android 12+ devices and soon Android Go.

ART is the engine behind the Android operating system (OS). It provides the runtime and core APIs that all apps and most OS services rely on. Both Java and Kotlin are compiled down to bytecode executed by ART. Improvements in the runtime, compiler and core API benefit all developers making app execution faster and bytecode compilation more efficient.

While parts of Android are customizable by device manufacturers, ART is the same for all devices and Google Play system updates enable a path to modular updates.

Modularizing the OS

Android was originally designed for monolithic updates, which meant that OS components did not need to have clear API boundaries. This is because all dependent software would be built together. However, this made it difficult to update ART independently of the rest of the OS. Our first challenge was to untangle ART's dependencies and create clear, well-defined, and tested API boundaries. This allowed us to modularize ART and make it independently updatable.

Illustration of a racecar with an engine part hovering above the hood. A curved arrow points to where this part should go

As a core part of the OS, ART had to blaze new trails and engineer new OS boundaries. These new boundaries were so extensive that manually adding and updating them would be too time-consuming. Therefore, we implemented automatic generation of those through introspection in the build system.

Another example is stack unwinding, which reports the functions last executed when an issue is detected. Before modularizing the OS, all stack unwinding code was built together and could change across Android versions. This made the transition even more challenging, since there is only one version of ART that is delivered to many versions of Android, we had to create a new API boundary as well as design it to be forward-compatible with newer versions of the ART APEX module on devices that are no longer getting full OS updates.

Recently, for Android 14, we refactored the interface between the Package Manager, the service that determines how to install and update apps, and ART. This moves the OS boundary from the ART dex2oat command line to a well-defined interface that enables future optimizations, such as finer-grained control over the compilation mode.

ART updatability also introduced new challenges. For example, the collection of Java libraries, referred to as the Boot Classpath, had to be securely recompiled to ensure good performance. This required introducing a new secure state for compilation during boot as well as a fallback JIT compilation mode.

On older devices, the secure compilation happens on the first reboot after an ART update. On newer devices that support the Android Virtualization Framework, the compilation happens while the device is idle, in an enclave called Isolated Compilation – saving up to 20 seconds of boot-time.

Testing the ART APEX module

The ART APEX module is a complex piece of software with an order of magnitude more APIs than any other APEX module. It also backs a quarter of the developer APIs available in the Android SDK. In addition, ART has a compiler that aims to make the most of the underlying hardware by generating chipset-specific instructions, such as Arm SVE. This, together with the multiple OS versions on which the ART APEX module has to run, makes testing challenging.

We first modularized the testing framework from per-platform release (e.g. Android CTS) to per module. We did this by introducing an ART-specific Mainline Test Suite (MTS), which tests both compiler and runtime, as well as core OpenJDK APIs, while collecting code coverage statistics.

Our target is 100% API coverage and high line coverage, especially for new APIs. Together with HWASan and fuzzing, all of the tests described above contribute to a massive test load that needs to be sharded across multiple devices to ensure that it completes in a reasonable amount of time.

Illustration of modularized testing framework

We test the upcoming ART release every day by compiling over 18 million APKs and running app compatibility tests, and startup, performance, and memory benchmarks on a variety of Android devices that replicate the diversity of our ecosystem as closely as possible. Once tests pass with all possible compilation modes, all Garbage Collector algorithms, and supported OS versions, we begin gradually rolling out the next ART release.

Benefits of ART Google Play system updates

By updating ART independently of OS updates, users get the latest performance optimizations and security fixes as quickly as possible, while developers get OpenJDK improvements and compiler optimisations that benefit both Java and Kotlin.

As shown in the graph below, the runtime and compiler optimizations in the ART 13 update delivered real-world app start-up improvements of up to 30% on some devices.

Graph of average app startup time showing startup time in milliseconds with improvement up to 30% across 12 weeks on devices running the latest ART Google Play system update

ART updates allow us to frequently deploy fixes with little additional effort from our ecosystem partners. They include propagating upstream OpenJDK fixes to Android devices as quickly as possible, as well as runtime and compiler security fixes, such as CVE-2022-20502, which was detected by our automated fuzzing tests.

For developers, ART updates mean that you can now target the latest programming features. ART 13 delivered OpenJDK 11 core language features, which was the fastest-ever adoption of a new OpenJDK release on Android devices.

What’s next

In the coming months, we'll be releasing ART 14 to all compatible devices. ART 14 includes OpenJDK 17 support along with new compiler and runtime optimizations that improve performance while reducing code size. Stay tuned for more details on ART 14!

Java and OpenJDK are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Privacy Sandbox Developer Preview 9: Custom Audience Delegation

Posted by Jon Markoff, Privacy Sandbox Developer Relations

Earlier this year we released the first Privacy Sandbox Beta on Android, with the goal of bringing real-world testing of our private advertising solutions to users' devices.

Since then, we’ve launched several additional Privacy Sandbox releases, each with new features and improvements, in Developer Preview and Beta. This is part of our ongoing commitment to helping developers create privacy-focused apps and tools that keep content open and accessible to everyone. Your feedback has helped us refine and improve these releases and new design proposals, and is greatly appreciated.

Today, we’re announcing Developer Preview 9 for the Privacy Sandbox on Android, including:

  • Protected Audience API: The first release of Custom Audience Delegation, which supports the creation of custom audiences for buyers that do not have an on-device SDK presence. Bidding and Auction services integrations are available to support more complex ad auctions.
  • Attribution Reporting API: Enrollment is no longer required for development and testing purposes. Improvements to debug reporting include supporting additional verbose debug report and app-to-web debug reports.
  • SDK Runtime: With some limitations, SDK Runtime can now launch intents to other apps, and can bind to an allowlist of services.
  • For the full list of released features, see the release notes.

Alongside Developer Preview 9, we’re also announcing Project Flight: a collection of sample apps that demonstrate how the Privacy Sandbox APIs can be used together in end-to-end user journeys. Project Flight includes the following:

  • Advertiser app, to demonstrate a conversion by booking a travel experience
  • Publisher app, to show a relevant ad and register an event
  • SSP library, to demonstrate running ad selection and registering a source
  • MMP library, to demonstrate joining a custom audience and registering a trigger
  • A mock server backend as a companion to the Protected Audience and Attribution Reporting APIs using Firebase

As with all of our releases, we highly encourage developers to share feedback as they continue their journey into the Privacy Sandbox on Android. To get started, read the instructions to set up the SDK and system images on an emulator or supported Pixel device.

For more information on the Privacy Sandbox on Android, visit the developer site, and sign up for our newsletter to receive regular updates.

Choosing the right storage experience

Posted by Yacine Rezgui - Developer Relations Engineer

The upcoming stable release of Android 14 is fast approaching. Now is a great time to test your app with this new release’s changes if you haven’t done so already. With Platform Stability, you can even submit apps targeting SDK 34 to the Google Play Store.

Android 14 introduces a new feature called Selected Photos Access, allowing users to grant apps access to specific images and videos in their library, rather than granting access to all media of a given type. This is a great way for users to feel more comfortable sharing media with apps, and it's also a great way for developers to build apps that respect user privacy.

Image in four panels showing Select Photos Access being used to share media from the user's on-device library
To ease the migration for apps that currently use storage permissions, apps will run in a compatibility mode. In this mode, if a user chooses “Select photos and videos” the permission will appear to be granted, but the app will only be able to access the selected photos. The permission will be revoked when your app process is killed or in the background for a certain time (similar to one time permissions). When the permission is once again requested by your app, users can select a different set of pictures or videos if they wish. Instead of letting the system manage this re-selection, it’s recommended for apps to handle this process to have a better user experience.

Image in four panels showing media reselection being used to update user's choice of which media to be shared

Choosing the right storage experience

Even when your app correctly manages media re-selection, we believe that for the vast majority of apps, the permissionless photo picker that we introduced last year will be the best media selection solution for both user experience and privacy. Most apps allow users to choose media to do tasks such as attaching to an email, changing a profile picture, sharing with friends, and the Android photo picker's familiar UI gives users a consistent, high-quality experience that helps users grant access in confidence, allowing you to focus on the differentiating features of your app. If you absolutely need a more tightly integrated solution, integrating with MediaStore can be considered as an alternative to the photo picker.


Android photo picker

Image of My Profile page on a mobile device

To use the photo picker in your app, you only need to register an activity result:

// Using Jetpack Compose, you should use rememberLauncherForActivityResult instead of registerForActivityResult // Registers a photo picker activity launcher in single-select mode val pickMedia = registerForActivityResult(PickVisualMedia()) { uri -> // Callback is invoked after the user selects a media item or closes the photo picker if (uri != null) { Log.d("PhotoPicker", "Selected URI: $uri") } else { Log.d("PhotoPicker", "No media selected") } }

The photo picker allows customization of media type selection between photos, videos, or a specific mime type when launched:

// Launch the photo picker and let the user choose images and videos. pickMedia.launch(PickVisualMediaRequest(PickVisualMedia.ImageAndVideo)) // Launch the photo picker and let the user choose only images. pickMedia.launch(PickVisualMediaRequest(PickVisualMedia.ImageOnly)) // Launch the photo picker and let the user choose only videos. pickMedia.launch(PickVisualMediaRequest(PickVisualMedia.VideoOnly)) // Launch the photo picker and let the user choose only images/videos of a // specific MIME type, like GIFs. pickMedia.launch(PickVisualMediaRequest(PickVisualMedia.SingleMimeType("image/gif")))

You can set a maximum limit when allowing multiple selections:

// Registers a photo picker activity launcher in multi-select mode. // In this example, the app lets the user select up to 5 media files. val pickMultipleMedia = registerForActivityResult(PickMultipleVisualMedia(5)) { uris -> // Callback is invoked after the user selects media items or closes the // photo picker. if (uris.isNotEmpty()) { Log.d("PhotoPicker", "Number of items selected: ${uris.size}") } else { Log.d("PhotoPicker", "No media selected") } }

Lastly, you can enable the photo picker support on older devices from Android KitKat onwards (API 19+) using Google Play services, by adding this entry to your AndroidManifest.xml file:

<!-- Prompt Google Play services to install the backported photo picker module --> <service android:name="com.google.android.gms.metadata.ModuleDependencies" android:enabled="false" android:exported="false" tools:ignore="MissingClass"> <intent-filter> <action android:name="com.google.android.gms.metadata.MODULE_DEPENDENCIES" /> </intent-filter> <meta-data android:name="photopicker_activity:0:required" android:value="" /> </service>

In less than 20 lines of code you have a well-integrated photo/video picker within your app that doesn’t require any permissions!


Creating your own gallery picker

Creating your own gallery picker requires extensive development and maintenance, and the app needs to request storage permissions to get explicit user consent, which users can deny, or, as of Android 14, limit access to selected media.

First, request the correct storage permissions in the Android manifest depending on the OS version:

<!-- Devices running up to Android 12L --> <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" android:maxSdkVersion="32" /> <!-- Devices running Android 13+ --> <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_MEDIA_IMAGES" /> <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_MEDIA_VIDEO" /> <!-- To handle the reselection within the app on Android 14+ (when targeting API 33+) --> <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_MEDIA_VISUAL_USER_SELECTED" />

Then, the app needs to request the correct runtime permissions, also depending on the OS version:

val requestPermissions = registerForActivityResult(RequestMultiplePermissions()) { results -> // Handle permission requests results // See the permission example in the Android platform samples: https://github.com/android/platform-samples } if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.UPSIDE_DOWN_CAKE) { requestPermissions.launch(arrayOf(READ_MEDIA_IMAGES, READ_MEDIA_VIDEO, READ_MEDIA_VISUAL_USER_SELECTED)) } else if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.TIRAMISU) { requestPermissions.launch(arrayOf(READ_MEDIA_IMAGES, READ_MEDIA_VIDEO)) } else { requestPermissions.launch(arrayOf(READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE)) }

With the Selected Photos Access feature in Android 14, your app should adopt the new READ_MEDIA_VISUAL_USER_SELECTED permission to control media re-selection, and update your app’s UX to let users grant your app access to a different set of images and videos.

When opening the selection dialog, photos and/or videos will be shown depending on the permissions requested: if you're requesting the READ_MEDIA_VIDEO permission without the READ_MEDIA_IMAGES permission, only videos would appear in the UI for users to select files.

// Allowing the user to select only videos requestPermissions.launch(arrayOf(READ_MEDIA_VIDEO, READ_MEDIA_VISUAL_USER_SELECTED))

You can check if your app has full, partial or denied access to the device’s photo library and update your UX accordingly. It's even more important now to request these permissions when the app needs storage access, instead of at startup. Keep in mind that the permission grant can be changed between the onStart and onResume lifecycle callbacks, as the user can change the access in the settings without closing your app.

if ( Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.TIRAMISU && ( ContextCompat.checkSelfPermission(context, READ_MEDIA_IMAGES) == PERMISSION_GRANTED || ContextCompat.checkSelfPermission(context, READ_MEDIA_VIDEO) == PERMISSION_GRANTED ) ) { // Full access on Android 13+ } else if ( Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.UPSIDE_DOWN_CAKE && ContextCompat.checkSelfPermission(context, READ_MEDIA_VISUAL_USER_SELECTED) == PERMISSION_GRANTED ) { // Partial access on Android 14+ } else if (ContextCompat.checkSelfPermission(context, READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE) == PERMISSION_GRANTED) { // Full access up to Android 12 } else { // Access denied }

Once you verified you have access to the right storage permissions, you can interact with MediaStore to query the device library (whether the granted access is partial or full):

data class Media( val uri: Uri, val name: String, val size: Long, val mimeType: String, val dateTaken: Long ) // We run our querying logic in a coroutine outside of the main thread to keep the app responsive. // Keep in mind that this code snippet is querying all the images of the shared storage suspend fun getImages(contentResolver: ContentResolver): List<Media> = withContext(Dispatchers.IO) { val projection = arrayOf( Images.Media._ID, Images.Media.DISPLAY_NAME, Images.Media.SIZE, Images.Media.MIME_TYPE, ) val collectionUri = if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.Q) { // This allows us to query all the device storage volumes instead of the primary only Images.Media.getContentUri(MediaStore.VOLUME_EXTERNAL) } else { Images.Media.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI } val images = mutableListOf<Media>() contentResolver.query( collectionUri, projection, null, null, "${Images.Media.DATE_ADDED} DESC" )?.use { cursor -> val idColumn = cursor.getColumnIndexOrThrow(Images.Media._ID) val displayNameColumn = cursor.getColumnIndexOrThrow(Images.Media.DISPLAY_NAME) val sizeColumn = cursor.getColumnIndexOrThrow(Images.Media.SIZE) val mimeTypeColumn = cursor.getColumnIndexOrThrow(Images.Media.MIME_TYPE) while (cursor.moveToNext()) { val uri = ContentUris.withAppendedId(collectionUri, cursor.getLong(idColumn)) val name = cursor.getString(displayNameColumn) val size = cursor.getLong(sizeColumn) val mimeType = cursor.getString(mimeTypeColumn) val dateTaken = cursor.getLong(4) val image = Media(uri, name, size, mimeType, dateTaken) images.add(image) } } return@withContext images }

The code snippet above is simplified to illustrate how to interact with MediaStore. In a proper production app, you should consider using pagination with something like the Paging library to ensure good performance.

You may not need permissions

As of Android 10 (API 29), you no longer need storage permissions to add files to shared storage. This means that you can add images to the gallery, record videos and save them to shared storage, or download PDF invoices without having to request storage permissions. If your app only adds files to shared storage and does not query images or videos, you should stop requesting storage permissions and set a maxSdkVersion of API 28 in your AndroidManifest.xml:

<!-- No permission is needed to add files from Android 10 --> <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" android:maxSdkVersion="28" />

ACTION_GET_CONTENT behavior change

In our last storage blog post, we announced that we’ll be rolling out a behavior change whenever ACTION_GET_CONTENT intent is launched with an image and/or video mime type. If you haven’t tested yet this change, you can enable it manually on your device:

adb shell device_config put storage_native_boot take_over_get_content true

That covers how to offer visual media selection in your app with the privacy-preserving changes we've made across multiple Android releases.If you have any feedback or suggestions, submit tickets to our issue tracker.

Android 14 Beta 5

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering
Android 14 logo

With the official release of Android 14 only weeks away, today we're bringing you Beta 5, the last scheduled update in our Android 14 beta program. It's the last chance to make sure your apps are ready and provide feedback before non-beta users start getting Android 14. To enable you to test your applications on devices spanning multiple form factors, Beta 5 is available for Pixel Tablet and Pixel Fold, in addition to the rest of the supported Pixel family and the Android emulator.

What's in Beta 5?

Beta 5 is our third Platform Stable Android 14 release, which means that the developer APIs and all app-facing behaviors are final for you to review and integrate into your apps, and you can publish apps on Google Play targeting Android 14's SDK version 34. It includes the latest fixes and optimizations, giving you everything you need to complete your testing.

Image of timeline showing Android 14 release is on schedule with Platform Stability testing happening in August

Get your apps, libraries, tools, and game engines ready!

The official Android 14 release is just weeks ahead, so please finish your final compatibility testing and publish any necessary updates to ensure a smooth app experience ahead of the final release of Android 14.

If you develop an SDK, library, tool, or game engine, it's even more important to release any necessary updates now to prevent your downstream app and game developers from being blocked by compatibility issues and allow them to target the latest SDK features. Please make sure to let your developers know if updates are needed to fully support Android 14.

Testing your app involves installing your production app onto a device running Android 14 Beta 5; you can use Google Play or other means. Work through all the app's flows and look for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing. Each release of Android contains changes to the platform that improve privacy, security, and the overall user experience, and these changes can affect your apps. Here are some top changes to test:

Remember to exercise libraries and SDKs that your app is using in your compatibility testing. You may need to update to current SDK versions or reach out to the developer for help.

Once you’ve published the compatible version of your current app, you can start the process to update your app's targetSdkVersion. Review the behavior changes that apply when your app targets Android 14 and use the compatibility framework to help detect issues quickly.

Get started with Android 14

Today's Beta 5 release has everything you need to try Android 14 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. You can enroll any supported Pixel device here to get this and future Android 14 Beta and feature drop Beta updates over-the-air, and 64-bit Android Emulator system images will be available soon in the Android Studio SDK Manager.

For the best development experience with Android 14, we recommend that you use the latest release of Android Studio Hedgehog. Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:

  • Try the new features and APIs. Report issues in our tracker on the feedback page.
  • Test your current app for compatibility – learn whether your app is affected by default behavior changes in Android 14. Install your app onto a device or emulator running Android 14 and extensively test it.
  • Test your app with opt-in changes – Android 14 has opt-in behavior changes that only affect your app when it’s targeting the new platform. It’s important to understand and assess these changes early. To make it easier to test, you can toggle the changes on and off individually.
  • Update your app with the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant - Android Studio Hedgehog now filters and identifies the specific Android 14 API changes that are relevant to your app, and walks you through the steps to upgrade your targetSdkVersion with the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant.

We’ll update the beta system images regularly throughout the Android 14 release cycle.

If you are already enrolled in the Android 14 Beta program and your device is supported, Beta 5 will be made available to you as an Over The Air update without taking any additional action.

For complete information on how to get the Beta, visit the Android 14 developer site.