Category Archives: Android Developers Blog

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Withings reduces 50% of its data sync code by streamlining health and fitness API integrations with Health Connect

Posted by the Android team

French consumer electronics company Withings hosts one of the largest ecosystems of digital health and wellness products in the world. The company’s products include smart watches, smart scales, blood pressure monitors, and its own health-tracking application. Formerly known as Health Mate, the Withings application gives Withings users an easy way to track all of their health information—like activity, weight, ECG records, and sleep—obtained from Withings devices.

While Withings works to create a central hub for its users to access their health-related data, the number of devices and applications for monitoring health has grown substantially. And as health and fitness data spread across multiple platforms, it can be difficult for users to easily track and analyze this information.

To extend access to additional metrics and give Withings users a chance to use the application with their non-Withings apps and devices, Withings integrated Health Connect, Android’s latest API offering that gives users a simpler way to consolidate and share their health and fitness data across applications.

Health data is more powerful together

Before integrating Health Connect, Withings users had to manually activate which health and fitness apps could sync data to and from the Withings app. Now, thanks to Health Connect, its users can grant permissions to new health and fitness applications and automatically sync their data to the Withings app, letting them find their data in one easy-to-manage place.

“We integrated Health Connect in Withings app to grow our health sphere and offer a more complete experience to our users by supporting a wider range of data,” said Sophie Zecri, a mobile software engineer at Withings. “Health Connect helped us create a richer health-tracking interface and a more efficient overview for users.”

By uniting health data using the Health Connect API, Withings application offers its users a more holistic view of their health and makes it easier to develop a deeper understanding of key health insights with the data they gather.

For instance, Withings’ users can now combine their other workout- or calorie-tracking applications with the Withings app. By doing this, users can more easily track how changes in one area of their health may be affecting another. Additionally, the Withings app can provide greater guidance and more specialized programs to meet each user's unique needs, such as specific dietary recommendations and recipes or more specialized exercise programs.

Withings also wanted the data available through the Withings application to be accessible in its users' other health and fitness apps. Integrating with Health Connect made this possible. “We wanted to extend access to additional metrics, giving our users a chance to use Withings devices with their other applications,” said Sophie.

Ensuring that users felt in control of their data was also a top priority for the Withings team. They saw Health Connect as a powerful tool that’s equally secure for both Withings and its users. With Health Connect, users can easily manage permissions in one place, with granular controls to see which apps are accessing data at any given time. And for Withings, setting up permission checks was as easy as dropping in a simple piece of code provided by Health Connect.

Simplify connectivity between apps with Health Connect

The amount of work required to connect with other third-party health and fitness applications was Withings’ biggest roadblock to giving its users access to additional syncs. All the APIs for every other app, with all their unique code, made integrations complex and expensive for Withings to maintain.

“Connecting with other apps’ APIs was onerous. Any changes had to be repeated for every API, which meant expanding the codebase and increasing the risk of bugs that could impact Withings app’s quality,” said Sophie.

Health Connect lets Withings developers maintain less code while preserving stability and minimizing potential bugs. This translates to a reduced codebase and increased productivity for other projects. By integrating Health Connect with the Withings app, Withings reduced the amount of code related to data sync with third-party applications by 50%.

Headshot of Sophie Zecri, Mobile Software Engineer at Withings, with quote, 'Integrating Health Connect was really rewarding for us. We're thrilled we can enrich the user experience by generating true synergy, letting users dive deeper into the details of their health aspects.'

Preparing for a future with Health Connect

The Withings team attributes much of its success to the available Android resources for developers looking to integrate Health Connect with their company’s app. Withings developers used the Health Connect UX developer guide to aid the integration, and they used the Health Connect toolbox for testing and to understand how Withings app behaves with other applications that have integrated Health Connect.

The Withings team is excited to support new data types as its product range grows and new biomarker measurements become available. Currently, the company plans to expand its use of Health Connect by adding more data types related to women’s health.

“I would recommend Health Connect to other engineers looking to unite data for its users,” said Sophie. “Health Connect is a powerful, interesting, and easy tool to use.”

Join the many other apps using Health Connect today

Streamline integrations with other health and fitness apps while providing your users with deeper health insights using Health Connect.

Get started by viewing Android’s Introduction to Health Connect. Then, head over to the Health Connect Codelab and learn how you can integrate the Health Connect API today.

Happening now! Unpacking the latest in large screens and foldables + MAD Skills on #TheAndroidShow

Rebecca Gutteride and Madona Wambua, Co-Hosts of #TheAndroidShow

We’re just about to kick off another episode of #TheAndroidShow, you can watch live here! In this episode, we’re unpacking the latest Android foldables and large screens and the incredible opportunity these open up for you and your users, we’re continuing our MAD Skills series on Compose layouts and modifiers with a live Q&A, plus more! If you haven’t already, there’s still time to get your burning questions answered from the team, using #AskAndroid. We've assembled a team of experts ready to answer your questions live!

The latest Android large screens and foldables from our Android friends

One of the coolest moments for hardware enthusiasts was last week at Mobile World Congress, where Android device makers from around the world gather to unveil the latest innovations. It was an especially big year for foldables in particular, with a number of compelling devices coming out. We had the opportunity to catch up with three Android partners and see their latest hardware: the Oppo Find N2 Flip, the HONOR Magic Vs, and the Tecno Phantom V Fold. These launches bring new, high-quality devices into the foldable category, giving users more options as they look for their next mobile device and signaling an investment in foldables across the Android ecosystem. For developers, foldables can present unique opportunities (and challenges); large screen devices like foldables and tablets can challenge assumptions that you might have made in the past around configuration changes, cameras, and the shape and size of the screen - or screens. On devices with more screen real estate and folds, users are expecting better multi-tasking and more content-rich app experiences that adapt to these form factors.

As this category continues to expand, we want to make large screen optimization as easy as possible for you. We’ve established tiered quality guidelines to help prioritize which behaviors are the most important to focus on across screen sizes and, late last year, we announced new guidance and updated tools to help you update your app to meet those guidelines. To make it easier to quickly test apps on a variety of representative devices, we have a growing collection of resizable, foldable, tablet and desktop emulators, and updated Material adaptive design guidance for these devices with more specific Canonical Layout designs!

To get started, check out the gallery page to get inspired with high fidelity mockups, links to material design guidance, implementation guides, and case studies from apps like yours. Then, test your app for large screens using the resizable emulator in Android Studio to see how your app looks today!


MAD Skills: Compose Layouts & Modifiers

Our latest MAD skills series deep-dives into Compose layouts and modifiers. The initial episodes cover layout fundamentals including what out-of-the-box APIs Compose offers, how you can use modifiers to stylize your composables, and the different phases in Compose. We then dive deeper into modifier chaining and building custom layouts for complex use cases. The series culminates in a live Q&A–happening right now, where we'll be answering the questions you've been asking us using #AskAndroid. You can view the YouTube playlist to rewatch the videos in the series.

What it means to be an Android Google Developer Expert

The Android Developer community is at the heart of everything we do and at the core of this is our Android Google Developer Experts. Spanning all over the world, the community comes together to share best practices through speaking, open-source contributions, workshops, and articles, and gets involved in early access Android releases - providing valuable feedback to make improvements for developers everywhere! Tune in to #TheAndroidShow to hear from six GDEs about their journey as an Android Developer and Google Developer Expert and what this role means to them.


App Quality Insights in Android Studio

In 2022 we released Android Studio’s App Quality Insights (AQI) which helps you discover, investigate, and reproduce issues reported by Crashlytics within the context of your local Android Studio project. In this segment we go behind the scenes with David Motsonashvili, a Software Engineer on the Firebase team, to learn more about where the idea came from. We also explore how crash management has evolved throughout the years with Annyce Davis, VP of Engineering at Meetup and GDE. Tune into #TheAndroidShow to watch the segment, read the AQI documentation to learn more, and download the latest version of Android Studio to try it out.


Now in Android

Now in Android is your ongoing guide to what’s new and notable in the world of Android development, and this week we covered the second Android 14 Developer Preview, Google Play policy changes around Wear OS app quality, the release of the full Android Basics with Compose course, Advanced Compose Layout Concepts, Drawing in Compose, Multi-Window and Activity Embedding, TensorFlow Lite in Google Play Services, and more.

Tune in!

#TheAndroidShow is your conversation with the Android developer community, this time hosted by Rebecca Gutteridge and Madona Wambua. Tweet us your questions, and let us know what you’d like to hear in future videos from the Android team. It’s all happening right now – and you can rewatch it at any time!

What it means to be an Android Google Developer Expert

Posted by Yasmine Evjen, Community lead, Android DevRel

The community of Android developers is at the heart of everything we do. Seeing the community come together to build new things, encourage each other, and share their knowledge encourages us to keep pushing the limits of Android.

At the core of this is our Android Google Developer Experts, a global community that comes together to share best practices through speaking, open-source contributions, workshops, and articles. This is a caring community that mentors, supports each other, and isn’t afraid to get their hands dirty with early access Android releases, providing feedback to make it the best release for developers across the globe.

We asked, “What do you love most about being in the #AndroidDev and Google Developer Expert community?”

Gema Socorro,”I love helping other devs in their Android journey,” and Jaewoog Eum shares the joy of “Learning, building, and sharing innovative Android technologies for everyone.”

Hear from the Google Developer Expert Community

We also sat down with Ahmed Tikiwa, Annyce Davis, Dinorah Tovar, Harun Wangereka, Madona S Wambua, and Zarah Dominguez - to hear about their journey as an Android Developer and GDE and what this role means to them - watch them on The Android Show below.

Annyce, VP Engineer Meetup shares, “the community is a great sounding board to solve problems, and helps me stay technical and keep learning”

Does the community inspire you? Get involved by speaking at your local developer conferences, sharing your latest Android projects, and not being afraid to experiment with new technology. This year, we’re spotlighting community projects! Tag us in your blogs, videos, tips, and tricks to be featured in the latest #AndroidSpotlight.

Active in the #AndroidDev community? Become an Android Google Developer Expert.

A group of Android Developers and a baby, standing against a headge of lush greenery, smiling

#WeArePlay | Meet Ania from Canada. More stories from USA, Australia and Montenegro

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

This International Women’s Day, we’re dedicating our latest #WeArePlay stories to the inspirational women founders creating apps and games businesses on Google Play. Like Ania from Victoria in Canada, who is making mental health support more accessible worldwide.

When Ania was a student, she started experiencing debilitating panic attacks. Realizing there wasn’t much help readily available on mobile, she took it upon herself to do her own research and learn how to manage her anxiety. After feeling more confident again, she wanted to share what she had learned and help people, so began developing Rootd.

The app provides in-the-moment relief: with lessons to understand panic attacks, breathing exercises, and ways to make short-term and long-term changes to reduce anxiety. She is growing the app’s reach by expanding to different countries, with the hope it will eventually become one of the most widely used tools to overcome panic attacks in the world.

Celebrating more women founders

Alongside Ania, there are many other women founders doing incredible work in the apps and games space: like Bria from USA - founder of Honey B Games and creator of bubble tea game Boba Story, Lauren and Christina from Australia - co-founders of Lumi Interactive and their wellbeing app Kinder World: Cozy Plants, and Jelena from Montenegro - CEO of games studio 3Hills.

Check out their stories now at g.co/play/weareplay.


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Android 14 Developer Preview 2

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Today, we're releasing the second Developer Preview of Android 14, building on the work of the first developer preview of Android 14 from last month with additional enhancements to privacy, security, performance, developer productivity, and user customization while continuing to refine the large-screen device experience on tablets, foldables, and more.

Android delivers enhancements and new features year-round, and your feedback on the Android 14 developer preview and Quarterly Platform Release (QPR) beta program plays a key role in helping Android continuously improve. The Android 14 developer site has lots more information about the preview, including downloads for Pixel and the release timeline. We’re looking forward to hearing what you think, and thank you in advance for your continued help in making Android a platform that works for everyone.

Working across form factors

Android 14 builds on the work done in Android 12L and 13 to support tablets and foldable form factors. See get started with building for large screens and learn about foldables for a quick jumpstart on how to get your apps ready. Our app quality guidance for large screens contains detailed checklists to review your app. We've also recently released libraries supporting low latency stylus and motion prediction.

The large screen gallery contains design inspiration for social and communications, media, productivity, shopping, and reading app experiences.

Privacy and security

Privacy and security have always been a core part of Android's mission, built on the foundation of app sandboxing, open source code, and open app development. In Android 14, we’re building the highest quality platform for all by providing a safer device environment and giving users more controls to protect their information.

Selected photos access

We recommend that you use the Photo Picker if your app needs to access media that the user selects; it provides a permissionless experience on devices running Android 4.4 onwards, using a combination of core platform features, Google Play system updates, and Google Play services.

If you cannot use Photo Picker, when your app requests any of the visual media permissions (READ_MEDIA_IMAGES / READ_MEDIA_VIDEO) introduced in SDK 33, Android 14 users can now grant your app access to only selected photos and videos.

In the new dialog, the permission choices will be:

  • Allow access to all photos: the full library of all on-device photos & videos is available
  • Select photos: only the user's selection of photos & videos will be temporarily available via MediaStore
  • Don’t allow: access to all photos and videos is denied

Apps can prompt users to select media again by requesting the media permissions again and having the READ_MEDIA_VISUAL_USER_SELECTED permission declared in their app manifest.

Please test this new behavior with your apps and adapt your UX to handle the new permission and the media file reselection flow.

Credential manager

Android 14 adds Credential Manager as a platform API, and we're supporting it back to Android 4.4 (API level 19) devices through a Jetpack Library with a Google Play services implementation. It aims to make sign-in easier for users with APIs that retrieve and store credentials with user-configured credential providers. In addition to supporting passwords, the API allows your app to sign-in using passkeys, the new industry standard for passwordless sign-in. Passkeys are built on industry standards, can work across different operating systems and browser ecosystems, and can be used with both websites and apps. Developer Preview 2 features improvements in the UI styling for the account selector, along with changes to the API based upon feedback from Developer Preview 1. 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.

Background activity launching

Android 10 (API level 29) and higher place restrictions on when apps can start activities when the app is running in the background. These restrictions help minimize interruptions for the user and keep them more in control of what's shown on their screen. To further reduce instances of unexpected interruptions, Android 14 gives foreground apps more control over the ability of apps they interact with to start activities. Specifically, apps targeting Android 14 need to grant privileges to start activities in the background when sending a PendingIntent or when binding a Service.

Streamlining background work

Android 14 continues our effort to optimize the way apps work together, improve system health and battery life, and polish the end-user experience.

Background optimizations

Developer Preview 2 includes optimizations to Android’s memory management system to improve resource usage while applications are running in the background. Several seconds after an app goes into the cached state, background work is disallowed outside of conventional Android app lifecycle APIs such as foreground services, JobScheduler, or WorkManager. Background work is disallowed an order of magnitude faster than on Android 13.

Fewer non-dismissible notifications

Notifications on Android 14 containing FLAG_ONGOING_EVENT will be user dismissible on unlocked handheld devices. Notifications will stay non-dismissible when the device is locked, and notification listeners will not be able to dismiss these notifications. Notifications that are important to device functionality, like system and device policy notifications, will remain fully non-dismissible.

Improved App Store Experiences

Android 14 introduces several new PackageInstaller APIs which allow app stores to improve their user experience, including the requestUserPreapproval() method that allows the download of APKs to be deferred until after the installation has been approved, the setRequestUpdateOwnership() method that allows an installer to indicate that it is responsible for future updates to an app it is installing, and the setDontKillApp() method that can seamlessly install optional features of an app through split APKs while the app is in use. Also, the InstallConstraints API gives installers a way to ensure that app updates happen at an opportune moment, such as when an app is no longer in use.

If you develop an app store, please give these APIs a try and let us know what you think!

Personalization

Regional Preferences

Regional preferences enable users to personalize temperature units, the first day of the week, and numbering systems. A European living in the United States might prefer temperature units to be in Celsius rather than Fahrenheit and for apps to treat Monday as the beginning of the week instead of the US default of Sunday.

New Android Settings menus for these preferences provide users with a discoverable and centralized location to change app preferences. These preferences also persist through backup and restore. Several APIs and intents grant you read access to user preferences for adjusting app information display (getTemperatureUnit, getFirstDayOfWeek). You can also register a BroadcastReceiver on ACTION_LOCALE_CHANGED to handle locale configuration changes when regional preferences change.

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 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.

Developer Preview 2 is in the period where we're looking for input on our APIs, along with details on how platform changes affect your apps, so now is the time to try new features and give us your feedback.

It’s also a good time to start your compatibility testing and identify any work you’ll need to do. You can test some of them without changing your app's targetSdkVersion using the behavior change toggles in Developer Options. This will help you get a preliminary idea of how your app might be affected by opt-in changes in Android 14.

Image of a partial screen shot of a device showing App compatibility toggles in Developer Options
App compatibility toggles in Developer Options.

Platform Stability is when we’ll deliver final SDK/NDK APIs and app-facing system behaviors. We’re expecting to reach Platform Stability in June 2023, and from that time you’ll have several weeks before the official release to do your final testing. The release timeline details are here.

Get started with Android 14

The Developer Preview has everything you need to try the Android 14 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. For testing your app with tablets and foldables, the easiest way to get started is using the Android Emulator in a tablet or foldable configuration in the latest preview of the Android Studio SDK Manager. For phones, you can get started today by flashing a system image onto a Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 7, Pixel 6a, Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6, Pixel 5a 5G, Pixel 5, or Pixel 4a (5G) device. If you don’t have a Pixel device, you can use the 64-bit system images with the Android Emulator in Android Studio.

For the best development experience with Android 14, we recommend that you use the latest preview of Android Studio Giraffe (or more recent Giraffe+ versions). Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:

  • Try the new features and APIs - your feedback is critical during the early part of the developer preview. 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.

We’ll update the preview system images and SDK regularly throughout the Android 14 release cycle. This preview release is for developers only and not intended for daily or consumer use, so it will only available by manual download for new Android 14 developer preview users. Once you’ve manually installed a preview build, you’ll automatically get future updates over-the-air for all later previews and Betas. Read more here.

If you intend to move from the Android 13 QPR Beta program to the Android 14 Developer Preview program and don't want to have to wipe your device, we recommend that you move to Developer Preview 2 now. Otherwise, you may run into time periods where the Android 13 Beta will have a more recent build date which will prevent you from going directly to the Android 14 Developer Preview without doing a data wipe.

As we reach our Beta releases, we'll be inviting consumers to try Android 14 as well, and we'll open up enrollment for the Android 14 Beta program at that time. For now, please note that the Android Beta program is not yet available for Android 14.

For complete information, visit the Android 14 developer site.

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Let’s go. It’s Google I/O 2023

Posted by Jeanine Banks, VP & General Manager, Developer X, and Head of Developer Relations

Google I/O is back and you’re invited to join us online May 10! Learn about Google’s latest solutions, products, and technologies for developers, that help unlock your creativity and simplify your development workflow. You’ll also get to hear about ways to use the latest in technology, from AI and cloud, to mobile and web. Tune in to watch the live streamed keynotes from Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA, then dive into 100+ on-demand technical sessions and engage with helpful learning material. Visit the Google I/O site and register to stay informed about I/O and other related events coming soon.

Want to get a head start?

Stay tuned for more updates. We look forward to seeing you in May!

Let’s go. It’s Google I/O 2023

Posted by Jeanine Banks, VP & General Manager, Developer X, and Head of Developer Relations

Google I/O is back and you’re invited to join us online May 10! Learn about Google’s latest solutions, products, and technologies for developers, that help unlock your creativity and simplify your development workflow. You’ll also get to hear about ways to use the latest in technology, from AI and cloud, to mobile and web. Tune in to watch the live streamed keynotes from Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA, then dive into 100+ on-demand technical sessions and engage with helpful learning material. Visit the Google I/O site and register to stay informed about I/O and other related events coming soon.

Want to get a head start?

Stay tuned for more updates. We look forward to seeing you in May!

Tune in on Thursday to watch #TheAndroidShow

Posted by the Compose team

In just a few days, on Thursday, March 9 at 10AM PT, we’ll be kicking off another episode of #TheAndroidShow! In this episode, we’ll unpack the latest Android foldables and large screens for you to get building on, straight from Mobile World Congress last week in Barcelona, and sharing with you how to get started building.

Tweet us your Compose layouts & modifiers questions using #AskAndroid

In this episode of #TheAndroidShow, we’ll also be hosting a live Q&A from our latest MAD Skills series spotlighting the essentials of Compose layouts and modifiers. The initial episodes cover layout fundamentals including what out-of-the-box APIs Compose offers, how you can use modifiers to stylize your composables, and the different phases in Compose. We then dive deeper into modifier chaining and building custom layouts for complex use cases. The series culminates in a live Q&A where we’ll be answering your questions. You can view the YouTube playlist to rewatch the videos in the series. Tweet us your burning Compose layouts and modifiers questions using #AskAndroid. We've assembled a team of experts ready to answer your questions live!

#TheAndroidShow is your conversation with the Android developer community, this time hosted by Rebecca Gutteridge and Madona Wambua. You'll hear the latest from the developers and engineers who build Android. Don’t forget to tune in live on March 9 at 10AM PT, broadcast live on YouTube!

Keeping Android and Google Play safe with our key 2023 initiatives

Posted by Bethel Otuteye, Senior Director, Product Management, Android App Safety

It’s our top priority to keep Android and Google Play safe for developers to build successful businesses and provide quality apps and games to billions of users around the world. Over the past years, we’ve continued to share more tools to help protect your apps, evolve our policies to help keep people and their families safe and secure, and collaborate with you to build more private advertising technology.

We know it can be difficult to keep up with how quickly the privacy and security landscape evolves. So, we’ve been sharing more product and policy support, frequent updates about our work, and advance notice about changes. As we did last year, we’re sharing a preview of some of our key priorities that we’re excited to collaborate with you on, on the behalf of our shared users.

What we look forward to this year

Building a more privacy-friendly approach to advertising

Last year, we announced the Privacy Sandbox on Android, an industry-wide initiative to raise the bar for user privacy and ensure continued access to free content and services. Building on our web efforts, we’re developing solutions for digital advertising that limit user data sharing and don't rely on cross-app identifiers. We’re working closely with the industry to gather feedback and test these new technologies.

Now, we’re entering the next phase of this initiative: Rolling out the first Beta for the Privacy Sandbox on Android to a small percentage of Android devices. With the Beta, users and developers will be able to experience and evaluate these new solutions in the real world. See our developer guidance on how to participate in the Beta and follow our Privacy Sandbox blog for regular updates. We’ll continue to work in collaboration with developers, publishers, regulators and more as we navigate the transition to a more private mobile ecosystem.

Giving people more control over their data

Developers want to build consumer trust by showcasing responsible data practices in a way that’s simple and easy to understand. Over the past few years, we’ve helped developers provide more transparency around if and how they collect, share, and protect user data. This year, we’ll continue improving Google Play’s Data safety section with new features and policies that aim to give people more clarity and control around deletion practices.

You can also enhance your users’ safety by reducing the permissions you request for accessing users’ data. Your app can often leverage privacy-preserving methods for fulfilling its use case. For example, you can use the photo picker intent to allow users to select individual photos to share with your app rather than requesting access to all the photos on their device through runtime permissions. You can also start testing privacy, security, and transparency enhancements in our Android 14 Developer Preview 1. Stay tuned to our Android 14 and Google Play policy updates, as we’ll share more soon.

Protecting your apps from abuse and attacks

Developers have told us that they want more help protecting their business, users, and IP. So, we’ve continued enhancing Play Integrity API and automated integrity protection to help you better detect and prevent risks, and strengthen your anti-abuse strategy. Developers who use these products have seen an average of over 50% reduction in unauthorized access of their apps and games. Get started today with the Play Integrity API. And, stay tuned for some highly-requested feature updates to integrity products and expanded access to automatic integrity protection.

Helping you navigate SDKs

Developers have shared that they want more help deciding which SDKs are reliable and safe to use. So, we’ve created ways for SDK providers to directly message you through Play Console and Android Studio about critical issues for specific SDK versions and how to fix SDK-related crashes. We’ve also launched Google Play SDK Index to give you insights and usage data for over 100 of the most popular commercial SDKs on Google Play. Soon, we’ll share even more information about sensitive permissions an SDK may use and whether specific SDK versions may violate Google Play policy. By partnering with SDK providers to build safer SDKs and giving you greater insight, we hope to help you and your users avoid disruptions and exposure to risks.

Enhancing protections for kids and families

We’re proud that together with developers, we have made Google Play a trusted destination for families to find educational and delightful experiences for kids. Over the past years, we’ve launched new features, expanded our programs, and evolved our policies to improve app experience and strengthen privacy and security protections. This year, you’ll continue to see improved ways for Google Play to help families discover great apps and more policy updates to protect kids’ safety. Stay updated through our policy email updates and PolicyBytes videos.

Boosting responsible data collection and use

We continue to emphasize that developers and apps should only collect and use data that’s required for their apps to function and provide quality user experiences. This year, you’ll continue to see new permission and policy requirements. Stay updated through our policy email updates and PolicyBytes videos.
 
Fostering developer innovation, while keeping users safe

As a platform, we’re always looking to understand the challenges developers face and help them bring innovative ideas to life. While Google Play already hosts a variety of blockchain related apps, we’ve increasingly heard from developers who want to introduce additional web3 components, including the tokenization of digital assets as NFTs, into their apps and games. With any new technology, we must balance innovation with our responsibility to protect users, which is why we’ve begun conversations with developer partners to assess how potential policy changes could responsibly support these opportunities. As always, engaging with developers is an essential part of how we evolve our platform and maintain a safe, transparent, and trusted experience for our shared users. We hope to have more to share in the coming months.
 
Giving you a better experience with our policies and Console

We’re continuously improving our policy communication, support, and experience. We’ve recently introduced a new Play Console feature to give you more flexibility and control over the app review process. This year, we’ll provide even more features and support.

Developers have shared that they want a place to ask questions and hear from others. So in February, we opened up the Google Play Developer Community to all developers in English so you can ask for advice and share best practices with fellow developer experts. Developers have shared positive feedback about this new forum, and we welcome you to sign up to be a Product Expert (select Play Console as your product and English as your language).

We’re also expanding our pilot programs like the Google Play Developer Helpline pilot, which provides direct policy phone support. Today, we’ve expanded the pilot to nearly 60,000 in 26 countries (16,000 more developers and 9 more countries since November). We’ve completed nearly 5,000 policy support sessions with developers and with a satisfaction score of 90%.

And last, we’ve also been sending you more notices and reminders about upcoming requirements to your Developer Console Inbox, so we reach you when you’re thinking about updating your app. This year, we’re also building a new feature to help you plan ahead about declarations.

We’ll continue to share updates with you throughout the year. Thank you for your partnership in keeping Android and Google Play safe and trustworthy for everyone.

Policy Updates: New Wear OS App Quality Requirements

Posted by Ishaan Aggarwal, Product Manager

Today we are announcing upcoming policy changes intended to improve the quality of apps for Wear OS and their presentation in the Google Play Store. We are introducing these changes to ensure app users get a basic consistent experience across all apps in accordance with our latest Wear OS design and development principles. In addition, updates to the publishing requirements will improve the discovery and presentation of your Wear OS apps in the Google Play Store.

The new requirements will come into effect from August 31, 2023. Until then, we will continue to use the existing policies to review and maintain the quality of Wear OS apps. The overall Wear OS app review process will continue to be mandatory and remains unchanged.

Alongside the above policy changes, all Wear OS apps must target Android 11 (API level 30). Apps that target lower levels will stop being discoverable to all Google Play users whose devices run Android OS versions newer than the app’s target API level from August 31, 2023. This is to ensure that the app is built to meet the safety and quality standard that users expect from newer Wear OS versions.

The following list highlights examples of upcoming quality changes. See a comprehensive list of review criteria here:

  • Black Background – Use a black background for all apps and tiles.
images of watch faces side by side showing Do: Use black Background on the left and Don't use any other color for background on right
  • Ongoing Activity – When a user has an ongoing activity, you must do the following:
    • Show the ongoing activity indicator on the watch face.
    • Update recent apps with the appropriate app launcher chip for the ongoing activity.
    • Reference the ongoing activity from the tile, if the tile is present in the user’s tile carousel.

    Images of two watch faces displaying ongoing activity indicator at the bottom of the watch face on the left and Ongoing activity on an app launcher chip in recent apps on the right
  • Show Time – Display the time of day clearly at the top of the app home screen and any ongoing activity screens. We recommend that you display the time of day at the top of all activities except dialogs and confirmation screens.
    Images of two watch faces with showing time display at the top of the app on the left and Don’t display the time in a dialog, confirmation screen, or picker on the right
These quality updates span visual experience, functionality, performance, and Google Play listings; they are designed to help you provide a consistent, intuitive and enjoyable experience for Wear OS users. With careful consideration of app design, optimal functional behavior, and Google Play experiences, we are aiming to improve app quality and discoverability of quality apps across the Wear OS ecosystem.

As you design and develop, keep in mind the following recommendations to ensure a modern, successful, and discoverable app:
  • Build a modern app that targets API Level 30.
  • Test your app on devices running Wear OS 3 and above to make sure it works well on the latest Wear OS versions.
  • Consider the new Wear OS quality requirements early when designing and developing your app to create quality experience.

Thank you for your continued support of Wear OS by Google. We look forward to seeing what you create.