I/O 2024: What’s new in Google Play

Posted by Paul Feng, Vice President of Product Management, Google Play

At Google Play, we’re passionate about helping people discover experiences they’ll love while empowering developers like you to bring your ideas to life and build successful businesses.

At this year’s Google I/O, we shared our latest developments for apps and games, plus how we’re helping you reinforce trust with secure, high-quality experiences, acquire and engage users, and optimize your revenue.

Addressing the unique needs of your app category

We know that success looks different in every app category, which is why we’re addressing the specific challenges and opportunities of each vertical, from games and media to entertainment and retail.

Engage SDK: Expanding your app’s reach on and beyond the Play Store

Over the last year, the Play Store has evolved into a content-focused destination, highlighting your apps' most exciting features and updates. Now we're introducing a brand-new surface as a developer preview to showcase your content and enable cross-app continuation journeys.

Developers can use this surface to highlight the most important content from users’ installed apps and even launch users into a full-screen immersive experience with personalized recommendations and promotions. For users who haven’t installed your app yet, you can also use this space to recommend your app and showcase its most compelling content.

To unlock these benefits, you'll need to integrate with Engage SDK, a client-side integration that leverages on-device APIs and takes most developers about a week to complete. Express interest in joining our developer preview today and be among the first to feature your content on the new on-device surface launching later this year.

Google Play Games on PC and Play Points: Maximizing gamer engagement

For games, we continue to enhance our tools to empower you throughout the game lifecycle. Google Play Games on PC recently expanded to more than 140 markets with a catalog of over 3,000 games, helping you reach gamers across multiple devices. We’ve also simplified the integration process with Play Games Services, which connects your gamers’ progress and achievements on Play. To further boost gamer engagement, you can leverage Play Points to launch coupons, discounts, or exclusive in-game items, while also benefiting from improved performance reporting within Play Console.

To learn more about our broad suite of tools for game developers, check out the full recap from the Google for Games Developer Summit.

Reinforcing trust with secure, high-quality experiences

Quality and security are at the heart of Google Play. This year, we’ve made several updates designed to protect both your users and your business, including SDK management tools, smoother launch processes, enhanced user security, and proactive ways to safeguard user trust and business integrity.

Google Play SDK Console: Building a safer Play Store with SDK owners

In 2021, we launched Google Play SDK Console and invited some of the most widely adopted SDKs to join. Now, we’re opening SDK Console to all SDKs, as long as they’re distributed from a canonical Maven repository source that we can verify. This includes open-source SDKs and smaller SDKs that weren’t previously supported.

Through the console, SDK owners can access usage statistics and tools to help them guide app developers in adopting SDK versions that fix quality issues and comply with Play policies.

Recently, we added the option in Play Console for app developers to share crash or ANR data with SDK owners, which in turn can give guidance to app developers on how to fix crashes or ANR errors in all affected apps in Android Studio and Play Console.

Developers can now share crash or ANR data with SDK owners in Play Console

Enhanced app-release tools: Preventing surprises and streamlining launches

Our new pre-review checks combine several existing quality checks into one UI, allowing you to spot common policy and compatibility issues before your app goes live. And if you need to make last-minute changes, you can now discard unwanted releases in the “Not yet sent for review” stage, reducing the risk of making accidental updates.

Play Integrity API updates: New protections against unauthorized access

The Play Integrity API helps prevent attacks, abuse, and unauthorized access by letting you check that your app is unmodified and installed by Google Play on a genuine Android device. Today, we’re launching three new features to help further defend against security threats:

    • App access risk, now in public beta, lets your app know if another app could be capturing the screen, displaying overlays, or controlling the device. Since these features are important for accessibility users, we’ve designed it so that genuine accessibility apps won’t trigger the verdict.
    • You can also receive a Play Protect verdict in your API response. This lets your app know if Play Protect is turned on and if it has found any known malware on the device.
    • Finally, recent device activity lets you detect and respond to devices that make a high volume of requests, which could be a sign of automated traffic or an attack.

More ways to acquire and engage users

Reaching the right audience is crucial for the success of your app. That’s why we're constantly developing tools that help you target your ideal users, personalize your messaging, and create engaging experiences that drive downloads and retention.

Custom store listings: More ways to reach the right audience with the right message

Your store listing is often your first chance to make a good impression and acquire new users. You can already tailor your store listing in a number of ways, to optimize your conversions for different audiences.

Now, you can also create listings based on what users search for. Tailoring your store listings by search keywords will not only make its content more relevant, it can also help you target users actively seeking the benefits your app provides. Play Console will even give you keyword suggestions for potentially impactful store listings.

Learn how to build listings that target specific search keywords in our new Play Academy course, and get a head start on writing by generating suggested descriptions with Gemini models.

Increase your store listing's relevance and conversions by displaying content tailored to users by search keywords

Store listings: Enhancements to enable cross-device discovery

We’re also making store listings more relevant to users who want to use your apps on multiple devices.

    • Your listings now display screenshots, ratings, and reviews specific to each form factor to help users get a sense of the app experience they can expect.
    • Plus, by adding details specific to each device type, your app can be discovered when users search and filter for new apps by device type or explore our new page dedicated to “other devices.”

Deep links: Increasing engagement with seamless web-to-app journeys

Deep links are a great way to increase engagement by driving users directly to a relevant page within your app, where they can check out content, book a trip, or continue their shopping experience.

    • Now we’re making it even easier to manage your deep links in Play Console with deep links patching. Patching allows you to experiment or make quick changes to your deep-link setup without the need to release a new app version, and it doesn’t commit you to permanent changes.
    • Once the changes are made, you can review them by previewing or downloading a test version to your device. If everything works as expected, just push the patch live and let Google Play deliver the changes to your users.

Optimizing revenue with Google Play Commerce

With over 2.5 billion users across 190+ markets, Google Play gives you access to a vast global audience. This year, we focused on improving your ability to access customers in these markets by making it easier to make secure and seamless purchases.

Expanded payment options: More ways for customers to pay for your content

Our extensive payment method library, which includes traditional payment methods like credit cards and over 300 local forms of payment in more than 65 markets, continues to grow.

    • We enabled Pix in Brazil and enhanced support for UPI in India to streamline subscription purchases, allowing you to offer hundreds of millions of customers their preferred payment method in these markets.
    • We’ve also extended the ability for customers to make purchases for someone else. Customers with a Google family set up can now approve their child’s purchases on Android from any OS.
    • Starting in India, customers can ask a friend or family member outside their Google family group to purchase an app or in-app product for them by sharing a payment link through their preferred text messaging service or email.

Optimized pricing: Pricing your products for local purchasing power

Finding the right price for your products is essential to attract customers and maximize revenue.

    • Google Play now automatically updates price ranges to reflect currency fluctuations against the US dollar, and you’ll see a new Inbox notification in Play Console any time we recommend a price adjustment for your in-app products.
    • To give you more pricing flexibility, you can now price your products on Google Play as high as 999.99 US dollars or local equivalent.

Improved purchase experiences: Boosting your checkout performance

We’re making purchase experiences more seamless and convenient by giving customers more guidance and flexibility, and giving you the tools to fine-tune these experiences.

    • We added new badges to the Play Store such as “best selling,” “trending,” and “popular” to help guide customers’ purchases.
    • With our all-new installment subscriptions feature, you can offer customers the option to pay over time for long-term subscriptions, helping increase your signups and lifetime value. Our early access program showed an increase of 8% in total subscription sign ups and 4% in user spend.
Installment subscriptions are now available for users in Brazil, France, Italy, and Spain

    • We’re also introducing the new Play Billing Lab app, which makes it easier to adopt and test features that can help you improve the customer experience for one-time purchases and subscriptions. The Lab allows you to test your integration with Play's billing system, create test configurations without affecting real users, and experiment with country overrides and subscription lifecycle changes.

To take advantage of these features and everything else that our commerce platform has to offer, be sure to upgrade to Play Billing Library 7.0 later this month. This year, we're aligning the library's deprecation timelines with Play's policies, so support for version 5 will end in August 2024.


And that’s it for our recap of the latest updates and vertical-specific investments we're making to help you reinforce trust, acquire and engage users, and optimize your revenue. We're excited to see how you leverage these tools to grow your business on Google Play.

What’s new in Jetpack Compose at I/O ‘24

Posted by Ben Trengrove – Developer Relations Engineer, and Nick Butcher – Product Manager for Jetpack Compose

At Google I/O 2024, we announced the upcoming June ‘24 Jetpack Compose release, packed with features designed to make Android development faster and easier, no matter what form factor you are building for. We also announced expanded Compose support across the ecosystem of Android devices. This post provides an overview of all the announcements, in case you missed any.

Compose June ‘24 release

Compose is Android's modern, native UI toolkit that is used by apps such as Threads, Google Drive, and SoundCloud. This release adds major features you have been asking for, including shared element transitions and list reordering animations, and improves performance.

Shared element transitions

Modifier.sharedElement() and Modifier.sharedBounds() have been added to Compose. They allow you to create beautiful transitions between screens with finer control than the View system allowed. Wrap your AnimatedContent composables in SharedTransitionLayout and then add the Modifier.sharedElement() or Modifier.sharedBounds() onto the content that you’d like to share between screens. Compose will then find composables with matching keys and smoothly transition between them.

Navigation Compose and predictive back animations in Android 15 also work smoothly together with shared element transitions. This allows you to create screen transitions directly tied to the navigation gesture, which provides a high quality user experience.

Check out the documentation for more information.

Lazy list item animations

Lazy row and column now have the ability to automatically animate the insertion, removal, and reordering of items. Just add Modifier.animateItem() to your list items and changes will automatically animate. You can also customize the animation by providing different animation specifications.

Check out the documentation for the instructions.

Text

Text now supports inline links and basic HTML formatting via the new AnnotatedString.fromHtml() extension. This converts basic HTML formatting, including links to an AnnotatedString, which can then be rendered by Compose.

BasicTextField gains a new overload that accepts a TextFieldState; a new rich state object that allows more robust user experiences (such as rich content like keyboard gifs) and can be hoisted out of the component and updated asynchronously.

Note: Material TextField will be updated to use the new BasicTextField in a subsequent release, but if you’d like to try it out in your apps, see the documentation.

Contextual Flow Layouts

A commonly requested layout is a lazy flow layout that only composes the content that can fit. If you have ever needed this functionality, ContextualFlowRow and ContextualFlowColumn are for you. Given a max number of lines, the flow layout will compose as many items that can fit and then provide you the context of what was rendered. With this context, you can then render a custom expand indicator that shows a count of remaining items.

@OptIn(ExperimentalLayoutApi::class)
@Composable
private fun SuggestedSnacks(
   snacks: List<Snack>,
   onSnackClick: (Snack) -> Unit,
   modifier: Modifier = Modifier
) {
   var maxLines by remember { mutableIntStateOf(1) }
   ContextualFlowRow(
       maxLines = maxLines,
       overflow = ContextualFlowRowOverflow.expandIndicator {
           val remainingItems = totalItemCount - shownItemCount
           MyOverflowIndicator(
               remainingItems = remainingItems,
               modifier = Modifier
                   .clickable {
                       // Expand the max lines on click
                       maxLines += 1
                   }
           )
       },
       itemCount = snacks.size
   ) { index ->
       val snack = snacks[index]
       SnackItem(snack, onSnackClick)
   }
}

Performance improvements

Jetpack Compose continues to get faster with every release. We are pleased to report that we have improved the time to first pixel benchmark of our Jetsnack sample by 17% compared to the January release. We gained these improvements simply by updating the sample app to the new Compose version. The chart below shows the improvement in Jetsnack with each Compose release, since the August 2023 release we have nearly halved the time to first pixel drawn of Jetsnack.

The indication APIs have been rewritten to allow for lazy creation of ripples, which is very important for scroll performance. For most apps, there should be no changes required, but upgrading might introduce breaking changes if you have custom indications. For help with the migration, see the new documentation.

We continue to improve the efficiency of the Compose runtime, which speeds up all Compose code in your app. We’ve re-engineered the slot table to a more efficient data structure, and we are also generating more efficient code by detecting and removing unused composition groups. Additionally, there are new APIs that now allow you to customize the behavior of lazy layout prefetching.

Strong skipping mode

Strong skipping mode has graduated from experimental status and is now production-ready—the upcoming 2.0.20 compiler release will enable this feature by default. Strong skipping mode simplifies composable skipping by allowing composables with unstable parameters to be skipped. This means more composables will skip automatically, reducing the need to manually annotate classes as stable. The Now In Android sample saw a 20% improvement in home screen recomposition time when enabling strong skipping. For more details see the documentation.

Compose compiler moving to the Kotlin repository

In case you missed our previous announcement, the Compose compiler will be hosted in the Kotlin repository from Kotlin 2.0. This means you will no longer have to wait for a matching Compose compiler to be released to upgrade your Kotlin version. For full details on this change and to learn about the new Compose Compiler Gradle plugin, see our announcement blog post.

Stable APIs

We continue to stabilize experimental APIs and remove experimental annotations. Notable APIs for this release include Pager, AnchoredDraggable, SegmentedButton, SwipeToDismissBox, Slider, and more.

Compose support across Android form factors

We continue to extend Jetpack Compose to all Android form factors to make it faster and easier to build beautiful Android apps, no matter what Android form factor you are targeting. At I/O this year we announced a number of updates to support building layouts that adapt across screen sizes, Compose for TV reaching 1.0 Beta and updates to Compose for Wear OS.

Jetpack Libraries

Type safe navigation in Navigation Compose

As of Jetpack Navigation 2.8.0-alpha08, the Navigation Component has a full type safe system based on Kotlin Serialization for defining your navigation graph when using our Kotlin DSL, designed to work best with integrations like Navigation Compose.

Now, you can define your navigation destinations and parameters as serializable objects.

// Define a home destination that doesn't take any arguments
@Serializable
object Home

// Define a profile destination that takes an ID
@Serializable
data class Profile(val id: String)

Then, when defining your NavGraph, passing the object is enough. No more route strings!

NavHost(navController, startDestination = Home) {
    composable<Home> {
        HomeScreen(onNavigateToProfile = { id ->
            navController.navigate(Profile(id))
        })
     }
     composable<Profile> { backStackEntry ->
         val profile: Profile = backStackEntry.toRoute()
         ProfileScreen(profile)
     }
}

For more information, see this blog post.

CameraX Compose

We are releasing a new Compose-specific CameraX artifact called camera-viewfinder-compose. In this first alpha release, you can use the new Viewfinder composable to display a camera preview on your screen that always shows the correct aspect ratio and rotation, whether you resize your window, unfold your device, or change the display or orientation. It also correctly handles camera and surface lifecycles, something that can be difficult when dealing with cameras. It also enables complex interactions in the camera coordinate system, making it easy for you to implement gestures such as tap-to-focus or pinch-to-zoom.

You can use the Viewfinder composable even when you aren’t using any of the other CameraX libraries, and link it directly to your Camera2 code.

We are actively working on improving the APIs and are looking forward to your feedback! Check out the known issues, and raise bugs or feature requests to help us create the best possible camera experience in Compose.

Get started

We’re grateful for all of the bug reports and feature requests submitted to our issue tracker that led to these changes — they help us to improve Compose and build the APIs you need. Please continue providing your feedback, and help us make Compose better for you.

Wondering what’s next? Check out our roadmap to see the features we’re currently thinking about and working on. We can’t wait to see what you build.

Happy composing!

SoundCloud supported more screens using 45% less code with Jetpack Compose

Posted by Chris Arriola, Developer Relations Engineer and Nick Butcher, Product Manager for Jetpack Compose

As one of the largest audio streaming platforms in the world, SoundCloud supports a network of creators who use its service to upload and promote their music. SoundCloud’s developers are always exploring ways to improve its user experience, which means going beyond simply building the best mobile app. The team also wants to make SoundCloud available on as many form factors as possible so users can easily access and listen to SoundCloud in any situation and on the devices that work best for them.

That’s why the SoundCloud team adopted Jetpack Compose, Android’s modern declarative toolkit for building native UI. Compose enabled SoundCloud engineers to not only expand the app to more form factors, but also streamline new feature development—in some cases reducing nearly half the code.

Compose helped us reach new users and markets, ultimately increasing our global reach” — Vitus Ortner, Android engineer at SoundCloud


Simplified UI development with Compose

Before migrating to Compose, building UI was much slower for SoundCloud developers because they had to constantly switch context between Kotlin and XML. This also made managing and maintaining its design system much more difficult. The team’s engineers wanted to find a simpler way to write code, and they knew Compose would help them get there.

“We started adopting Compose to quickly build dynamic layouts using Kotlin, the language we love,” said Vitus Ortner, an Android engineer at SoundCloud. “We wanted to empower our engineers to effectively create rich UIs through Compose.”

SoundCloud engineers overhauled the app’s design system with Compose and can now build new features using 45% less code on average. Compose’s concise Kotlin syntax and its ability to create reusable UI made design and maintenance much easier for the team. Prototyping new features was also simpler thanks to Compose’s declarative approach, as well as its live edit and UI preview features.

“We implemented a new content discovery feature with an interactive vertical feed layout. We used Compose to prototype, and it enabled us to iterate fast even when we changed our design ideas daily,” said Vitus. “That wouldn’t have been possible with Views.”

Compose’s interoperability with Views made it easier for developers to migrate SoundCloud’s design system to the new toolkit because they could do it gradually. Because SoundCloud uses a model–view–viewModel architecture, developers could reuse the app’s old view models in the new Compose framework. This meant they only needed to migrate the app’s View-based layouts to Compose, rather than rewrite the entire UI layer.

“Compose helped us reach new users and markets, ultimately increasing our global reach” — Vitus Ortner, Android engineer at SoundCloud

Optimizing for more form factors with Compose

Switching to Compose enabled developers to do more than streamline the app’s codebase. It also made supporting multiple form factors easier. With Compose, SoundCloud engineers were able to more easily bring the app to tablets, TVs, cars, and wearables.

“We’re using Compose across all form factors in the Android ecosystem,” said Vitus. “We implemented our Wear OS and TV apps from the ground up with Compose, which allowed us to rapidly iterate and ship new products in a fraction of the time it would have taken before.”

To adapt the mobile experience to a variety of screen sizes while maintaining interoperability with existing code, SoundCloud developers provide different XML layouts to combine existing View code with newer Compose components. Easy-to-implement features like this helped the team quickly build experiences across different devices, including optimizing SoundCloud for cars and tablets.

With these improvements, SoundCloud engineers built their Wear OS app and TV app from the ground up in just four months using Compose. According to Vitus, this “would’ve been unthinkable” using their previous system.

“Our mobile Compose skills transferred directly to Compose for other form factors,” said Vitus. “The concepts and most APIs are the same across form factors. We still needed to learn some form factor-specific APIs, like ScalingLazyColumn for Wear OS and TvLazyColumn for TVs.”

UI example

Future investment in Compose

By migrating its Android app to Compose, SoundCloud developers improved productivity, simplified the app’s code, and established smoother development processes for new features and experiences. Switching to Compose also helped SoundCloud expand to more form factors, creating new ways for users to access the platform.

“Compose helped us reach new users and markets, ultimately increasing our global reach,” said Vitus. “We're fully committed to Compose and plan to use it for all projects in the future.”


Get started

Optimize your UI development with Jetpack Compose.

Google I/O 2024: What’s new in Android Development Tools

Posted by Mayank Jain – Product Manager, Android Studio

At Google I/O 2024, we announced an exciting new set of features and tools aimed at making Android development faster and easier. We also shared updates to Android Studio that will help you leverage AI and make it easier for you to build high quality apps for Android across the Android ecosystem.

You can check out the What’s new in Android Developer Tools session at Google I/O 2024 to see some of the new features in action or better yet, try them out yourself by downloading Android Studio Koala 🐨 Feature Drop in the preview release channel. Here’s a look at our announcements:

Leverage Gemini in Android Studio

Since launching AI features in Android Studio last year, we continue to evolve our underlying models, integrate your feedback, and expand availability to more countries and territories so that you can leverage AI in your workflow and become a more productive Android app developer. Using the built-in AI privacy controls, you can opt in to using the latest AI feature improvements that are tailored for your Android app project.

Code suggestions with Gemini in Android Studio

You can now provide custom prompts for Gemini in Android Studio to generate code suggestions. After you enable Gemini from the View > Tool Windows > Gemini tool window, right-click in the code editor and select Gemini > Transform selected code from the context menu to see the prompt field. You can then prompt Gemini to generate a code suggestion that either adds new code or transforms selected code. You can ask Gemini to simplify complex code by rewriting it, perform very specific code transformations such as “make this code idiomatic,” or generate new functions you describe. Android Studio then shows you Gemini’s code suggestion as a code diff, so that you can review and accept only the suggestions you want.

Code suggestions with Gemini in Android Studio

Gemini for recommendations on crash reports

App Quality Insights in Android Studio seamlessly incorporates both Firebase Crashlytics and Android Vitals data into Android Studio so you can access the most important app stability related information, without having to switch tools.

You can now use Gemini in Android Studio to analyze your crash reports, generate insights which are shown in the Gemini tool window, provide a crash summary, and when possible recommend next steps, including sample code and links to relevant documentation.

You can generate all of this information directly from the App Quality Insights tool window in Android Studio after you enable Gemini from View > Tool Windows > Gemini.

Gemini for recommendations on crash reports

Integrate Gemini API into your app with a starter template

Start prototyping with Gemini models in your apps with our new starter app template provided in Android Studio. In this app template, you can issue prompts directly to the Gemini API, add image sources as input, and display the responses on the screen. Additionally, use Google AI Studio to craft custom prompts for your app.

When you are ready to scale your AI features to production with Google Cloud infrastructure, you can also access the powerful capabilities of Gemini models through Vertex AI. This is Google’s fully-managed development platform designed for building and deploying generative AI. Whether you simply need world class inference capabilities, or want to build end-to-end AI workflows with Vertex, the Gemini API is a great solution.

Integrate Gemini API into your app with a starter template

Gemini 1.5 Pro coming to Android Studio

We previously announced that Gemini in Android Studio uses the Gemini 1.0 Pro model to help you by answering Android development questions, generating code, finding resources, or explaining best practices. In this preview stage of Gemini in Android Studio, we are offering Gemini 1.0 Pro at no-cost for all users for now. Gemini 1.0 Pro is a versatile model, making it ideal to scale. However we acknowledge that its quality of responses may be limited in some cases. Based on your feedback, we are committed to improving the quality for Android development, and excited to add more features using Gemini to make your developer experience even more productive.

Along this journey, the Gemini 1.5 Pro model will be coming to Android Studio later this year. Equipped with a Large Context Window, this model notably leads to higher quality responses, and unlocks use cases like multimodal input that you might have seen in the Google I/O 2024 sessions. Stay tuned for more updates on how you can access more capable models in Android Studio.

Productivity enhancements

Release Monitoring with Firebase

Today we announced the general availability of the Firebase Release Monitoring Dashboard. The Firebase Release Monitoring Dashboard is a single dashboard powered by Firebase Crashlytics to monitor your most recent production releases of your Android app. It updates in real time to give you a high-level view of the most important release metrics, like crash-free sessions, comparisons, and benchmarking based on your previous releases.

Android Device Streaming

Android Device Streaming, powered by Firebase, lets you securely connect to remote physical Android devices hosted in Google's data centers. It is a convenient way to test your app against physical units of some of the latest Android devices, including the Google Pixel 8 and 8 Pro, Pixel Fold, and more.

Starting today, Android Device Streaming now includes the following devices, in addition to the portfolio of 20+ device models already available:

    • Samsung Galaxy Fold5
    • Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra
    • Google Pixel 8a

Additionally, if you’re new to Firebase, Android Studio automatically creates and sets up a no-cost Firebase project for you when you sign in to Koala Feature Drop to use Device Streaming. So, you can get to streaming the device you need much faster. Learn more about Android Device Streaming quotas, including promotional quota for the Firebase Blaze plan projects available for a limited time.

Connect to the latest physical Android devices in moments with Android Device Streaming, 
powered by Firebase

USB cable speed detection

Did you know that USB cable bandwidth varies from 480 Mbps (USB-2) to up to 40,000 Mbps (USB-4)? Android Studio Koala Feature Drop now makes it trivial to differentiate low performing USB cables from the high performing ones.

When you connect an Android device, Android Studio automatically detects the device and USB cable bandwidth and warns you if there’s a mismatch in USB bandwidth.

Note: USB cable speed detection requires an updated ADB found in Android SDK Platform Tools v34+, and is currently available for macOS and Linux.

USB cable speed detection.
Learn more about USB speeds here

A new way to sign in with Google in Android Studio

It’s now easier to sign in to multiple Google services with one authentication step. Whether you want to use Gemini in Android Studio, Firebase for Android Device Streaming, Google Play for Android Vitals reports, or all these useful services, the new sign in flow makes it easier to get up and running. If you’re new to Firebase and want to use Android Device Streaming, Android Studio automatically creates a project for you, so you can quickly start streaming a real physical Firebase device. With granular permissions scoping, you will always be in control of which services have access to your account. To get started, just click the profile avatar and sign in with your developer account.

A new way to sign in with Google in Android Studio

Device UI setting shortcut

Using the device UI setting shortcut, you can now effortlessly configure your devices to desired settings related to dark theme, font size, display size, app language, and more, all directly through the Running Devices window. You can now test and debug your UI seamlessly for any of the possible scenarios required by your use case.

Device UI settings shortcuts

Faster and improved Profiler with a task-centric approach

The internals of the Android Studio Profiler have been dramatically improved. Popular profiling tasks like capturing a system trace with profileable apps now start up to 60% faster.*

We’ve redesigned the profiler to make it easier to start the task you’re interested in, whether it’s profiling your app’s CPU, memory, or power usage. For example, initiating a system trace task to profile and improve your app’s startup time is integrated right in the UI as you open the profiler.

Faster and improved Profiler with a task-centric approach 
*Based on internal data, as tested in April 2024

Google Play SDK Index integration

Android Studio is integrated with the Google Play SDK Index to inform when there are known policy or version issues with SDKs used by your app. This enables you to update those dependencies and avoid issues that could prevent you from publishing new versions of your app.

In the Android Studio Koala Feature Drop release, the integration has been expanded to also include warnings from the Google Play SDK Console. This gives you a complete view of any potential version or policy issues in your dependencies before submitting your app to the Google Play Console.

Notes from SDK authors are now also displayed directly in Android Studio to save you time.

A warning from the SDK Index with the corresponding SDK author note

Preview tiles for Wear OS apps

Android Studio now has preview support for Tiles. You can now iterate much quicker when creating tiles, enabling you to quickly see what a Tile looks like on different configurations without needing to run it on a device.

Tiles previews usage for Wear OS apps

Generate synthetic sensor data for testing on Wear OS apps

To help simulate real life scenarios you can now generate synthetic (fake) data for a Wear OS emulator for health related sensors such as heart rate, speed, steps, and more. You are now able to set up and perform testing for a multi-sport training session in minutes, end-to-end in Android Studio, without ever leaving your desk.

Generate synthetic sensor data for testing on Wear OS apps

Compose Glance widget previews

Android Studio Koala Feature Drop makes it easy to preview your Jetpack Compose Glance widgets (1.1.0-rc01) directly within the IDE. Catch potential UI issues and fine-tune your widget's appearance early in the development process. Learn more about how to get started.

Previews for Compose Glance widgets

Live Edit for Compose enabled by default

Live Edit for Compose can accelerate your Compose development experience by automatically deploying code changes to the running application on an emulator or physical device. Live Edit can help you see the effect of updates to UX elements—for example new composables, modifier updates, and animations—on the overall app experience. As you become more familiar with Live Edit you will find many creative ways it can help improve your development experience and productivity.

In Android Studio Koala Feature Drop, Live Edit is enabled by default in manual mode and has increased stability and more robust change detection, including support for import statements.

ALT TEXT
Compose Preview Screenshot Testing with Now in Android app

Compose preview screenshot testing plugin (alpha)

Host-side screenshot testing is an easy and powerful way to test UIs and prevent regressions. Today, the first alpha version of the Compose Preview Screenshot Testing plugin is available as a separate plugin, to be used together with AGP 8.5.0-beta01 or higher. Add your Compose Previews to the src/main/screenshotTest folder and run the task to generate a diff report after UI updates. The generated HTML test report lets you visually detect any changes to your app’s UI.

This alpha version of the plugin is designed for rapid iteration and feedback. We plan to merge it back into AGP in the future, but for now, this separate plugin lets us experiment and improve the feature quickly. Learn more about how to get started.

IntelliJ Platform Update (2024.1)

Android Studio Koala Feature Drop includes the IntelliJ 2024.1 platform release, which comes with some very useful IDE improvements:

    • An overhauled terminal featuring both visual and functional enhancements to streamline command-line tasks. Learn more in this blog post.
    • A new feature called sticky lines in the editor simplifies working with large files and exploring new codebases. This feature keeps key structural elements, like the beginnings of classes or methods, pinned to the top of the editor as you scroll and provides an option to promptly navigate through the code by clicking on a pinned line.
    • Basic IDE functionalities like code highlighting and completion now work for Java and Kotlin during project indexing, which should enhance your startup experience.
    • You can now scale the IDE down to 90%, 80%, or 70%, giving you the flexibility to adjust the size of IDE elements both upward and downward.

Read the detailed IntelliJ release notes here.

To summarize

Android Studio Koala Feature Drop (2024.1.2) is now available in the Android Studio canary channel with

    • Gemini in Android Studio
        • Code suggestions with Gemini in Android Studio
        • Gemini for recommendations on crash reports
        • Gemini API starter app template to help integrate Gemini into your app (also available in Koala 2024.1.1)

    • Productivity enhancements
        • Release Monitoring with Firebase
        • Android Device Streaming
        • USB cable speed detection
        • A new way to sign in with Google in Android Studio
        • Device UI setting shortcut
        • Faster and improved Profiler with a task-centric approach
        • Google Play SDK Index integration
        • Preview tiles for Wear OS apps
        • Generate synthetic sensor data for testing on Wear OS apps
        • Compose Glance widget previews
        • Live Edit for Compose enabled by default
        • Compose preview screenshot testing plugin (alpha) - to be installed additionally

    • IntelliJ Platform Update (2024.1): also available in Koala 2024.1.1
        • An overhauled terminal
        • Sticky lines in editor simplifies working with large files
        • Code highlighting and completion now work during project indexing
        • Flexible IDE size adjustments

And last, a quick reminder that going forward, the initial Android Studio releases will have the .1 Android Studio major version and introduce the updated IntelliJ platform version, while subsequent Feature Drops will increase the Android major version to .2 and focus on introducing Android-specific features that help you be more productive for Android app development.

How to get started

Ready to try the exciting new features in Android Studio?

You can download the canary version Android Studio Koala 🐨 Feature Drop (2024.1.2) today to incorporate these new features into your workflow or try the stable version Android Studio Jellyfish 🪼. You can also install them side by side by following these instructions.

As always, your feedback is important to us – check known issues, report bugs, suggest improvements, and be part of our vibrant community on LinkedIn Medium, YouTube, or X. Let's build the future of Android apps together!

Chrome Dev for Desktop Update

The Dev channel has been updated to 126.0.6468.2 for Windows, Mac and Linux.

A partial list of changes is available in the Git log. Interested in switching release channels? Find out how. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug. The community help forum is also a great place to reach out for help or learn about common issues.

Srinivas Sista
Google Chrome

Chrome for Android Update

  Hello, Everyone! We've just released Chrome 125 (124.0.6367.179) for Android: it'll become available on Google Play over the next few days.

This release includes stability and performance improvements. You can see a full list of the changes in the Git log. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug.


Android releases contain the same security fixes as their corresponding Desktop (Windows & Linux: 124.0.6367.207 and Mac:124.0.6367.207/.208;  ) unless otherwise noted.

Erhu Akpobaro
Google Chrome

Stable Channel Update for Desktop

The Stable channel has been updated to 124.0.6367.207/.208 for Mac and Windows and 124.0.6367.207 for Linux which will roll out over the coming days/weeks. A full list of changes in this build is available in the Log.



The Extended Stable channel has been updated to 124.0.6367.207 for Mac and Windows which will roll out over the coming days/weeks.


Security Fixes and Rewards

Note: Access to bug details and links may be kept restricted until a majority of users are updated with a fix. We will also retain restrictions if the bug exists in a third party library that other projects similarly depend on, but haven’t yet fixed.


This update includes 1 security fix. Below, we highlight fixes that were contributed by external researchers. Please see the Chrome Security Page for more information.


[N/A][339458194] High CVE-2024-4761: Out of bounds write in V8. Reported by Anonymous on 2024-05-09


Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2024-4761 exists in the wild.


We would also like to thank all security researchers that worked with us during the development cycle to prevent security bugs from ever reaching the stable channel.


Interested in switching release channels? Find out how here. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug. The community help forum is also a great place to reach out for help or learn about common issues.


Daniel Yip

Google Chrome

Long Term Support Channel Update for ChromeOS

LTS-120 is being updated in the LTS (Long Term Support) channel, version 120.0.6099.310 (Platform Version: 15662.107.0), for most ChromeOS devices. 


Release notes for LTS-120 can be found here 
Want to know more about Long-term Support? Click here


This update contains selective Security fixes, including:

Chrome Browser Security Fixes
339266700 High  CVE-2024-4671 Use after free in Visuals
335003891 High CVE-2024-4331 Use after free in Picture In Picture


ChromeOS Security Fixes:
High Fixes for CVE-2024-0409
High Fixes for CVE=2023-25584
High Fixes for CVE-2024-24806
High Fixes for CVE-2024-21626


Giuliana Pritchard 
Google Chrome OS