Learn more about Google Shopping’s new AI tools, like image generation for shopping, new AR beauty features and more.
We're very excited to announce that Search Central Live is going to Madrid for the first time on April 9! The event will have a mix of presenters from the Google Search, News, and Partnerships teams and the content will be delivered in English and Spanish, but we'll have live translation.
Imagen 3, our most advanced image generation model, is now available through Vertex AI in Firebase, making it even easier to integrate it to your Android apps.
Designed to generate well-composed images with exceptional details, reduced artifacts, and rich lighting, Imagen 3 represents a significant leap forward in image generation capabilities.
Imagen 3 unlocks exciting new possibilities for Android developers. Generated visuals can adapt to the content of your app, creating a more engaging user experience. For instance, your users can generate custom artwork to enhance their in-app profile. Imagen can also improve your app's storytelling by bringing its narratives to life with delightful personalized illustrations.
You can experiment with image prompts in Vertex AI Studio, and learn how to improve your prompts by reviewing the prompt and image attribute guide.
The integration of Imagen 3 is similar to adding Gemini access via Vertex AI in Firebase. Start by adding the gradle dependencies to your Android project:
Posted by dependencies {
implementation(platform("com.google.firebase:firebase-bom:33.10.0"))
implementation("com.google.firebase:firebase-vertexai")
}
Then, in your Kotlin code, create an ImageModel instance by passing the model name and optionally, a model configuration and safety settings:
val imageModel = Firebase.vertexAI.imagenModel( modelName = "imagen-3.0-generate-001", generationConfig = ImagenGenerationConfig( imageFormat = ImagenImageFormat.jpeg(compresssionQuality = 75), addWatermark = true, numberOfImages = 1, aspectRatio = ImagenAspectRatio.SQUARE_1x1 ), safetySettings = ImagenSafetySettings( safetyFilterLevel = ImagenSafetyFilterLevel.BLOCK_LOW_AND_ABOVE personFilterLevel = ImagenPersonFilterLevel.ALLOW_ADULT ) )
Finally generate the image by calling generateImages:
val imageResponse = imageModel.generateImages( prompt = "An astronaut riding a horse" )
Retrieve the generated image from the imageResponse and display it as a bitmap as follow:
val image = imageResponse.images.first() val uiImage = image.asBitmap()
Explore the comprehensive Firebase documentation for detailed API information.
Access to Imagen 3 using Vertex AI in Firebase is currently in Public Preview, giving you an early opportunity to experiment and innovate. For pricing details, please refer to the Vertex AI in Firebase pricing page.
Start experimenting with Imagen 3 today! We're looking forward to seeing how you’ll leverage Imagen 3's capabilities to create truly unique, immersive and personalized Android experiences.
The Beta channel is being updated to OS version 16181.30.0 (Browser version 134.0.6998.52) for most ChromeOS devices.
Visit our ChromeOS communities
General: Chromebook Help Community
Beta Specific: ChromeOS Beta Help Community
Interested in switching channels? Find out how.
Luis Menezes
Google ChromeOS
Hi, everyone! We've just released Chrome 134 (134.0.6998.39) 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.The Chrome team is delighted to announce the promotion of Chrome 134 to the stable channel for Windows, Mac and Linux. This will roll out over the coming days/weeks.
Chrome 134.0.6998.35 (Linux) 134.0.6998.35/36 ( Windows) 134.0.6998.44/45 (Mac) contains a number of fixes and improvements -- a list of changes is available in the log. Watch out for upcoming Chrome and Chromium blog posts about new features and big efforts delivered in 134.
Extended stable channel has been updated to 134.0.6998.36 ( Windows) and 134.0.6998.45 ( Mac).
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.
Srinivas Sista
Google Chrome
Learn how AI is making accurate health information more accessible and personalized and how AI can accelerate scientific discoveries with AI co-scientist.
M-133, ChromeOS version 16151.53.0 (Browser version 133.0.6943.146), has rolled out to ChromeOS devices on the Stable channel.
If you find new issues, please let us know one of the following ways:
Visit our ChromeOS communities
General: Chromebook Help Community
Beta Specific: ChromeOS Beta Help Community
Interested in switching channels? Find out how.
Andy Wu
Google ChromeOS
In just a few days, on Thursday, March 13 at 10AM PT, we’ll be dropping our winter episode of #TheAndroidShow, on YouTube and on developer.android.com!
Mobile World Congress - the annual event in Barcelona where Android device makers show off their latest devices, kicked off yesterday. In our winter episode we’ll take a look at these foldables, tablets and wearables and tell you what you need to get building.
Plus we’ve got some news to share, like a new update for Gemini in Android Studio and some new goodies for games developers ahead of the Game Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco later this month. And of course, with the launch of Android XR in December, we’ll also be taking a look at how to get building there. It’s a packed show, and you don’t want to miss it!
Mobile World Congress is a big moment for Android, with partners from around the world showing off their latest devices. And if you’re already building adaptive apps, we wanted to share some of the cool new foldable and tablets that our partners released in Barcelona:
These new devices are a great reason to build adaptive apps that scale across screen sizes and device types. Plus, Android 16 removes the ability for apps to restrict orientation and resizability at the platform level, so you’ll want to prepare. To help you get started, the Compose Material 3 adaptive library enables you to quickly and easily create layouts across all screen sizes while reducing the overall development cost.
These new devices are just one of the many things we’ll cover in our winter episode, you don’t want to miss it! If you watch live on YouTube, we’ll have folks standing by to answer your questions in the comments. See you on March 13 on YouTube or at developer.android.com/events/show!
Widgets can bring more productive, delightful and customized experiences to users' home screens, but they can be tricky to design to ensure a high quality focused experience. In this blog post, we’ll cover how easy Widget Canonical Layouts can make this process.
But, what is a Canonical Layout? It is a common layout pattern that works for various screen sizes. You can use them as a starting point, ready-to-use compositions that help layouts adapt for common use cases and screen sizes. Widgets also provide Canonical Layouts to get started crafting higher quality widgets.
The Widget Canonical Layouts Figma makes previewing your widget content in multiple breakpoints and layout types. Join me in our Figma design resource to explore how they can simplify designing a widget for one of our sample apps, JetNews.
Jetnews is a sample news reading app, built with Jetpack Compose. With the experience in mind, the primary user journey is reading articles.
With our content and user journey established, we’ll take a glance at which canonical layouts would make sense.
We want to show at least a few new articles with a headline, truncated description, and possible thumbnail. Which brings us to the Image + Text Grid layout and maybe the list layout.
Within our new Figma Widget Canonical Layout preview, we can add in some mock content to check out how these layouts will look in various sizes.
Now that we’ve previewed our content in both the grid and list layouts, we don’t have to choose between just one!
The grid layout better displays our content for larger sizes, where we have some more room to take advantage of multiple columns and a larger thumbnail image. While the list is working nicely for smaller sizes, giving a one column layout with a smaller thumbnail.
But we can adapt even further to allow the user to have more resizing flexibility and anticipate different OEM grid sizing. For JetNews, we decided on an additional extra small layout to accommodate a smaller grid size and vertical height while still using the List layout. For this size I decided to remove the thumbnail all together to give the title and action space.
Consider these in-between design tweaks as needed (between any of the breakpoints), that can be applied as general rules in your widget designs.
Here are a few guidelines to borrow:
Last, I’ll swap the app icon, round up all the breakpoint sizes, and provide an option with brand colors.
These are ready to send over to dev! Tune in for the code along to check out how to implement the final widget.
You can find the Widget Canonical Layouts at our new Figma Community Page: figma.com/@androiddesign. Stay tuned for more Android Figma resources.
Check out the official Android documentation for detailed information and best practices Widgets on Android and more on Widget Quality Tiers, and join us for the rest of Widget Spotlight week!
This blog post is part of our series: Spotlight Week on Widgets, where we provide resources—blog posts, videos, sample code, and more—all designed to help you design and create widgets. You can read more in the overview of Spotlight Week: Widgets, which will be updated throughout the week.
Posted by Anirudh Dewani, Director – Android Developer Relations
Posted by Summers Pitman – Developer Relations Engineer, and Ivy Knight – Senior Design Advocate