This creator turned donuts into dollars

Google for Creators recently launched The Conversation, a new YouTube series spotlighting the experiences of women of color creators. This month, we’re featuring designer, photo stylist and donut aficionado Samantha Ushiro, the talent behind the successful online brand Aww Sam. Learn more about Sam below and check out the full interview.

Samantha Ushiro’s love for donuts, confetti, bright colors and vintage fashion led to an unexpected — and successful — career move. Today, her Aww Sam brand has nearly 300,000 followers across her web properties, including her Pinterest profile, which receives 2.4 million monthly views. She’s also partnered with brands like Refinery29, Bustle, HGTV and Brit + Co.

Sam made a leap of faith to get where she is today. She was studying industrial design at the Parsons School of Design in New York. For her final project, she created a photo book of handmade, colorful donuts decorated in her whimsical style. A blogger since high school, Sam decided to post some of the photos online. “People were asking me, ‘What’s the recipe? How do I make these?’” Sam recalls. “That’s how it all started.”

Sam began posting her work on Instagram. Brands took notice of Sam’s upbeat, retro style, and paid gigs started rolling in. “I realized, OK, I could make a career doing this,” Sam says. She left her job in 3D modeling to dive into online content creation full time.

In 2015, Sam launched Aww Sam, a creative lifestyle blog “with a focus on making every day fun.” She expanded her content to include party planning, crafting, vintage fashion and home décor. Her audience ate it all up.

Sam now toggles between New York City and her home in Austin, Texas, which she shares with her husband, Kyle, and new baby Kiki. Here, Sam shares a few ingredients from her recipe for success.

Screen capture of Sam Ushiro’s “Category: Donuts” webpage features a photo of Sam in a pink dress and hat emerging from a giant box of donuts, along with other donut photographs.

Sam Ushiro’s love for decorated, handmade donuts launched the Aww Sam brand.

Commit to your passion

In the beginning, Sam was juggling college, a job and her social media content. Like so many aspiring creators, Sam had to choose where to focus her time and energy. “Some people wait until their social media work surpasses their salary, then they make the leap full time,” Sam shares. “It was hard for me to do both at once.” She decided to take a chance and become a full-time content creator. “I figured, if this fails, I can go back to my industrial design career.” Sam never had to revert to plan B, as Aww Sam became even more successful than she imagined.

Start with what you have

Sam didn’t start out with fancy equipment or a studio. Working out of her one-bedroom apartment in New York, she taped paper to the walls to create a photography backdrop. “I used Photoshop to extend the colored backgrounds,” Sam shares. She had a flip phone (no smartphone), so she improvised with the tools available. “I used a digital camera,” Sam explains. “I would email the photos to myself, and then I’d go on my iPod touch and post them on Instagram.”

Sam, Kyle, and baby Kiki pose against a shimmery, wintry white backdrop. Sam wears a baby blue princess dress and hair bow, Kyle is in a white suit with a blue scarf and black top hat and baby Kiki wears a yellow dress with a blue pom-pom headband.

Sam’s husband, Kyle, and baby Kiki are part of the Aww Sam experience.

Find inspiration in unexpected places

Sam’s design aesthetic is uniquely her own. But she’s drawn inspiration from outside of the Aww Sam orbit, too. “I look at other creative things, like films, graphic novels and surrealist art,” Sam says. “You can gather inspiration from stuff that’s not directly related to your work.”

Sam’s pink Jell-O crown cake has red and orange fruit chunks and white balls of cream. It sits atop a yellow cake stand.

Sam’s Jell-O crown cake is inspired by vintage recipes, when Jell-O was a kitchen staple.

Use your platform for social advocacy

Sam has built her brand on spreading joy. But she also uses her platform to educate her audience. Her Instagram Stories cover the Black Lives Matter movement and other important issues, including the rise in violence against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. In one post, Sam shared her experience growing up as a Japanese American, and how her grandparents were relocated and confined in U.S. internment camps during World War II. The post enlightened her audience, “some of whom didn’t know Japanese internment camps existed,” Sam says.

Photo of Sam as a young child. She sits on top of a green bouncy ride outside, wearing a blue dress, white tights and her hair styled with bangs in a bob cut.

Sam shared her experience growing up as a Japanese American with her followers.

Sam hopes her content serves as a bright spot in her followers’ social media feeds. She encourages other creators to start posting and see where their journey takes them. “I think all creative work is valid,” Sam says. “Even if you don't think you've done a good job, you still made this thing. You made something out of nothing. And that in itself is still valid.”

Want to hear more? Check out the full video interviewwith Sam on The Conversation.

Lessons from helping 10 million during the pandemic

2022 marks the third year of the pain of the COVID-19 pandemic. Though we’ve yet to see the long-term impact it will have on how we live, work, study and grow, I’ve never seen a time where technology has been as helpful to as many people as it has been over these last three years.

The same technology that has kept so many going will be key to the economic recovery, but we must also make sure no one is left behind.

In 2015, when I first started this role at Google, the EU released a report highlighting a digital skills gap that threatened to leave a million jobs unfilled. Seeing a unique challenge and opportunity for Google to help, we launched Grow With Google, which aims to help accelerate economic recovery through our technology, tools and training. Through Grow with Google, we’ve trained 88 million people around the world in the skills they need to build their career, launch or grow their own business.

With the onset of the pandemic, we sought to build on these efforts. The acceleration of technology was keeping businesses afloat and helping communities connect — but it also risked leaving some people behind.

So in June 2020 we set ourselves a new target, pledging to help 10 million people and businesses in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) find jobs, digitize and grow by the end of 2021. This important milestone has now been reached, and surpassed.

We approached this challenge by:

Providing businesses with the tools they need to thrive

Research has found 80% of small businesses increased their use of digital tools during the pandemic. So we’ve launched more than 200 new features since March 2020.

For example, with Business Profiles, we made it easier for businesses to manage their presence directly on Google Search and the Google Maps app and connect with customers online. These tools have helped businesses and people adjust and thrive during the pandemic. In fact, boutique French retailer Indira de Paris now attributes 70% of their sales to digital, thanks to these features.

We have also launched new features on Search and Google Maps enabling restaurants to inform customers they now do delivery — or for local stores to say they offer curbside pick-up. People can now find this information on Search and Maps for more than six million restaurants and retailers in Europe. To help retailers to connect with more customers, we made it free for retailers to list their products on the Shopping tab throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa. To help retailers stand out online, in over 10 EMEA markets, we launched tailored recommendations for every business with our new tool, Local Opportunity Finder.

Supporting people and businesses to learn new digital skills

To make the most of the digital opportunities available to them, people and businesses need the right skills. Across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as part of our Grow with Google efforts, we focused on providing digital skills training.

We have worked alongside partners to launch initiatives aimed at supporting local businesses and communities to make the digital transition. With the German Retail Association (HDE) we launched the ZukunftHandel initiative, which has provided over 70,000 retailers with coaching and other support.

Long before the coronavirus, it was clear the jobs of the future would require anew set of digital skills. McKinsey now estimates that more than 25% of people may need to transition new jobs because of the pandemic. In response, we launched new Google Career Certificates to help people reskill for roles in high-growth areas such as IT support, project management, data analytics or UX design. People like Jelena in the UK have also benefited from the 100,000 scholarships we are providing in partnership with local governmental and non-governmental organizations. Jelena participated in a Project Management course from the Google Career Certificate program and is now a digital project coordinator for various charitable initiatives.

A picture of in Jelena Stephenson in Serbia who completed the Project Management course from the Google Career Certificate programme

A picture of in Jelena Stephenson in Serbia who completed the Project Management course from the Google Career Certificate programme

From our experience we feel there are five key lessons to share as we all continue the journey to economic growth and recovery in 2022.

1. The digital transition will continue at pace in 2022.

The future will be about businesses having the right skills and using the full range of digital tools to take advantage of the opportunities technology presents. Research has found that small businesses in Europe with a sophisticated use of digital tools were able to build a “digital safety net” during the pandemic, resulting in 80% better sales and 60% better revenue. For example, German fashion company das schöne leben ran their first in-house Search campaign during the pandemic and has tripled their direct online orders with customers of all ages throughout Germany.

2. Obtaining new skills will support the transition and expand the digital opportunity to more

Research by Google and McKinsey from 2020 shows that more than 90 million people in EMEA may need to learn new skills for future jobs, and that some people will need to change careers entirely. The past two years have only accelerated those changes further. Our work has provided us with numerous examples of businesses and individuals making the most of this opportunity. Noemi in Italy learned new skills so she could help local small businesses to digitize and grow, while Alba in Madrid used her Career Certificate to secure a job in IT support. Our Grow with Google and Career Certificate programs will continue to provide people with these skills.

3. For lasting impact, we must ensure that this opportunity is open to all

The pandemic has reinforced growing inequalities both between economies and within them. We know certain groups are more impacted than others: those without a college degree, ethinic minorities and women. To address this, we need new ways of thinking. We know that digital skills and tools, with the right support, can unlock everyone’s potential. In our efforts, we have seen countless examples of this — from Ibrahim in Italy, to the many women-owned businesses using Google tools across Europe. We will continue to work hard to reach everyone and will continue to work with a diverse group of organizations like MExoxo in Greece, which supports women, refugees and LGBTQ+ women in entrepreneurship.

4. Current challenges call for greater collaboration between organizations, communities and governments.

Partnerships have been the cornerstone of our work in supporting communities and governments. In France, working in partnership with Pole Emploi in some regions has helped job seekers identify gaps in digital skills and ways to access them. In 2022, expanding the digital opportunity and driving digitization should see this work continue. This will require continued collaboration on policy efforts, such as those led by the European Commission, as well as careful consideration of the regulations that will support a digital-led recovery.

5. The green economy will be the bedrock of the present and future.

The pandemic has demonstrated our collective ability to tackle major challenges — but coronavirus is not the only crisis we are facing. As we look to recover from the pandemic, the same focus must be given to fighting the climate crisis. Entrepreneurs are already working with governments and organizations to develop the technologies capable of addressing this challenge. Through theGoogle for Startups Accelerator: Sustainable Development Goals Project 2030 and anchoring over €2 billion of green infrastructure investments in Europe by 2025, we are backing those who are striving to find these solutions. We also want to help businesses and individuals make the right choices, working with SolarPower Europe’s #SolarWorks program to raise awareness of the diverse range of careers available in solar as well as promoting sustainable choices through the products we provide. In the U.K. we have worked with Planet Mark to offer training to help small businesses their journey towards sustainability.

The pandemic has presented enormous challenges to communities and economies across the world. While difficult work is still required to respond to and recover from the public health crisis, our work in helping 10 million people and businesses in Europe, the Middle East and Africa to find jobs, digitize and grow has underlined to me that there are also enormous opportunities. The future we need to build is an inclusive, sustainable and digitally accelerated one — and we are here to play our part.

Beta Channel Update for Chrome OS

The Beta channel is being updated to 98.0.4758.67 (Platform version: 14388.37.0) for most Chrome OS devices.

If you find new issues, please let us know by visiting our forum or filing a bug. Interested in switching channels Find out how. You can submit feedback using ‘Report an issue...’ in the Chrome menu (3 vertical dots in the upper right corner of the browser).  

Matt Nelson,

Google Chrome OS

Year in review: the Google Workspace Platform 2021

Posted by Charles Maxson, Developer Advocate

In 2021, we saw many changes and improvements to the Google Workspace Platform geared at helping developers build new solutions to keep up with the challenges of how we worked, like hybrid and fully remote office work. More than ever, we needed tools for virtual collaboration and digital processes to keep our work going. As paper processes in the office were less viable and we continued to go see digital transformations become necessary, many new custom solutions like desk reservation systems and automated test logging have evolved.

2021 was also a year for Platform milestones, Google Workspace grew to more than 3 billion users globally, we reached more than 5,300 public apps in the Google Workspace Marketplace, and we crossed over 4.8 billion apps installed (up from 1 billion in 2020)! We were also busy bringing Platform innovations and improving our developer experience to help building for Google Workspace easier and faster. Here’s a look at some of the key enhancements the Google Workspace Platform brought to the developer community.

Google Cloud Champion Innovators program

Community building is one of the most effective ways to support developers, which is why we created Google Cloud Innovators.This new community program was designed for developers and technical practitioners using Google Cloud and we welcome everyone.

And when we say everyone, it’s not just professional developers, data scientists, or student developers and hobbyists, we also mean non-technical end users. The growing Google community has something for everyone.

GWAO Alternate Runtimes goes GA

Google Workspace Add-ons are customized applications that tightly integrate with Google Workspace applications, and can be found in the Google Workspace Marketplace, or built specifically for your own domain. The development of these applications were limited to using Apps Script, our native scripting language for the Google Workspace Platform. With the launch of Alternate Runtimes you can now develop add-ons with your preferred hosting infrastructure, development tool chain, source control system, coding language, and code libraries; it was a highly requested update from the developer community, opening up the Platform to many new developer scenarios.

Card Builder UI Application

The GWAO Card Builder tool allows you to visually design the user interfaces for your Google Workspace Add-ons and Google Chat apps projects. It is a must-have for Google Workspace developers using either Apps Script or Alternate Runtimes, enabling you to prototype and design Card UIs super fast without hassle and errors of hand coding JSON or Apps Script on your own.

Card Builder tool for building Google Workspace Add-ons and Chat Apps

Recommended for Google Workspace

This program showcases a selection of market-leading applications built by software vendors across a wide range of categories, including project management, customer support, and finance in our Google Workspace Marketplace. These apps undergo rigorous usability and security testing to make sure they meet our requirements for high quality integrations. They must also have an exemplary track record of user satisfaction, reliability, and privacy.

Recommended for Google Workspace program showcases high quality applications

Chat Slash Commands and Dialogs

Slash commands simplify the way users interact with your Chat bot, offering them a visual leading way to discover and execute your bot’s primary features. As a developer, slash commands are straightforward to implement, and essential in offering a better bot experience. In addition to Slash Commands, Dialogs were a new capability introduced to the Chat App framework that allows developers to build user interfaces to capture inputs and parameters in a structured, reliable way. This was a tremendous step forward for bot usability because it simplified and streamlined the process of users interacting with bot commands. Now with dialogs, users can be led visually to supply inputs via prompts, versus having to rely on wrapping bot commands with natural language inputs.

Forms API beta

Google Forms enables easy creation and distribution of forms, surveys, and quizzes. Forms is used for a wide variety of use cases across business operations, customer management, event planning and logistics, education, and more. With the Google Forms API Beta announcement, developers were able to provide programmatic access for managing forms and acting on responses, empowering developers to build powerful integrations on top of Forms.

Google Workspace Marketplace updates

We made many updates to the Google Workspace Marketplace to improve both the user and developer experience. We added updates to the application detail page that included pricing and when the listing was last updated. The homepage also saw improvements with various curated categories by the Google team under Editor’s Choice. Finally, we launched the marketplace badges for developers to promote their published applications on websites and marketing channels. Oh, and we also had a logo update if you hadn’t noticed.

Google Workspace Marketplace Badges for application promotion

Farewell 2021 and here’s to welcoming in 2022

2021 brought us many innovations to the Google Workspace Platform to help developers address the needs of their users and it also brought more empowerment to knowledge workers to build the solutions they needed with our no-code and low-code platforms. These are just the highlights for the Google Workspace Platform and we look forward to more innovation in 2022. To keep up with all the news about the Platform, please subscribe to our newsletter.

How Google puts you in control of your location data

You may have seen news about lawsuits brought against Google concerning how we handle location data. These suits mischaracterize and inaccurately describe the settings and controls we provide users over location data.

Today, a court in Arizona made a significant legal ruling against the Arizona Attorney General. The AG is somehow claiming this as a big victory but in reality, a judge rejected his central argument. Unfortunately, just before today’s decision, four other state attorneys general rushed to file similar lawsuits making similarly inaccurate and outdated claims.

We wanted to take this opportunity to set the record straight about the location settings we offer, and how you are in control of your location data.

All smartphones use location data — it’s integral to how they work. It’s collected and used by network operators, device makers, apps, websites and operating systems. For our part, location makes Google products work better for you — it’s what helps you navigate around a traffic jam, helps you find your phone when you’ve misplaced it, and lets you find a pizza shop in your neighborhood instead of suggesting one in a different state.

We recognize that you have a lot of decisions to make around the use of location data by various apps and services. That’s why we’ve worked hard over the past few years to build more control and transparency directly into our products to make location easy to understand and simple to manage:

  • Easy-to-use settings: We offer settings like Location History, which creates a timeline of where you have been, saved to your Google Account. You can delete this data or pause saving it at any time. Web & App Activity saves activity like the things you do on Google sites and apps, including associated info like location. Again, you can delete this data or pause saving it at any time.
  • Auto-delete by default: Two years ago, we updated our data retention practices — in addition to turning Location History and Web & App Activity off, you can choose to automatically auto-delete them after a set period of time (3 months, 18 months or 36 months). (For new users, the default is to auto-delete them after 18 months).
  • Transparency: You can instantly see your settings and manage them right from your favorite Google products — for example, on every search results page, we indicate the location information that was used to deliver results, and enable you to change your settings directly. And if you have Location History enabled, we send monthly and annual emails to remind you about places you’ve visited, along with easy access to your settings.
  • Maps Incognito mode: With Google Maps Incognito mode, the places you search for or navigate to in Google Maps won’t be saved to your Google Account.
  • Advertisers and apps: Location data helps you get relevant offers such as local pizza restaurants but we never sell your location data to advertisers — or to anyone. And from Android 10 onwards, you can choose to share your device’s location with third party apps only while they’re in use — or not at all.

As we design our products, we focus on three important principles: keeping your information safe, treating it responsibly, and putting you in control. We aim to strike a balance between offering granular customization for users who want to pick and choose between options, while keeping our controls simple and easy to understand. We will continue to focus on providing simple, easy-to-understand privacy settings to our users, and will not be distracted from this work by meritless lawsuits that mischaracterize our efforts.

Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1) Stable

Posted by Adarsh Fernando, Product Manager, Android

Bumblbee Android Studio

The Android Studio team has been abuzz with the stable release of Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1) ? and Android Gradle plugin (AGP) 7.1.0; the latest versions of Android official IDE and build system. We’ve improved functionality across a broad area of the typical developer workflow: Build and Deploy, Profiling and Inspection, and Design.

Some notable additions include a unified test execution between Android Studio and your continuous integration (CI) server ✅, convenient pairing flows to support ADB over Wi-Fi ?, Improved Profiler tools to help you identify and analyze jank in your app ?️, and new ways to preview animations ? and UI interactions without deploying your app to a device.

As always, this release wouldn’t be possible without the early feedback from our Preview users. So read on or watch below for further highlights and new features you can find in this stable version. If you’re ready to jump in and see for yourself, head over to the official website to download Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1).


What’s in Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1)

Below is a full list of new features in Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1), organized by the three major themes.

Build and Deploy

  • New Device Manager: This new tool window in Bumblebee makes it easier to see and manage your virtual and physical test devices, and you can open it by selecting View > Tool Windows > Device Manager from the main menu bar. In the Virtual tab, create a new device, review device details, delete a device, or anything else you used to do from the now removed AVD Manager. In the Physical tab, quickly pair to a new device using ADB Wi-Fi and see details of each physical device at a glance, or quickly inspect each device’s file system using the Device File Explorer with a click of a button. Learn more about the New Device Manager in the release notes.
Device Manager

Device Manager


  • ADB over Wi-Fi: Bumblebee includes a simplified flow to connect to your Android 11 and higher devices over Wi-Fi for deployment and debugging using ADB. After you enable debugging over Wi-Fi on your device, select the Pair using Wi-Fi action in the Physical tab of the new Device Manager to open the pairing wizard. Then follow the steps provided to pair to a device connected over the same network. Learn more.
Pairing a device with ADB over Wifi

Pairing a device with ADB over Wifi


  • Run Instrumented Tests in Android Studio using Gradle: Have you ever run tests in Android Studio with different results than the same tests running on your CI? This can be a frustrating issue that leads to lost productivity. To resolve this issue, we’ve introduced a new test runner to Android Gradle plugin (AGP) 7.1.0 that Android Studio Bumblebee uses by default when running instrumentation tests, so all your tests run through a unified test runner. This is a similar improvement to Android Studio Arctic Fox, where we started running all unit tests via Gradle by default. And, similarly, this improvement doesn’t require you to change how you write or run your tests!

Using different runners lead to inconsistent results

Using different runners lead to inconsistent results


Android Studio now runs instrumentation tests via Gradle

Android Studio now runs instrumentation tests via Gradle


  • Android Gradle Plugin Upgrade Assistant now updates API usage: Originally introduced in Android Studio 4.2, the AGP Upgrade Assistant helped users update their projects to the latest version, and improvements in Arctic Fox provided a new UI with the ability to review and select the upgrade version and steps. In Bumblebee, the Upgrade Assistant now also checks for and offers to update your DSL to help you avoid using deprecated APIs before they are deleted. For more information see the Android Gradle Plugin DSL/API migration timeline.
  • Non-Transitive R classes on for new projects: Android Studio Arctic Fox introduced new refactoring tools to help you use non-transitive R classes to enable faster builds for applications with multiple modules. When creating new projects using Bumblebee, the IDE configures your project to use non-transitive R classes, by default. While this does bring performance improvements, you now have to refer to R classes by their proper package name, and not by the package names of their parent modules, as they will no longer resolve transitively. For more information see Use non-transitive R classes.
  • Emulator tool window enabled by default: Introduced in Android Studio 4.1, the Emulator launches within an Android Studio tool window and allows you to deploy and interact with virtual Android devices while fully remaining within the context of the IDE. The changes ads an improved UX for extended controls and snapshot management. For more information see Run the Android Emulator directly in Android Studio.
  • Apple Silicon Support Update - For those using macOS on Apple Silicon (arm64) hardware, Android Studio Arctic Fox and the Android Emulator have supported this new architecture since last year. However, with this release, we have now updated the Android SDK platform tools v32.0.0 (which includes ADB and fastboot) and build tools v32.1.0 (which includes aapt) to be universal binaries so that your Android developer tools no longer need the Rosetta binary translator to run. Based on community feedback, those developers on this hardware platform have seen notable performance improvements. See release notes.


Profile and Inspect

  • Jank detection track in Profilers: When profiling your app using devices running Android 11 (API level 30) or higher, the CPU profiler now shows a new group of tracks that illustrate the stages of each frame under Frame Lifecycle: Application, Wait for GPU, Composition and Frames on display. Each track labels the frames with a frame number and color-codes the rectangle to make it easy for you to visualize where a particular frame is in its lifecycle, along with guides you can toggle to compare with Vsync events. You can use this data to understand where Jank might occur in your app and investigate the root causes. In the Analysis panel, there is now a Frames tab, which conveniently summarizes rendering information for all frames. For more information, see UI jank detection.

Detailed frame lifecycle information in the CPU Profiler

Detailed frame lifecycle information in the CPU Profiler


  • Profileable app profiling support in Studio Profilers: When profiling your app, it’s important to generate accurate data with the version of your app that most closely resembles what your users will install. To do so, you can now include the <profileable> property in your app’s manifest to profile apps that are not debuggable, as shown below.

    <profileable android:shell="true"/>

    Profileable is a manifest configuration introduced in Android 10, and is available for CPU and Memory profiling tasks. Using the profileable flag instead of the debuggable flag has the key advantage of lower overhead for performance measurement; however, certain profiling features are not available for Profileable builds, such as the Event timeline, API initiated CPU profiling, heap dumps, or live location recordings. For more information, see Profileable applications.
  • Inspect Jobs, Alarms, and Wakelocks: The Background Task Inspector has been expanded to allow you to inspect Jobs, Alarms, and Wakelocks. You can see live information on how these background tasks are being scheduled, and see detailed information about their execution, similar to how you can inspect Workers. Additionally, when inspecting Workers, you can track and inspect Jobs that your Workers schedule for you. If you used to use the Energy Profiler in previous versions of the IDE, you should now navigate to View > Tool Windows > App Inspection from the menu bar and select the Background Task Inspector to inspect Jobs, Alarms, and Wakelocks.

Inspect Jobs, Alarms, and Wakelocks in the Background Task Inspector

Inspect Jobs, Alarms, and Wakelocks in the Background Task Inspector


  • Network Inspection: The Network Profiler has now migrated to the App Inspection tool window, to allow for a lighter-weight experience for inspecting network traffic in your app. The look and feel of the Network Profiler has been maintained and works with any debuggable app on devices running API level 26 and higher. To use the new inspector, select View > Tool Windows > App Inspection from the menu bar and select the Network Inspector. For more information, see Inspect network traffic with the Network Inspector.
  • Capture Layout Inspector snapshots: You can now capture snapshots of your app’s layout hierarchy to save, share, or inspect later. Snapshots capture the data you would typically see when using the Layout Inspector, including a detailed 3D rendering of your layout, the component tree of your View, Compose, or hybrid layout, and detailed attributes for each component of your UI. When inspecting the layout of a live running app, click Export snapshot from the Layout Inspector toolbar and save the snapshot with an *.li extension. You can then load a Layout Inspector snapshot by selecting File > Open from the main menu bar, and opening a *.li file. The snapshot appears in a tab in the Editor window, so that you can easily compare it with your running app. Learn more at Capture layout hierarchy snapshots.

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  • Support for Compose semantics in the Layout Inspector: In Compose, Semantics describe your UI in an alternative manner that is understandable for Accessibility services and for the Testing framework. In Android Studio Bumblebee, you can now use the Layout Inspector to inspect semantic information in your Compose layouts. When selecting a Compose node, use the Attributes window to check whether it declares semantic information directly, merges semantics from its children, or both. To quickly identify which nodes include semantics, either declared or merged, use select the View options dropdown in the Component Tree window and select Highlight Semantics Layers.

Design

  • Interactive Preview: Android Studio Arctic Fox launched with support to statically preview your composable functions in the Design / Split window of the Editor. In Bumblebee, we’ve expanded functionality to allow you to interact with certain components of your Compose layouts, to validate behavior without building and deploying the full app to a running device! To get started, navigate to a previewable compose function and click Start Interactive Mode in the Design / Split window. For more information see Interactive mode.

Interact with the Compose Preview to validate behavior

Interact with the Compose Preview to validate behavior


  • Animated Vector Drawables Preview: The Preview window is now also available when viewing vector drawables. When viewing a static drawable, you can use the preview window to change background options between “None”, “White”, “Black”, “Checkedered”, to view your drawable against different conditions. Animated drawables also provide the option to preview the animation at different speeds as well as backgrounds, to help you test animations before using them in your app. To learn more, see Animated Vector Drawables (AVD) preview.

Preview your animated vector drawables

Preview your animated vector drawables


  • Updated Device picker for design tools: To simplify designing your app for the diverse number of Android devices, we’ve updated the device picker in various design tool windows, such as Layout Editor and Layout Validation, with reference devices that reflect popular sizes of each device form factor. From phones to tablets, and Wear devices to Android TVs, it’s now easier to preview, validate, or edit your layout on screen sizes that are most representative of popular real-world devices. To learn more, see Change the preview appearance.

ALT TEXT GOES HERE

To recap, Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1) includes these new enhancements & features:

Build and Deploy
  • Run Instrumented Tests in Android Studio using Gradle
  • Android Gradle Plugin Upgrade Assistant now updates API usage
  • Non-Transitive R classes on for new projects
  • New Device Manager
  • ADB over Wi-Fi
  • Emulator tool window enabled by default
  • Apple Silicon Support Update
Profile and Inspect
  • Jank detection track in Profilers
  • Profileable app profiling support in Studio Profilers
  • Inspect Jobs, Alarms, and Wakelocks in the Background task Inspector
  • Capture Layout Inspector snapshots
  • Support for Compose semantics in the Layout Inspector
Design
  • Interactive Preview
  • Animated Vector Drawables Preview
  • Updated Device picker for design tools

Watch With Me on Google TV: Chris Paul’s watchlist

Movies and TV can make us laugh, cry and even shape who we are. Our watchlists can be surprisingly revealing. We’re teaming up with entertainers, artists and cultural icons on a new Watch With Meseries on Google TV to share their top picks and give you a behind-the-scenes look at the TV and movies that inspired them.

Remember waking up on Saturday morning and catching up on the latest episode of your favorite show before it ended? Chris Paul does. Before being crowned the king of the basketball court, Chris was just another kid from North Carolina who loved watching TV with his brother. “Back then, you couldn’t record your show or get it on demand to watch later,” he says. “You had to watch it when it came on.”

TV and movies were a way for him to learn about the world. “Growing up without social media made a lot of things different,” he says. “My brother and I used to get home from school and watch movies four, five days in a row. TV gave us a fresh perspective and a way to see what our dreams could be. As I got older, I looked back and saw how these shows and movies shaped my life.”

Google TV showing the Watch With Me page with Chris Paul’s watchlist.

What does your watchlist say about you?

Chris Paul: My watchlist says that I’m someone who has watched a lot of different things, and has a pretty diverse taste. I like the stories being told and the impact that TV and movies have on you.

What’s your favorite genre?

Chris Paul: My favorite genre would be comedy. I love to laugh. The stuff that makes a good comedy are the punchlines, the characters and the storyline. I think you can naturally tell when things are sort of off the cuff… a good comedy can’t be predictable.

What are some must-watches in your household?

Chris Paul: At home, we love getting together with the kids to watch TV, whether it be movies or shows. But I had a few movies that my wife had to see before we got married – like I asked her if she had seen them and she said no. We weren't going to get married until she saw “The Last Dragon” because that movie is a staple in just culture.

What’s something you love watching that might be unexpected?

Chris Paul: I don’t just love watching comedies, I like watching horrors too. But, something that I really liked to watch, probably nobody would expect is “Below Deck.” It’s interesting to watch a reality show about people working on yachts and what their life is like.

Do you like watching TV with the captions on or off?

Chris Paul: I’m a captions-off person, but now I watch with captions on. My wife likes having the captions on and always grabs the remote to turn them on to listen and read at the same time.

Who’s your favorite person to nerd out about shows and movies with?

Chris Paul: I love talking to my brother CJ about shows and movies more than anything. And I think people probably hate when me and my brother are around because all we do is quote lines from shows and movies on the regular. No matter what it is, that's all me and my brother do.

Check out Chris’s watchlist and catch some of his favorite lines on Google TV, rolling out over the next few days. Tell us your favorites using #WatchWithMe!

Today is the .day

Today, Google Registry is launching the .day top-level domain — a secure domain that brings attention to any day. In honor of the days coming up in this new year, we've rounded up 22 of our favorite .day websites:

Bring attention to a cause you care about

These nonprofit organizations are using their .day domains to raise awareness around specific issues or causes that help make the world a better place for everyone.

1. Wildlife.day by World Wildlife Fund

2. Accessibility.day by GAAD Foundation

3. Freedom.day by International Justice Mission

4. Tues.day by Giving Tuesday

5. Rednose.day by Comic Relief

6. SesameStreet.day by Sesame Street

7. Transvisibility.day by Human Rights Campaign

8. Veterans.day by Team Rubicon

9. Equalpay.day by National Women’s Law Center

10. MLK.day by NAACP

11. NativeNonprofit.day by Native Ways Federation

Amplify your brand or persona

Whether you’re a company building a brand or an influencer growing a fanbase, .day is a great way to register a memorable domain that promotes your message.

12. Nutella.day by Ferrero

13. Felicia.day by Felicia Day

14. Magic.day by Justin Willman

15. Wedding.day by The Knot Worldwide

16. Valentines.day by FTD

Build your community

The .day domain ending makes it easy to find short, memorable domain names, which make it even easier for your communities to find your website.

17. Community.day by Niantic

18. Braille.day by National Federation of the Blind

19. Easter.day by YouVersion

20. Ramadan.day by Yaqeen Institute

21. Yoga.day by Hindu American Foundation

22. HolocaustRemembrance.day by World Jewish Congress

Starting today, you can register your own .day domain as part of our Early Access Program for an additional one-time fee. This fee decreases according to a daily schedule through the end of January. On February 1 at 8:00 am Pacific time, .day domains will be publicly available at a base annual price through your registrar of choice. To learn more about pricing and our participating partners, visit new.day.

Will you celebrate because it is your birth.day, diwali.day, or just because it is fri.day? Will you engage more deeply with your community? No matter what you do today, we hope you’ll seize your .day domain and make it a great experience.

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Do something new with whats.new

More than 200 .new domains are now live, providing shortcuts to common tasks within apps like Medium, Asana, and GitHub.

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Hello, .dev!

Today we’re introducing .dev, the latest top-level domain (TLD) from Google Registry, offering secure domains for developers and technology.

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Introducing .app, a more secure home for apps on the web

Today we’re announcing .app, the newest top-level domain (TLD) from Google Registry, created specifically for apps and app developers.

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Use the Cloud Search Stats API to keep track of billable usage

Quick summary 

Google Cloud Search customers can now use the Cloud Search Stats APIs to surface and track billable usage, such as: 
  • Billable indexed documents 
  • Billable queries 
  • Billable search applications 

We hope that by making this information easily accessible to Admins, customers can keep track of their Cloud Search usage for more informed budget planning, cost management and forecasting. Visit the Help Center for more details on how overages are calculated. 


Usage data is updated daily and is accrued for a given month. Additionally, you can specify a date range and view usage from previous months or within a specific time frame.


Getting started

  • Admins and developers: This feature is ON by default and can be configured at the domain-level. For more information, refer to the stats resource documentation. 
  • End users: No end user impact.


Rollout pace

  • This feature is available now for all users.

Availability

  • Available to Google Cloud Search customers

Resources


Get to know the new Topics API for Privacy Sandbox

We started the Privacy Sandbox initiative to improve web privacy for users, while also giving publishers, creators and other developers the tools they need to build thriving businesses, ensuring a safe and healthy web for all. We also know that advertising is critical for many businesses, and is a key way to support access to free content online.

Today, we’re announcing Topics, a new Privacy Sandbox proposal for interest-based advertising. Topics was informed by our learning and widespread community feedback from our earlier FLoC trials, and replaces our FLoC proposal.

With Topics, your browser determines a handful of topics, like “Fitness” or “Travel & Transportation,” that represent your top interests for that week based on your browsing history. Topics are kept for only three weeks and old topics are deleted. Topics are selected entirely on your device without involving any external servers, including Google servers. When you visit a participating site, Topics picks just three topics, one topic from each of the past three weeks, to share with the site and its advertising partners. Topics enables browsers to give you meaningful transparency and control over this data, and in Chrome, we’re building user controls that let you see the topics, remove any you don’t like or disable the feature completely.

Short animation that describes how Topics works
10:25

More importantly, topics are thoughtfully curated to exclude sensitive categories, such as gender or race. Because Topics is powered by the browser, it provides you with a more recognizable way to see and control how your data is shared, compared to tracking mechanisms like third-party cookies. And, by providing websites with your topics of interest, online businesses have an option that doesn’t involve covert tracking techniques, like browser fingerprinting, in order to continue serving relevant ads.

Example illustrations of what users can see about 3rd party cookies on the left vs Topics on the right. In Chrome, we’re building user controls that lets you see the topics, remove any you don’t like or disable the feature completely.

Example illustrations of what you can see about 3rd party cookies (left) vs Topics (right). In Chrome, we plan to make Topics easier to recognize and manage for users.

To learn more about the details of the Topics proposal, including other design features that preserve privacy, see an overview on privacysandbox.com or read the full technical explainer. Soon, we will launch a developer trial of Topics in Chrome that includes user controls, and enables website developers and the ads industry to try it out. The final design of the user controls and the other various technical aspects of how Topics works will be decided based on your feedback and what we learn in the trial.

This is a busy time for the Privacy Sandbox. We recently worked with the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to offer revised commitments to ensure our proposals are developed in a way that works for the entire ecosystem, and later this week, we'll be sharing more details about the FLEDGE and measurement technical proposals with developers. The Privacy Sandbox is one of the most ambitious, important efforts we’ve ever undertaken, and we’re profoundly grateful for the engagement, feedback and partnership from everyone who’s participated.