Privacy Sandbox: Developer Preview 5 is here!

Posted by Fred Chung, Android Developer Relations

Today, we’re releasing the Privacy Sandbox on Android Developer Preview 5 ‒ it’s a major milestone that will become the foundation for upcoming Privacy Sandbox Beta releases.

We appreciate that many of you have tested the Developer Preview and have reported issues and shared your feedback. This feedback has helped us evolve the Privacy Sandbox design. For example, we have modified the SDK Runtime design to allow reflection API usage, and have published additional design proposals on FLEDGE services, mediation, and app-to-web measurement.

Let’s have a look at the specifics in this release.


What’s in Developer Preview 5?

Developer Preview 5 includes additional functionality, data validation enhancements, and API signature changes across the privacy preserving APIs and the SDK Runtime. See the release notes for details.


Attribution Reporting API



FLEDGE on Android API

  • To provide up-to-date data for auctions, you can set up a daily fetch URL to update custom audience AdData lists and other metadata.
  • This release incorporates various API signature changes and additional parameter validation to ensure robustness. Refer to the release notes for details. Be sure to update the sample code and your test projects using previous Developer Preview releases.


SDK Runtime

  • Apps get additional control on runtime enabled SDK lifecycle events, such as when the SDK is unexpectedly terminated by the platform. Implementing the SdkSandboxLifecycleCallback allows the app to take appropriate actions to recover.
  • After successfully loading an SDK, apps now have access to an IBinder interface to facilitate 2-way communications with the runtime-enabled SDK.


Topics API

  • Updated taxonomy for classification of mobile apps.


AdServices permissions

  • App developers must now declare AdServices permissions to access the privacy preserving APIs. Learn more.

In the coming months, we’ll continue to use the Developer Previews to innovate and implement new features. We’ll publish more details about the Beta and these future releases in the coming months.


Get started with Developer Preview 5

With today’s Developer Preview release, we hope to continue working with the industry and developers to get prepared for Privacy Sandbox on Android. The release provides the resources you need to begin early testing of features and share feedback. To get started developing, see instructions to set up the SDK and system images on the emulator or supported Pixel devices.

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