Tag Archives: android developers

#WeArePlay | Meet Maria, AnnMaria and Dennis from the USA. More stories from around the world

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

From underserved communities needing more support with kids' education, to struggling to preserve the memories of passed loved ones. In our latest release of #WeArePlay stories, we’re celebrating the inspiring founders who identified problems around them and made apps or games to solve them.


Starting with Maria, Annmaria and Dennis from Minnesota, USA - founders of 7 Generation Games. Growing up as a Latina in rural North Dakota, Maria wanted to build something inspired by her experiences and help support the education gap in underserved communities. She teamed up with her mom AnnMaria, a teacher and computer programmer, and software developer Dennis, to set up 7 Generation Games. They make educational games – in English, Spanish and indigenous languages – to improve math skills of Hispanic and Native American children. Making Camp Ojibwe is a village-building simulation where players earn points by answering math and social studies questions. Now with multiple titles, their games are proven to improve children’s school results.


#WeArePlay David, Arman & Hayk ZOOMERANG Yerevan, Armenia, Google Play
Next, David, Arman & Hayk from Armenia - founders of Zoomerang. After uploading his music online, David got limited views because his video editing wasn’t engaging. It was his passion for music that led him to start Zoomerang with co-founders Arman and Hayk. They created a platform where content creators could get editing templates for their videos, allowing thousands to grow their brand and vivify their content.


#WeArePlay Rama LITTLE THINKING MINDS Amman, Jordan, Google Play
Next, Rama from Jordan - founder of Little Thinking Minds. When she and her friend and co-founder Lamia had their first boys, they struggled to find resources to teach their children Arabic. So, they utilized their background in film production and started making children’s videos in Arabic in their backyards. When they held a screening at a local cinema, over 500 parents and children came to watch it, and they had to screen it multiple times. A few years later and the content is now digitized in a series of apps used in schools of 10 countries. The most popular, I Read Arabic, has educational videos, books, games, and a dashboard for teachers to track students' progress.


#WeArePlay Prakash FORKEEPS Cape Town, South Africa, Google Play
Last but not least, Prakash from South Africa - founder of ForKeeps. When Prakash’s sister passed away, his nieces longed to hear her voice again and keep her memory alive. When his father died, he felt the same and regretted not having all his photos and messages in one place. This inspired Prakash and his co-founders to create ForKeeps: a platform for preserving a person’s legacy with photo albums, stories, and voice messages. Through the app, people can feel their loved one’s presence after they're gone. The Forever Album tool also allows the audience to share and celebrate special occasions in real time. Now Prakash’s goal is to help more people across different cultures around the world record memories for their loved ones.

Check out their stories now at g.co/play/weareplay and keep an eye out for more stories coming soon.


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Reduce uninstalls for your app with auto-archive

Posted by Chang Liu and Lidia Gaymond, Product Managers, Google Play

Did you know that one of the main reasons users uninstall apps is to free up space? Today, whenever users try to install a new app on a nearly-full device, they see a dialog that allows them to manually uninstall the app to make room. However, sometimes uninstalling a whole app, including all of the user’s app data just isn’t necessary.

To reduce unnecessary uninstalls and help users successfully install new apps, we are introducing a new feature: auto-archive. Once a user opts in, auto-archive can help them automatically free up to nearly 60% of an app’s storage space, without removing the app presence or users’ data from the device.

What is auto-archive?
image of a phone screen illustrating the archiving experience
Archived apps are visually indicated with cloud icons and remain on the user's device.

Auto-archive is a new feature that allows users to free up space on their device without the need to completely uninstall an app. Once the user opts in, infrequently used apps will be partly removed from the device to save space, whilst the app icon and the user’s personal app data will be preserved. When the user wants to start using the app again, they can simply tap to re-download it and pick up where they left off (as long as the app is still available on Google Play).


Eligibility of auto-archive

Auto-archive is only available for developers using the App Bundle to publish their apps. If your app supports archiving, users will be less likely to see it surfaced amongst uninstall suggestions.

How it works

Users can opt into auto-archive in a few steps.

  1. The user tries to install a new app when the device is out of storage.
  2. A pop-up window appears asking if the user wants to enable auto-archive.
  3. If the user opts in, unused apps on the user's device will be auto-archived to free up enough space for a new app request.

Auto-archive is an easy way for users to manage their device storage, and a great way for developers to lower the likelihood of their apps being uninstalled.


Yonatan Levin, Android GDE, uses his developer superpowers to help refugees in Ukraine

Posted by Kevin Hernandez, Developer Relations Community Manager

Headshot of Yonatan Levin, smiling
Yonatan Levin, R&D Tech Lead, Monday.com

Initial reaction to the news

At the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Android GDE Yonatan Levin was confused. He started his day just like any other - with exercise and a book - but on the day of the invasion, his phone was bombarded with text messages from friends, relatives, and coworkers. Normally a hard worker, Yonatan tried to go into work but as he sat at his desk, he had a distracting thought in the front of his mind. He recounts, “I was staring at my monitor and in my head, all I kept repeating was, ‘I have to do something, I have to do something.’” He messaged coworkers about the situation to see what they could do and eventually, the leadership of his or gave Yonatan their blessing to go to the Ukraine / Poland border and help the refugees. Yonatan and his friends immediately packed their bags and set out to Poland.

Arriving at the border

Yonatan and his friends landed and immediately drove 6 hours from Warsaw to the border where camps organized by volunteers were located. When he got there, he and his friends felt immediate shock. They saw thousands of refugees crammed in a small space with their whole lives packed into bags. His feeling of shock quickly wore off as he saw the unorganized volunteer efforts; he started focusing on ways to support relief efforts as a developer.

Yonatan noticed that there were volunteers arriving from all over Europe to offer free rides, accommodation, or even work opportunities. However, there was little technology being used - volunteers held up signs with locations they were driving to. The current matchmaking process was inefficient, so he decided to build an Android app and a solution on top of monday.com (an all-in-one work management software) where volunteers with cars and refugees registered online and were matched based on where they needed to go.

Using technology to turn chaos into order

Just like any new idea or a startup, Yonatan’s group went through iterations before they had a solution that truly worked. To replace the cardboard signs that volunteer drivers held up, Yonatan and his friends bought laptops and a TV so they could display a list of drivers and their destinations. Then, they matched refugees with volunteer drivers - but this proved to be a manual solution. They offered this solution to other camps but when they came back to the original site, they found that the laptops were closed and volunteers reverted back to the old system of holding up cardboard signs. This was a sign to go back to the drawing board to create something that would stick.

While the laptops and TV screens helped, there were still large queues at the camps as busloads of refugees came in every few minutes. With monday.com, they created a registration form for the refugees and a completely new process. Once refugees arrived at the camp, they received a wristband with a QR code, registered their names, and selected what they needed: food, sim cards, a bed, a ride to a different city, etc. This new process took just 10 minutes and they built a dashboard to keep track of data in order to dedicate resources where they were needed. For example, if the most in-demand destination was Warsaw, volunteers knew to recruit more drivers heading there.

Yonatan and his friends were able to pull off the impressive feat of developing an entire Android app with 3rd party APIs integrations for driver verification and a core database with monday.com in just one night. “To build an app in one night is amazing. You can not easily do this with other platforms,” he observed. This was a turning point for the camps and volunteer organizers embraced this system.

Reflecting a year later

Yonatan hopes to inspire others through his experience. “This is something that happened very close to me. If I did something about it, I hope others know they can help too,” he urges. He expanded the system to other camps and remembers one of the organizers beaming that it was the best software they have ever used. Yonatan and his colleagues used their expertise to help refugees get to safety and he reflects on being a developer by saying, “It is a power that we developers have - to identify a huge pain and solve it with relatively minimal effort, sometimes in a matter of hours. This is a super power.”

Yonatan’s motto is to help in any way you can. He encourages other developers, “Things happen everywhere, all the time. Do not distance yourself from the struggles of others. Instead, search for ways you can help them.” Due to the changing environment, the app is not being used today but countless refugees were driven to safety thanks to Yonatan's developer superpowers.

You can find Yonatan on LinkedIn or Twitter.

The Google Developer Experts (GDE) program is a global network of highly experienced technology experts, influencers, and thought leaders who actively support developers, companies, and tech communities by speaking at events and publishing content.

What it means to be an Android Google Developer Expert

Posted by Yasmine Evjen, Community lead, Android DevRel

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

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

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

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

Hear from the Google Developer Expert Community

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

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

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

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

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

Play Commerce prevented over $2 billion in fraudulent and abusive transactions in 2022

Posted by Sheenam Mittal, Product Manager, Google Play

Google Play Commerce enables you to monetize your apps and games at scale in over 170 markets, without the complexities and time consumption required to run your own global commerce platform. It enables you to easily transact with millions of users around the world and gives users trusted and safe ways to pay for your digital products and content. Ensuring developers and users have a secure purchase experience has been a key pillar of Play Commerce, and we achieve this by continuously preventing and monitoring for bad actors looking to defraud and abuse your apps.

Preventing fraud and securing purchases

In 2022, we prevented over $2 billion in fraudulent and abusive transactions. Bad actors looking to carry out abuse on apps implement an array of strategies across both one–time purchases as well as auto-renewing payments. For example, they may attempt to purchase an item in your app with a compromised form of payment, or request a refund for an in-app purchase that’s been already consumed or sold, or use scammed gift cards for purchases. When a combined or coordinated attempt is carried out by bad actors, it can result in large-scale abuse on your app. Preventing such fraud and abuse requires a comprehensive approach, consisting of automated solutions and an array of internal monitoring tools combined with human expertise.

Empower developers with tools to mitigate app abuse

Information asymmetry between Google Play and developers is commonly exploited by bad actors. Two of the most effective solutions that you can implement to help address this are Voided Purchases API and Obfuscated Account ID. Over 70% of our top 200 monetizing developers have integrated these solutions to reduce fraud and abuse on their apps.

  • Voided Purchases API provides you with a list of in-app and subscription orders for each user that have been voided. You can implement revocation that prevents the user from accessing products from those orders.
Diagram detailing Improve losses, preserve app economy, and secure game integrity as benfits of Voided Purchases API
Benefits of Voided Purchases API
  • Obfuscated Account ID helps Play detect fraudulent transactions, such as many devices making purchases on the same account in a short period of time.

You can also use Play Integrity API to protect your apps and games from potentially risky and fraudulent interactions, such as cheating and unauthorized access. You call the Play Integrity API at important moments to check that user actions or server requests are coming from your unmodified app, installed by Google Play, running on a genuine Android device. If something is wrong, your app’s backend server can respond with appropriate actions to prevent attacks and reduce abuse. Developers using the API have seen an average of over 50% reduction in unauthorized access of their apps and games. Stay tuned for new highly-requested feature updates.

Chart showing the flow of how Play Integrity API works from user action or server request to app request a Play Inegrity API verdict, to Play returns verdicts to backend server decides what to do next.
Flowchart of how Play Integrity API works

Looking forward

This month, we launched Purchases.product.consume, which allows you to consume in-app items using the Play Developer API, reducing the risk of client-side abuse by shifting more business logic to your secure backends. For example, if a bad actor purchases an item from your app but tampers with the client side, the purchase will be automatically refunded due to lack of acknowledgement after 3 days of purchase. Using server side consumption will prevent this type of app abuse.

Google Play Commerce is committed to providing developers and users a secure purchase experience. Learn more about how to prevent bad actors from harming users and abusing your app by visiting this guide, as well as other 2023 initiatives helping keep Android and Google Play safe.

Launching new #WeArePlay stories from India

Posted by Parul Tyagi, Developer Marketing

Every month, over 2.5 billion people visit Google Play to discover millions of apps and games, which are created by people with all sorts of backgrounds, who founded companies big and small.

#WeArePlay celebrates this community of people building apps and games businesses, with monthly spotlights of founders from across the world.

Last summer we went on a virtual tour of the USA, sharing stories from every state, and today we’re continuing our tour across the world with our next stop: India.

To kick us off, we are spotlighting 20 stories from across the country, with many more coming throughout the year.

Moving text reads #WeArePlay INDIA Discover now g.co/play/weareplay-india Google Play

First, we begin with Pramit from Gurugram, Haryana. He was climbing the corporate ladder when medication he was taking damaged his retina, therefore losing his vision. No longer able to read, he required help from friends and family to perform daily tasks. One day, when a friend was booking a driver for him, Pramit got the idea to create a tool that could function exactly like a virtual friend through voice-activated commands. Using his app Louie Voice Control, people can operate other apps using their voice, making technology infinitely more accessible for the visually impaired.

#WeArePlay Pramit Visioapps Technology Gurugram, Haryana g.co/play/weareplay-india Google Play

Next, meet Sourav and Gunjan from Kolkata, West Bengal. When Sourav and Gunjan had their son, they noticed how fascinated he was watching videos on their phones. This gave Gunjan the idea to provide meaningful screen time for him by making educational games for young children. Fast forward to today and they have 42 apps, including Yoga for Kids where youngsters follow along with simple yoga poses and unlock animated pets as rewards.

#WeArePlay Sourav & Gunjan Gunjanapps Studios Kolkata, West Bengal g.co/play/weareplay-india Google Play

Now onto Tejas from Rajkot, Gurajat. He was always determined to go his own way in life and pursue programming, rather than his family's construction business. After discovering how popular cooking games are, his company TheAppGuruz makes versions catered specifically for Asian audiences - with some full of Indian dishes and specialties. Now, Tejas and his team are developing more cooking simulation titles, as well as traditional board games for a global audience.

#WeArePlay Tejas TheAppGuruz Rajkot, Gujarat g.co/play/weareplay-india Google Play

And last but not least, Anshul and Rohan from Mumbai, Maharashtra. After bonding over their experiences in overcoming mental health struggles, they discovered they had the same goal: to create something in the mental wellness space. So they built Evolve - an app with guided meditations, breathing exercises and daily affirmations. During the pandemic, the pair realized the LGBTQ+ community was one of the most underserved in mental health support, so they adapted Evolve to meet their needs.

#WeArePlay Rohan &Anshul Evolve Mumbai, Maharashtra g.co/play/weareplay-india Google Play

Check out all the stories now at g.co/play/weareplay-india and stay tuned for even more coming soon.


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Launching new #WeArePlay stories from India

Posted by Parul Tyagi, Developer Marketing

Every month, over 2.5 billion people visit Google Play to discover millions of apps and games, which are created by people with all sorts of backgrounds, who founded companies big and small.

#WeArePlay celebrates this community of people building apps and games businesses, with monthly spotlights of founders from across the world.

Last summer we went on a virtual tour of the USA, sharing stories from every state, and today we’re continuing our tour across the world with our next stop: India.

To kick us off, we are spotlighting 20 stories from across the country, with many more coming throughout the year.

Moving text reads #WeArePlay INDIA Discover now g.co/play/weareplay-india Google Play

First, we begin with Pramit from Gurugram, Haryana. He was climbing the corporate ladder when medication he was taking damaged his retina, therefore losing his vision. No longer able to read, he required help from friends and family to perform daily tasks. One day, when a friend was booking a driver for him, Pramit got the idea to create a tool that could function exactly like a virtual friend through voice-activated commands. Using his app Louie Voice Control, people can operate other apps using their voice, making technology infinitely more accessible for the visually impaired.

#WeArePlay Pramit Visioapps Technology Gurugram, Haryana g.co/play/weareplay-india Google Play

Next, meet Sourav and Gunjan from Kolkata, West Bengal. When Sourav and Gunjan had their son, they noticed how fascinated he was watching videos on their phones. This gave Gunjan the idea to provide meaningful screen time for him by making educational games for young children. Fast forward to today and they have 42 apps, including Yoga for Kids where youngsters follow along with simple yoga poses and unlock animated pets as rewards.

#WeArePlay Sourav & Gunjan Gunjanapps Studios Kolkata, West Bengal g.co/play/weareplay-india Google Play

Now onto Tejas from Rajkot, Gurajat. He was always determined to go his own way in life and pursue programming, rather than his family's construction business. After discovering how popular cooking games are, his company TheAppGuruz makes versions catered specifically for Asian audiences - with some full of Indian dishes and specialties. Now, Tejas and his team are developing more cooking simulation titles, as well as traditional board games for a global audience.

#WeArePlay Tejas TheAppGuruz Rajkot, Gujarat g.co/play/weareplay-india Google Play

And last but not least, Anshul and Rohan from Mumbai, Maharashtra. After bonding over their experiences in overcoming mental health struggles, they discovered they had the same goal: to create something in the mental wellness space. So they built Evolve - an app with guided meditations, breathing exercises and daily affirmations. During the pandemic, the pair realized the LGBTQ+ community was one of the most underserved in mental health support, so they adapted Evolve to meet their needs.

#WeArePlay Rohan &Anshul Evolve Mumbai, Maharashtra g.co/play/weareplay-india Google Play

Check out all the stories now at g.co/play/weareplay-india and stay tuned for even more coming soon.


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Key product updates from the 2023 Google for Games Developer Summit

Posted by Greg Hartrell, Product Director, Games on Android & Google Play

Whether you’re working on your first game or your next season pass, Google remains committed to helping you across the development and publishing lifecycle. At our Google for Games Developer Summit, I was privileged to share some exciting new tools and insights from Android and Google Play that will help developers like you build games for everyone.

Check out our video playlist to watch the keynote and product sessions on demand, or keep reading for a quick recap of the highlights.

Building great Android games

App quality is the foundation of everything we do at Android and Google Play, and because every user matters, we have updated our approach to technical quality with more emphasis on the user experience.

Google Play’s technical quality bar now uses new user-perceived crash and ANR metrics, which we evaluate on a per-device basis as well as overall. We have introduced an 8% quality bar at the device level, and we now steer users on Google Play away from titles that do not meet this threshold on their phone. To help you meet these guidelines, we’ve launched a number of new features in Android vitals to make it easier to monitor and act on issues. Learn more about these features in this session and about our quality bar in this blog post.

  • Performance is another key aspect of technical quality and for a smooth user experience, games on Google Play should aim for at least 30 frames per second. To help you reach this goal, we’ve just launched frame rate metrics for games in Android vitals. You can see these metrics in Play Console or with the Developer Reporting API. In due course, we will start steering users away from games that cannot achieve 20 frames per second on their phone. Learn more about the new metric in this session.

Screenshot of Android vitals in Play Console
Android vitals in Play Console now offers frame rate metrics to help you understand how smooth and fluid your game feels to users.

We’ve also introduced a range of new tools and services to help you improve the quality of your game.

  • We announced updates to Firebase Crashlytics to improve the quality of Unity stack traces, including Unity on-demand-fatal event reporting. We also now support the symbolication of native Android ANRs, and will soon support memory debugging for GWP-ASAN-enabled games.

  • We’re also introducing a suite of Adaptability APIs to the Android Game Development Kit to help your game respond to changing device performance and thermal scenarios. The Android Dynamic Performance Framework includes a hinting library that can send signals about your workload to the CPU, so your game can tap into performance when you need it and save power when you don’t. There’s also a Thermal API to listen during runtime for when the device is about to thermally throttle so that you can adjust your workloads to smooth performance without overheating the device.


Connecting with players

Building and connecting with your players is key to success for many games, which is why we’re creating more opportunities to help you find new players or engage and re-acquire existing ones.

  • We relaunched our LiveOps tools as Promotional content and made it available to more developers. Eligible developers can upload promotional assets in Play Console to promote in-game events, offers and deals, and major updates, and customize that content for new or returning users.

  • Custom store listings allow you to create up to 50 different store listings with different descriptions and graphic assets based on country, pre-registration status, and more. We’ve now introduced inactive custom store listings, so you can target churned users with a different story about how to come back to your game.

  • We also announced the early access program for Machine Translation in the Play Console, which can translate your game’s strings in minutes. This uses Google Translate and the best-in-class transformer-based language models for quality translation in over 8 languages including Simplified Chinese and Japanese. Sign up here to be one of the first developers to try it.

Reaching higher with large screens

Large screens offer new opportunities for an enhanced gaming experience. Our research shows that the majority of phone owners have access to a large screen, like a tablet, Chromebook, or PC, and gamers want to play their games across those screens. Large screens give you the real estate to implement high-resolution graphics, take advantage of multi-tasking or foldable-specific experiences, and add keyboard, mouse, and game controller support to give users more control.

The beauty of Android is that your games can be easily adapted for all these screens and we’ve made several updates to make the user experience better.

Four different screen sizes displaying seamless sync across devices playing Asphalt 9:Legends
Easily adapt your game to different form factors so your users can play whenever and wherever they want.
(Example shown here is Asphalt 9: Legends, subject to game availability and PC compatibility.)

  • Although each form factor has its unique advantages, you don’t need to customize your game for each one independently. Watch this session to ensure great playability across large-screen platforms.

  • Google Play Games for PC, now in beta in 13 countries, is expanding to Japan and countries in Europe in the coming months and is also expanding its catalog to include top games like Garena Free Fire, Ludo King, and MapleStory M.

  • And starting today, we’re making it much easier to join Google Play Games on PC with your existing mobile build, whether you support x86 or not. Through our partnership with Intel, you can now submit your mobile build while you work on optimization — no need to recompile for x86 right away.


You can learn more about these updates in this blog post or express interest in joining Google Play Games on PC.

For more announcements from the Google for Games Developer Summit, please visit g.co/gamedevsummit. Thank you as always for your thoughtful feedback and partnership as we create high-quality game experiences for players around the world.

Google Play Games on PC is available to download in 13 countries. Please see g.co/googleplaygames for more information. Game titles may vary by region.

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

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

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

The latest Android large screens and foldables from our Android friends

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

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

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


MAD Skills: Compose Layouts & Modifiers

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

What it means to be an Android Google Developer Expert

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


App Quality Insights in Android Studio

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


Now in Android

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

Tune in!

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

What it means to be an Android Google Developer Expert

Posted by Yasmine Evjen, Community lead, Android DevRel

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

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

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

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

Hear from the Google Developer Expert Community

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

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

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

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

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