Today, we open sourced our Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) libraries, fulfilling a promise and building on our partnership with Sparkasse to support EU age assurance.
We're thrilled to announce the return of Google Play's Indie Games Fund (IGF) in Latin America for its fourth consecutive year! This year, we're once again committing $2 million to empower another 10 indie game studios across the region. With this latest round of funding, our total investment in Latin American indie games will reach an impressive $8 million USD.
Since its inception, the IGF has been a cornerstone of our commitment to fostering growth for developers of all sizes on Google Play. We've seen firsthand the transformative impact this support has had, enabling studios to expand their teams, refine their creations, and reach new audiences globally.
Just like in previous years, selected small game studios based in Latin America will receive a share of the $2 million fund, along with support from the Google Play team.
As Vish Game Studio, a previously selected studio, shared: "The IGF was a pivotal moment for our studio, boosting us to the next level and helping us form lasting connections." We believe in fostering these kinds of pivotal moments for all our selected studios.
The program is open to indie game developers who have already launched a game, whether it's on Google Play, another mobile platform, PC, or console. Each selected recipient will receive between $150,000 and $200,000 to help them elevate their game and realize their full potential.
Check out all eligibility criteria and apply now! Applications will close at 12:00 PM BRT on July 31, 2025. To give your application the best chance, remember that priority will be given to applications received by 12:00 PM BRT on July 15, 2025.
At Google Play, we're dedicated to helping people discover experiences they'll love, while empowering developers like you to bring your ideas to life and build successful businesses. This year, Google I/O was packed with exciting announcements designed to do just that. For a comprehensive overview of everything we shared, be sure to check out our blog post recapping What's new in Google Play.
Today, we'll dive specifically into the latest updates designed to help you streamline your subscriptions offerings and maximize your revenue on Play. Get a quick overview of these updates in our video below, or read on for more details.
We're excited to announce multi-product checkout for subscriptions, a new feature designed to streamline your purchase flow and offer a more unified experience for both you and your users. This enhancement allows you to sell subscription add-ons right alongside your base subscriptions, all while maintaining a single, aligned payment schedule.
The result? A simplified user experience with just one price and one transaction, giving you more control over how your subscribers upgrade, downgrade, or manage their add-ons. Learn more about how to create add-ons.
We're also making it easier for you to retain more of your subscribers by showcasing subscription benefits in more key areas across Play. This includes the Subscriptions Center, within reminder emails, and even during the purchase and cancellation processes. This increased visibility has already proved effective, reducing voluntary churn by 2%. To take advantage of this powerful new capability, be sure to enter your subscription benefits details in Play Console.
Another way we’re helping you maximize your revenue is by extending grace periods and account hold durations to tackle unintended subscription losses, which often occur when payment methods unexpectedly decline.
Now, you can customize both the grace period (when users retain access while renewal is attempted) and the account hold period (when access is suspended). You can set a grace period of up to 30 days and an account hold period of up to 60 days. However, the total combined recovery period (grace period + account hold) cannot exceed 60 days.
This means instead of an immediate cancellation, your users have a longer window to update their payment information. Developers who've already extended their decline recovery period—from 30 to 60 days—have seen impressive results, with an average 10% reduction in involuntary churn for renewals. Ready to see these results for yourself? Adjust your grace period and account hold durations in Play Console today.
But that’s not all. We’re constantly investing in ways to help you optimize conversion throughout the entire buyer lifecycle. This includes boosting purchase-readiness by prompting users to set up payment methods and verification right from device setup, and we've integrated these prompts into highly visible areas like the Play and Google account menus. Beyond that, we're continuously enabling payments in more markets and expanding payment options. Our AI models are even working to optimize in-app transactions by suggesting the right payment method at the right time, and we're bringing buyers back with effective cart abandonment reminders.
That’s it for our top announcements from Google I/O 2025, but there’s so many more updates to discover from this year’s event. Check out What's new in Google Play to learn more, and to dive deeper into the session details, view the Google Play I/O playlist for all the announcements.
At Google Play, we're dedicated to helping people discover experiences they'll love, while empowering developers like you to bring your ideas to life and build successful businesses. This year, Google I/O was packed with exciting announcements designed to do just that. For a comprehensive overview of everything we shared, be sure to check out our blog post recapping What's new in Google Play.
Today, we'll dive specifically into the latest updates designed to help you streamline your subscriptions offerings and maximize your revenue on Play. Get a quick overview of these updates in our video below, or read on for more details.
We're excited to announce multi-product checkout for subscriptions, a new feature designed to streamline your purchase flow and offer a more unified experience for both you and your users. This enhancement allows you to sell subscription add-ons right alongside your base subscriptions, all while maintaining a single, aligned payment schedule.
The result? A simplified user experience with just one price and one transaction, giving you more control over how your subscribers upgrade, downgrade, or manage their add-ons. Learn more about how to create add-ons.
We're also making it easier for you to retain more of your subscribers by showcasing subscription benefits in more key areas across Play. This includes the Subscriptions Center, within reminder emails, and even during the purchase and cancellation processes. This increased visibility has already proved effective, reducing voluntary churn by 2%. To take advantage of this powerful new capability, be sure to enter your subscription benefits details in Play Console.
Another way we’re helping you maximize your revenue is by extending grace periods and account hold durations to tackle unintended subscription losses, which often occur when payment methods unexpectedly decline.
Now, you can customize both the grace period (when users retain access while renewal is attempted) and the account hold period (when access is suspended). You can set a grace period of up to 30 days and an account hold period of up to 60 days. However, the total combined recovery period (grace period + account hold) cannot exceed 60 days.
This means instead of an immediate cancellation, your users have a longer window to update their payment information. Developers who've already extended their decline recovery period—from 30 to 60 days—have seen impressive results, with an average 10% reduction in involuntary churn for renewals. Ready to see these results for yourself? Adjust your grace period and account hold durations in Play Console today.
But that’s not all. We’re constantly investing in ways to help you optimize conversion throughout the entire buyer lifecycle. This includes boosting purchase-readiness by prompting users to set up payment methods and verification right from device setup, and we've integrated these prompts into highly visible areas like the Play and Google account menus. Beyond that, we're continuously enabling payments in more markets and expanding payment options. Our AI models are even working to optimize in-app transactions by suggesting the right payment method at the right time, and we're bringing buyers back with effective cart abandonment reminders.
That’s it for our top announcements from Google I/O 2025, but there’s so many more updates to discover from this year’s event. Check out What's new in Google Play to learn more, and to dive deeper into the session details, view the Google Play I/O playlist for all the announcements.
To captivate players and grow your game, you need tools that enhance discovery and retention. Play Games Services (PGS) is your key to unlocking a suite of services that connect you with over 2 billion monthly active players. PGS empowers you to drive engagement through features like achievements and increase retention with promotions tailored to each gameplay progress. These tools are designed to help you deliver relevant and compelling content that keeps players coming back.
We are continuously evolving gaming on Play, and this year, we're introducing more PGS-powered experiences to give you deeper player insights and greater visibility in the Play Store. To access these latest advancements and ensure continued functionality, you must migrate from PGS v1 to PGS v2 by May 2026. Let’s take a closer look at what’s new:
We’re fundamentally transforming how achievements work in the Play Store, making them a key driver for a great gaming experience. Now deeply embedded across the store, achievements are easily discoverable via search filters and game detail pages, and further drive engagement when offered with Play Points.
At a minimum, you should have at least 15 achievements spread across the lifetime of the game, in the format of incremental achievements to show progress. Games that enable players to earn at least 5 achievements in the first 2 hours of gameplay are most successful in driving deeper engagement*.
The most engaging titles offer 40 or more achievements with diverse types of goals including leveling up characters, game progression, hidden surprises, or even failed attempts. To help you get the most out of achievements, we’ve made it easier to create achievements with bulk configuration in Play Console.
For eligible titles*, Play activates quests to reward players for completing achievements - for example with Play Points. Supercell activated quests for Hay Day, leading to an average 177% uplift in installs*. You can tailor your quests to achieve specific campaign objectives, whether it's attracting high-value players or driving spend through repeated engagement, all while making it easy to jump back into your game.
Promotional content is a vital tool for you to highlight new events, major content updates, and exciting offers within your game. It turns Play into a direct marketing channel to re-engage with your players. We've enhanced audience targeting capabilities so you can tailor your content to reach and convert the most relevant players.
By integrating PGS, you can use the Play Grouping API to create custom segments based on gameplay context*. Using this feature, Kabam launched promotional content to custom audiences for Marvel Contest of Champions, resulting in a 4x increase in lapsed user engagement*.
PGS is designed to make the sign-in experience more seamless for players, automatically syncing their progress and identity across Android devices. With a single tap, they can pick up where they left off or start a new game from any screen. Whether you use your own sign-in solution, services from third parties, or a combination of both, we've made it easier to integrate Play Games Services with the Recall API.
To ensure a consistent sign-in experience for all players, we’re phasing out PGS v1.
All games currently using PGS v1 must migrate to PGS v2 by May 2026. After this date, you will no longer be able to publish or update games that use the v1 SDK.
Below you'll find the timeline to plan your migration:
Migration guide |
|
| May 2025 | As announced at I/O, new apps using PGS v1 can no longer be published. While existing apps can release updates with v1 and the APIs are still functional, you’ll need to migrate by May 2026, and APIs will be fully shut down in 2028. |
| May 2026 | APIs are still functional for users, but are no longer included in the SDK. New app versions compiled with the most recent SDK would fail in the build process if your code still uses the removed APIs. If your app still relies on any of these APIs, you should migrate to PGS v2 as soon as possible. |
| Q3 2028 | APIs are no longer functional and will fail when a request is sent by an app. |
Coming soon, players will be able to generate unique, AI-powered avatars within their profiles – creating fun, diverse representations of their gaming selves. With PGS integration, developers can allow players to carry over their avatar within the game. This enables players to showcase their gaming identity across the entire gameplay experience, creating an even stronger motivation to re-engage with your game.
PGS is the foundational tool for maximizing your business growth on Play, enabling you to tailor your content for each player and access the latest gameplay innovations on the platform. Stay tuned for more PGS features coming this year to provide an even richer player experience.
On July 1, Amazing Seasun Games is set to unveil its highly anticipated action shooting game - Mecha BREAK, with a multiplatform launch across PC and Console. A key to their PC growth strategy is Google Play Games on PC, enabling the team to build excitement with a pre-registration campaign, maximize revenue with PC earnback, and ensure a secure, top-tier experience on PC.
With a legacy of creating high-quality games since 1995, Amazing Seasun Games has already seen Mecha BREAK attract over 3.5 million players during the last beta test. To build on this momentum, the studio is bringing their game to Google Play Games on PC to open pre-registration and connect with its massive player audience.
"We were excited to launch on Google Play Games on PC. We want to make sure all players can enjoy the Mecha BREAK experience worldwide."- Kris Kwok, Executive Producer of Mecha BREAK and CEO of Amazing Seasun Games
Mecha BREAK's launch strategy includes leveraging the native PC earnback, a program that gives native PC developers the opportunity to unlock up to 15% in additional earnback.
Beyond earnback, the program offers comprehensive support for PC game development, distribution, and growth. Developers can manage PC builds in Play Console, simplifying the process of packaging PC versions, configuring releases, and managing store listings. Now, you can also view PC-specific sales reports, providing a more precise analysis of your game's financial performance.
Mecha BREAK is designed to deliver an intense and high-fidelity experience on PC. Built on a cutting-edge, proprietary 3D engine, the game offers players three unique modes of fast-paced combat on land and in the air.
The decision to integrate with Google Play Games on PC was driven by the platform's robust security infrastructure, including tools such as Play Integrity API, supporting large-scale global games like Mecha BREAK.
"Mecha BREAK’s multiplayer setting made Google Play Games a strong choice, as we expect exceptional operational stability and performance. The platform also offers advanced malware protection and anti-cheat capabilities."- Kris Kwok, Executive Producer of Mecha BREAK and CEO of Amazing Seasun Games
This year, the native PC program is open to all PC games, including PC-only titles. If you're ready to expand your game's reach and accelerate its growth, learn more about the eligibility requirements and how to join the program today.
Gemini in Android Studio is the AI-powered coding companion that makes you more productive at every stage of the dev lifecycle. At Google I/O 2025 we previewed new agentic AI experiences: Journeys for Android Studio and Version Upgrade Agent. These innovations make it easier for you to build and test code. We also announced Agent Mode, which was designed to handle complex, multi-stage development tasks that go beyond typical AI assistant capabilities, invoking multiple tools to accomplish tasks on your behalf. We’re excited to see how you leverage these agentic AI experiences which are now available in the latest preview version of Android Studio on the canary release channel.
You can also use Gemini to automatically generate Jetpack Compose previews, as well as transform UI code using natural language, saving you time and effort. Give Gemini more context by attaching images and project files to your prompts, so you can get more relevant responses. And if you’re looking for enterprise-grade privacy and security features backed by Google Cloud, Gemini in Android Studio for businesses is now available. Developers and admins can unlock these features and benefits by subscribing to Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise editions.
Compose is our recommended UI toolkit for Android development, used by over 60% of the top 1K apps on Google Play. We released a new version of our Jetpack Navigation library: Navigation 3, which has been rebuilt from the ground up to give you more flexibility and control over your implementation. We unveiled the new Material 3 Expressive update which provides tools to enhance your product's appeal by harnessing emotional UX, making it more engaging, intuitive, and desirable for your users. The latest stable Bill of Materials (BOM) release for Compose adds new features such as autofill support, auto-sizing text, visibility tracking, animate bounds modifier, accessibility checks in tests, and more! This release also includes significant rewrites and improvements to multiple sub-systems including semantics, focus and text optimizations.
These optimizations are available to you with no code changes other than upgrading your Compose dependency. If you’re looking to try out new Compose functionality, the alpha BOM offers new features that we're working on including pausable composition, updates to LazyLayout prefetch, context menus, and others. Finally, we've added Compose support to CameraX and Media3, making it easier to integrate camera capture and video playback into your UI with Compose idiomatic components.
KMP enables teams to deliver quality Android and iOS apps with less development time. The KMP ecosystem continues to grow: last year alone, over 900 new KMP libraries were published. At Google I/O we released a new Android Studio KMP shared module template to help you craft and manage business logic, updated Jetpack libraries and new codelabs (Getting started with Kotlin Multiplatform and Migrating your Room database to KMP) to help you get started with KMP. We also shared additional announcements at KotlinConf.
Learn more about what we announced at Google I/O 2025 to help you build better apps, faster.
Software development is undergoing a significant evolution, moving beyond reactive assistants to intelligent agents. These agents don't just offer suggestions; they can create execution plans, utilize external tools, and make complex, multi-file changes. This results in a more capable AI that can iteratively solve challenging problems, fundamentally changing how developers work.
At Google I/O 2025, we offered a glimpse into our work on agentic AI in Android Studio, the integrated development environment (IDE) focused on Android development. We showcased that by combining agentic AI with the built-in portfolio of tools inside of Android Studio, the IDE is able to assist you in developing Android apps in ways that were never possible before. We are now incredibly excited to announce the next frontier in Android development with the availability of 'Agent Mode' for Gemini in Android Studio.
These features are available in the latest Android Studio Narwhal Feature Drop Canary release, and will be rolled out to business tier subscribers in the coming days. As with all new Android Studio features, we invite developers to provide feedback to direct our development efforts and ensure we are creating the tools you need to build better apps, faster.
Gemini in Android Studio's Agent Mode is a new experimental capability designed to handle complex development tasks that go beyond what you can experience by just chatting with Gemini.
With Agent Mode, you can describe a complex goal in natural language — from generating unit tests to complex refactors — and the agent formulates an execution plan that can span multiple files in your project and executes under your direction. Agent Mode uses a range of IDE tools for reading and modifying code, building the project, searching the codebase and more to help Gemini complete complex tasks from start to finish with minimal oversight from you.
To use Agent Mode, click Gemini in the sidebar, then select the Agent tab, and describe a task you'd like the agent to perform. Some examples of tasks you can try in Agent Mode include:
The agent then suggests edits and iteratively fixes bugs to complete tasks. You can review, accept, or reject the proposed changes along the way, and ask the agent to iterate on your feedback.
While powerful, you are firmly in control, with the ability to review, refine and guide the agent’s output at every step. When the agent proposes code changes, you can choose to accept or reject them.
Additionally, you can enable “Auto-approve” if you are feeling lucky 😎 — especially useful when you want to iterate on ideas as rapidly as possible.
You can delegate routine, time-consuming work to the agent, freeing up your time for more creative, high-value work. Try out Agent Mode in the latest preview version of Android Studio – we look forward to seeing what you build! We are investing in building more agentic experiences for Gemini in Android Studio to make your development even more intuitive, so you can expect to see more agentic functionality over the next several releases.
The default Gemini model has a generous no-cost daily quota with a limited context window. However, you can now add your own Gemini API key to expand Agent Mode's context window to a massive 1 million tokens with Gemini 2.5 Pro.
A larger context window lets you send more instructions, code and attachments to Gemini, leading to even higher quality responses. This is especially useful when working with agents, as the larger context provides Gemini 2.5 Pro with the ability to reason about complex or long-running tasks.
To enable this feature, get a Gemini API key by navigating to Google AI Studio. Sign in and get a key by clicking on the “Get API key” button. Then, back in Android Studio, navigate to the settings by going to File (Android Studio on macOS) > Settings > Tools > Gemini to enter your Gemini API key. Relaunch Gemini in Android Studio and get even better responses from Agent Mode.
Be sure to safeguard your Gemini API key, as additional charges apply for Gemini API usage associated with a personal API key. You can monitor your Gemini API key usage by navigating to AI Studio and selecting Get API key > Usage & Billing.
Note that business tier subscribers already get access to Gemini 2.5 Pro and the expanded context window automatically with their Gemini Code Assist license, so these developers will not see an API key option.
Gemini in Android Studio's Agent Mode can now interact with external tools via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). This feature provides a standardized way for Agent Mode to use tools and extend knowledge and capabilities with the external environment.
There are many tools you can connect to the MCP Host in Android Studio. For example you could integrate with the Github MCP Server to create pull requests directly from Android Studio. Here are some additional use cases to consider.
In this initial release of MCP support in the IDE you will configure your MCP servers through a mcp.json file placed in the configuration directory of Studio, using the following format:
Posted by Daniel Trócoli – Google Play Partnerships
Posted by Raghavendra Hareesh Pottamsetty – Google Play Developer and Monetization Lead
Posted by Meghan Mehta – Android Developer Relations Engineer
Posted by {
"mcpServers": {
"memory": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"@modelcontextprotocol/server-memory"
]
},
"sequential-thinking": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"@modelcontextprotocol/server-sequential-thinking"
]
},
"github": {
"command": "docker",
"args": [
"run",
"-i",
"--rm",
"-e",
"GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN",
"ghcr.io/github/github-mcp-server"
],
"env": {
"GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "<YOUR_TOKEN>"
}
}
}
}
For this initial release, we support interacting with external tools via the stdio transport as defined in the MCP specification. We plan to support the full suite of MCP features in upcoming Android Studio releases, including the Streamable HTTP transport, external context resources, and prompt templates.
For more information on how to use MCP in Studio, including the mcp.json configuration file format, please refer to the Android Studio MCP Host documentation.
By delegating routine tasks to Gemini through Agent Mode, you’ll be able to focus on more innovative and enjoyable aspects of app development. Download the latest preview version of Android Studio on the canary release channel today to try it out, and let us know how much faster app development is for you!
As always, your feedback is important to us – check known issues, report bugs, suggest improvements, and be part of our vibrant community on LinkedIn, Medium, YouTube, or X. Let's build the future of Android apps together!
AI is reshaping how users interact with their favorite apps, opening new avenues for developers to create intelligent experiences. At Google I/O, we showcased how Android is making it easier than ever for you to build smart, personalized and creative apps. And we’re committed to providing you with the tools needed to innovate across the full development stack in this evolving landscape.
This year, we focused on making AI accessible across the spectrum, from on-device processing to cloud-powered capabilities. Here are the top 3 announcements you need to know for building with AI on Android from Google I/O ‘25:
For on-device AI, we announced a new set of ML Kit GenAI APIs powered by Gemini Nano, our most efficient and compact model designed and optimized for running directly on mobile devices. These APIs provide high-level, easy integration for common tasks including text summarization, proofreading, rewriting content in different styles, and generating image description. Building on-device offers significant benefits such as local data processing and offline availability at no additional cost for inference. To start integrating these solutions explore the ML Kit GenAI documentation, the sample on GitHub and watch the "Gemini Nano on Android: Building with on-device GenAI" talk.
The Google AI Edge platform enables building and deploying a wide range of pretrained and custom models on edge devices and supports various frameworks like TensorFlow, PyTorch, Keras, and Jax, allowing for more customization in apps. The platform now also offers improved support of on-device hardware accelerators and a new AI Edge Portal service for broad coverage of on-device benchmarking and evals. If you are looking for GenAI language models on devices where Gemini Nano is not available, you can use other open models via the MediaPipe LLM Inference API.
Serving your own custom models on-device can pose challenges related to handling large model downloads and updates, impacting the user experience. To improve this, we’ve launched Play for On-Device AI in beta. This service is designed to help developers manage custom model downloads efficiently, ensuring the right model size and speed are delivered to each Android device precisely when needed.
For more information watch “Small language models with Google AI Edge” talk.
For more advanced generative AI use cases, such as complex reasoning tasks, analyzing large amounts of data, processing audio or video, or generating images, you can use larger models from the Gemini Flash and Gemini Pro families, and Imagen running in the cloud. These models are well suited for scenarios requiring advanced capabilities or multimodal inputs and outputs. And since the AI inference runs in the cloud any Android device with an internet connection is supported. They are easy to integrate into your Android app by using Firebase AI Logic, which provides a simplified, secure way to access these capabilities without managing your own backend. Its SDK also includes support for conversational AI experiences using the Gemini Live API or generating custom contextual visual assets with Imagen. To learn more, check out our sample on GitHub and watch "Enhance your Android app with Gemini Pro and Flash, and Imagen" session.
These powerful AI capabilities can also be brought to life in immersive Android XR experiences. You can find corresponding documentation, samples and the technical session: "The future is now, with Compose and AI on Android XR".
We released a new open source app, Androidify, to help developers build AI-driven Android experiences using Gemini APIs, ML Kit, Jetpack Compose, CameraX, Navigation 3, and adaptive design. Users can create personalized Android bot with Gemini and Imagen via the Firebase AI Logic SDK. Additionally, it incorporates ML Kit pose detection to detect a person in the camera viewfinder. The full code sample is available on GitHub for exploration and inspiration. Discover additional AI examples in our Android AI Sample Catalog.
Choosing the right Gemini model depends on understanding your specific needs and the model's capabilities, including modality, complexity, context window, offline capability, cost, and device reach. To explore these considerations further and see all our announcements in action, check out the AI on Android at I/O ‘25 playlist on YouTube and check out our documentation.
We are excited to see what you will build with the power of Gemini!
Today, we are announcing important changes to Wear OS watch face development that will affect how developers publish and update watch faces on Google Play. As part of our ongoing effort to enhance Wear OS app quality, we are moving towards supporting only the Watch Face Format and removing support for AndroidX / Wearable Support Library (WSL) watch faces.
We introduced Watch Face Format at Google I/O in 2023 to make it easier to create watch faces that are customizable and power-efficient. The Watch Face Format is a declarative XML format, so there is no executable code involved in creating a watch face, and there is no code embedded in the watch face APK.
Developers will need to migrate published watch faces to the Watch Face Format by January 14, 2026. Developers using Watch Face Studio to build watch faces will need to resubmit their watch faces to the Play Store using Watch Face Studio version 1.8.7 or above - see below for more details.
To prepare for these changes and to continue publishing watch faces to the Play Store, developers using AndroidX or WSL to build watch faces must migrate their watch faces to the Watch Face Format and resubmit to the Play Store by January 14, 2026.
Developers using Watch Face Studio to build watch faces will need to resubmit their watch faces to the Play Store using Watch Face Studio version 1.8.7 or above:
Watch Face Format was developed to support developers in creating watch faces. This format provides numerous advantages to both developers and end users:
To get started migrating your watch faces to the Watch Face Format, check out the following developer guidance:
We encourage developers to begin the migration process as soon as possible to ensure a seamless transition and continued availability of your watch faces on Google Play.
We understand that this change requires effort. If you have further questions, please refer to the Wear OS community announcement. Please report any issues using the issue tracker.
Posted by Kateryna Semenova – Sr. Developer Relations Engineer
Posted by François Deschênes Product Manager - Wear OS