Tag Archives: android11

11 Weeks of Android: People & Identity

Posted by Dr. Stefan Frank, Senior Product Manager, Android System UI

#11 weeks of Android with Android logo

This blog post is part of a weekly series for #11WeeksOfAndroid. Each week we’re diving into a key area of Android so you don’t miss anything. This week, we spotlight people & identity. Here's a look at what you should know.

The big news

One of the goals of Android 11 was making our phones more people-centric. Because nothing matters more to people than connecting to loved ones. It is a core human need especially during our current physical distancing constraints. We have the need to be more social than ever before. Android 11 reimagines how we have conversations on our phones by adding new capabilities to help you maintain your identity across multiple devices.

We are announcing some new features in Android 11 that allows you to easily connect with your loved ones, friends and business colleagues. At the center of this release is the Android Conversation Shortcut API and Identity Services Library. These new tools empower instant connections to your best friend, sharing funny pictures of your dogs, telling your aunt about a tasty seafood recipe that you discovered, or congratulating an office colleague about her promotion. And they also provide a new level of password management that makes it easier for your users to sign up and sign in.

One of our favorite features brings conversations from people that matter most to you right to the lock screen of your phone. You’ll easily recognize them by their avatar and instantly respond to your family, friends, or colleagues. These are people you truly want to connect to. We knew this feature would be useful, but the responses from our beta-testers made us smile. The decision to include the Conversation Shortcut API to improve the lives of our users was one of the easiest decisions for us to make in the release of Android 11.

Creating a bubble from an incoming notification and accessing the conversation from the bubble.

Creating a bubble from an incoming notification and accessing the conversation from the bubble.

One of the new features building on top of shortcuts is the new conversation space at the top of your notifications. It focuses your attention on what matters most - your conversations. Right from these notifications the user can trigger another new feature in Android 11 - Bubbles. Bubbles are small representations of conversations floating over other content on the side of the screen, which can be expanded to allow quick access to conversations, without changing what you were doing on the device. They are super handy for carrying on conversations while using the device for other tasks.

The new conversations space showing how a conversation is marked as priority and will be displayed on the lock screen.

The new conversations space showing how a conversation is marked as priority and will be displayed on the lock screen.

A long tap on conversation notifications enables the user to mark priority conversations in order to give special prominence to the most important people. Priority conversations will be displayed with their individual avatar right on the lock screen and move to the top of your notifications. They can even be set to break through do-not-disturb. Another use of the conversation shortcuts is that they are used as share targets in the system share sheet, which was already launched in Android 10.

Another focus of this week was identity. To tackle user and developer complexity that makes identity a challenge for developers, we've been working on One Tap and Block Store, part of our new Google Identity Services Library. One Tap is our new cross-platform sign-in mechanism for Web and Android, supporting and streamlining multiple types of credentials. Block Store is our new token-based sign-in mechanism that’s built on top of Backup and Restore. It allows you to keep your user signed in across Android devices.

We’re super excited about all these features [since] they help all of us connect, communicate and express ourselves to the people that we care about and to the apps we are dealing with -- which is as important now as it’s ever been.”

What to watch

For a high level overview of the people centric functionality, we recommend that you check out the Android 11 launch highlight video on People. Earlier this week, we also launched a new talk on ‘Conversation Notifications’, where Artur describes how to implement the conversation shortcut and bubbles. There is also a great overview talk on the conversation additions and other System UI news from Dan. Finally, you can also listen to Chet’s podcasts where he interviews us on People and Bubbles.

If you’re interested in learning more about Identity, we also published “In Identity on Android: What’s new in sign-in”, this week. In this video, Vishal explains the new libraries in the Google Identity System: One Tap and Block Store."

Two of the teams that worked very early with us on these conversation specific topics are the Messenger team from Facebook and the direct messaging team from Twitter. Read the stories around both of these implementations here and here.

Learning path

If you’re looking for an easy way to pick up the highlights of this week, check out the People and Identity pathway. A pathway is an ordered tutorial that allows users to complete a pre-defined module that culminates in a quiz. It may include codelabs, videos, articles and blog posts. A virtual badge is awarded to each user who passes the quiz. Test your knowledge of key takeaways about People and Identity to earn a limited edition badge.

Key takeaways

Android 11 is the starting point of an ongoing focus on what matters most to users, people and conversations. Many of our partners in our ecosystem introduced amazing apps and services enabling these connections with people and conversations. We in Android want to elevate and surface these partners more prominently in order to support this goal. Thus if you are working on an app that fosters real time communication between people, we strongly encourage you to adopt the conversation shortcut based APIs for notifications, bubbles and sharing when targeting API 30 in order to put users’ conversations front and center and give them quick access to your app. The developer documentation can be found here.

For apps that handle user accounts, we encourage you to help our users avoid messy password hunting and forgotten credential processes by integrating One Tap to streamline credential management and Block Store to handle device updates. These integrations will work on phones back to Android M.

In the spirit of this week, I wish you meaningful and joyful connections with the people that matter to you and seamless experiences with your favorite apps. We hope you will help us in our journey of supporting these goals.

Resources

You can find the entire playlist of #11WeeksOfAndroid video content here, and learn more about each week here. We’ll continue to spotlight new areas each week, so keep an eye out and follow us on Twitter and YouTube. Thanks so much for letting us be a part of this experience with you!

11 Weeks of Android: People & Identity

Posted by Dr. Stefan Frank, Senior Product Manager, Android System UI

#11 weeks of Android with Android logo

This blog post is part of a weekly series for #11WeeksOfAndroid. Each week we’re diving into a key area of Android so you don’t miss anything. This week, we spotlight people & identity. Here's a look at what you should know.

The big news

One of the goals of Android 11 was making our phones more people-centric. Because nothing matters more to people than connecting to loved ones. It is a core human need especially during our current physical distancing constraints. We have the need to be more social than ever before. Android 11 reimagines how we have conversations on our phones by adding new capabilities to help you maintain your identity across multiple devices.

We are announcing some new features in Android 11 that allows you to easily connect with your loved ones, friends and business colleagues. At the center of this release is the Android Conversation Shortcut API and Identity Services Library. These new tools empower instant connections to your best friend, sharing funny pictures of your dogs, telling your aunt about a tasty seafood recipe that you discovered, or congratulating an office colleague about her promotion. And they also provide a new level of password management that makes it easier for your users to sign up and sign in.

One of our favorite features brings conversations from people that matter most to you right to the lock screen of your phone. You’ll easily recognize them by their avatar and instantly respond to your family, friends, or colleagues. These are people you truly want to connect to. We knew this feature would be useful, but the responses from our beta-testers made us smile. The decision to include the Conversation Shortcut API to improve the lives of our users was one of the easiest decisions for us to make in the release of Android 11.

Creating a bubble from an incoming notification and accessing the conversation from the bubble.

Creating a bubble from an incoming notification and accessing the conversation from the bubble.

One of the new features building on top of shortcuts is the new conversation space at the top of your notifications. It focuses your attention on what matters most - your conversations. Right from these notifications the user can trigger another new feature in Android 11 - Bubbles. Bubbles are small representations of conversations floating over other content on the side of the screen, which can be expanded to allow quick access to conversations, without changing what you were doing on the device. They are super handy for carrying on conversations while using the device for other tasks.

The new conversations space showing how a conversation is marked as priority and will be displayed on the lock screen.

The new conversations space showing how a conversation is marked as priority and will be displayed on the lock screen.

A long tap on conversation notifications enables the user to mark priority conversations in order to give special prominence to the most important people. Priority conversations will be displayed with their individual avatar right on the lock screen and move to the top of your notifications. They can even be set to break through do-not-disturb. Another use of the conversation shortcuts is that they are used as share targets in the system share sheet, which was already launched in Android 10.

Another focus of this week was identity. To tackle user and developer complexity that makes identity a challenge for developers, we've been working on One Tap and Block Store, part of our new Google Identity Services Library. One Tap is our new cross-platform sign-in mechanism for Web and Android, supporting and streamlining multiple types of credentials. Block Store is our new token-based sign-in mechanism that’s built on top of Backup and Restore. It allows you to keep your user signed in across Android devices.

We’re super excited about all these features [since] they help all of us connect, communicate and express ourselves to the people that we care about and to the apps we are dealing with -- which is as important now as it’s ever been.”

What to watch

For a high level overview of the people centric functionality, we recommend that you check out the Android 11 launch highlight video on People. Earlier this week, we also launched a new talk on ‘Conversation Notifications’, where Artur describes how to implement the conversation shortcut and bubbles. There is also a great overview talk on the conversation additions and other System UI news from Dan. Finally, you can also listen to Chet’s podcasts where he interviews us on People and Bubbles.

If you’re interested in learning more about Identity, we also published “In Identity on Android: What’s new in sign-in”, this week. In this video, Vishal explains the new libraries in the Google Identity System: One Tap and Block Store."

Two of the teams that worked very early with us on these conversation specific topics are the Messenger team from Facebook and the direct messaging team from Twitter. Read the stories around both of these implementations here and here.

Learning path

If you’re looking for an easy way to pick up the highlights of this week, check out the People and Identity pathway. A pathway is an ordered tutorial that allows users to complete a pre-defined module that culminates in a quiz. It may include codelabs, videos, articles and blog posts. A virtual badge is awarded to each user who passes the quiz. Test your knowledge of key takeaways about People and Identity to earn a limited edition badge.

Key takeaways

Android 11 is the starting point of an ongoing focus on what matters most to users, people and conversations. Many of our partners in our ecosystem introduced amazing apps and services enabling these connections with people and conversations. We in Android want to elevate and surface these partners more prominently in order to support this goal. Thus if you are working on an app that fosters real time communication between people, we strongly encourage you to adopt the conversation shortcut based APIs for notifications, bubbles and sharing when targeting API 30 in order to put users’ conversations front and center and give them quick access to your app. The developer documentation can be found here.

For apps that handle user accounts, we encourage you to help our users avoid messy password hunting and forgotten credential processes by integrating One Tap to streamline credential management and Block Store to handle device updates. These integrations will work on phones back to Android M.

In the spirit of this week, I wish you meaningful and joyful connections with the people that matter to you and seamless experiences with your favorite apps. We hope you will help us in our journey of supporting these goals.

Resources

You can find the entire playlist of #11WeeksOfAndroid video content here, and learn more about each week here. We’ll continue to spotlight new areas each week, so keep an eye out and follow us on Twitter and YouTube. Thanks so much for letting us be a part of this experience with you!

Messenger and Conversations

Facebook logo

This blogpost is a collaboration between Google and Messenger from Facebook. Authored by Aaron Labiaga with support from Caleb Gomer and Samuel Guirado from Messenger.


Messenger is ubiquitous in the messaging app world and has pioneered the floating chat bubble. Bubbles help users keep conversations in view and accessible while multitasking, overlaying other UI elements in the foreground, and providing users easy access and visibility to their ongoing chats. Bubbles is one way Android 11 is making the platform more people-centric and expressive, reimagining the way we have conversations on our phones. Messenger’s early pioneering of the floating chat bubble, and the strong reception by users, helped lead to its native implementation in the framework.

new conversations ui gif

Bubbles

The Bubbles API is built on top of the notifications API and is exclusively focused on people in Android 11. First Introduced in Android 10, what was previously an opt-in feature is now on by default. To use bubbles, the developer must create BubbleMetadata, which is set on the notification. This metadata describes the Activity to launch when a bubble is clicked, along with various behaviors relevant to the expanded bubble. The Activity must follow the criteria of being embeddable and resizable in order to use it in a bubble.

Notification bubbles are reserved for conversations with persons in context. These are MessagingStyle notifications with a set long-lived shortcut ID. Please see the following Bubbles code sample how.


A Q&A with the Messenger team

The Messenger team shares their experience with the migration and prospect of the impact of the changes.

How was the migration to bubbles, technical challenges, scope, and impact on codebase?

Prior to Bubbles, Messenger used the SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW for its implementation of Bubbles. It achieved our purpose, but hosting complex Android UI outside of Activities is challenging to implement and maintain. Using this natively supported API allowed us to build more traditional, Activity-based Android UI that works well in Bubbles and full screen. This new Bubbles-based chat experience is much simpler and more maintainable than our SAW-based one. We are excited that Android believes that it is a user experience that will help drive improvements in the conversation space.
Ensuring that bubble shortcuts were up-to-date with the latest state of the conversation thread was a technical challenge worth noting. Picture changed, conversation deleted or contact blocked are events that require the bubble shortcut to be updated or even deleted. The Shortcuts API allows for easily registering/unregistering shortcuts and for querying and updating existing ones, which made this whole process very straight forward.

What are your future prospects on the impact of Messenger messages in the conversation space?

The conversation section will give our messages the right visibility. Given that conversation section ranks high in the notification drawer, we definitely want to be present in that space.

A people-centric experience in Android 11

Bubbles are just one way that Android 11 puts people at the heart of the experience for Android; if you’re a messaging or chat app, you should consider using the Bubbles API to help your users as they multi-task. It’s great to see apps like Messenger navigate the openness of Android to create innovative new experiences, and we’re excited to make Bubbles a native experience in Android 11. For more information, please visit the Conversation API guidelines.

Messenger and Conversations

Facebook logo

This blogpost is a collaboration between Google and Messenger from Facebook. Authored by Aaron Labiaga with support from Caleb Gomer and Samuel Guirado from Messenger.


Messenger is ubiquitous in the messaging app world and has pioneered the floating chat bubble. Bubbles help users keep conversations in view and accessible while multitasking, overlaying other UI elements in the foreground, and providing users easy access and visibility to their ongoing chats. Bubbles is one way Android 11 is making the platform more people-centric and expressive, reimagining the way we have conversations on our phones. Messenger’s early pioneering of the floating chat bubble, and the strong reception by users, helped lead to its native implementation in the framework.

new conversations ui gif

Bubbles

The Bubbles API is built on top of the notifications API and is exclusively focused on people in Android 11. First Introduced in Android 10, what was previously an opt-in feature is now on by default. To use bubbles, the developer must create BubbleMetadata, which is set on the notification. This metadata describes the Activity to launch when a bubble is clicked, along with various behaviors relevant to the expanded bubble. The Activity must follow the criteria of being embeddable and resizable in order to use it in a bubble.

Notification bubbles are reserved for conversations with persons in context. These are MessagingStyle notifications with a set long-lived shortcut ID. Please see the following Bubbles code sample how.


A Q&A with the Messenger team

The Messenger team shares their experience with the migration and prospect of the impact of the changes.

How was the migration to bubbles, technical challenges, scope, and impact on codebase?

Prior to Bubbles, Messenger used the SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW for its implementation of Bubbles. It achieved our purpose, but hosting complex Android UI outside of Activities is challenging to implement and maintain. Using this natively supported API allowed us to build more traditional, Activity-based Android UI that works well in Bubbles and full screen. This new Bubbles-based chat experience is much simpler and more maintainable than our SAW-based one. We are excited that Android believes that it is a user experience that will help drive improvements in the conversation space.
Ensuring that bubble shortcuts were up-to-date with the latest state of the conversation thread was a technical challenge worth noting. Picture changed, conversation deleted or contact blocked are events that require the bubble shortcut to be updated or even deleted. The Shortcuts API allows for easily registering/unregistering shortcuts and for querying and updating existing ones, which made this whole process very straight forward.

What are your future prospects on the impact of Messenger messages in the conversation space?

The conversation section will give our messages the right visibility. Given that conversation section ranks high in the notification drawer, we definitely want to be present in that space.

A people-centric experience in Android 11

Bubbles are just one way that Android 11 puts people at the heart of the experience for Android; if you’re a messaging or chat app, you should consider using the Bubbles API to help your users as they multi-task. It’s great to see apps like Messenger navigate the openness of Android to create innovative new experiences, and we’re excited to make Bubbles a native experience in Android 11. For more information, please visit the Conversation API guidelines.

Unwrapping the Android 11 Beta, plus more developer updates

Posted by Stephanie Cuthbertson, Director, Product Management

Editor’s note: The global community of Android developers has always been a powerful force in shaping the direction of the Android platform; each and every voice matters to us. We have cancelled the virtual launch event to allow people to focus on important discussions around racial justice in the United States. Instead, we are releasing the Android 11 Beta today in a much different form, via short-form videos and web pages that you can consume at your own pace when the time is right for you. Millions of developers around the world build their business with Android, and we're releasing the Beta today to continue to support these developers with the latest tools. We humbly thank those who are able to offer their feedback on this release.

Today, we’re unwrapping the Beta release for Android 11 as well as the latest updates for developers from Kotlin coroutines, to progress on the Jetpack Compose toolkit, to faster builds in Android Studio, even a refreshed experience for the Play Console.

Android 11 Beta: now available

You’ve been helping us with feedback on the Android 11 developer previews since February, and today we released the first Beta of Android 11 focused on three key themes: People, Controls, and Privacy.

People: we’re making Android more people-centric and expressive, reimagining the way we have conversations on our phones, and building an OS that can recognize and prioritize the most important people in your life:

  • Conversation notifications appear in a dedicated section at the top of the shade, with a people-forward design and conversation specific actions, such as opening the conversation as a bubble, creating a conversation shortcut on the home screen, or setting a reminder.
  • Bubbles help users to keep conversations in view and accessible while multitasking. Messaging and chat apps should use the Bubbles API on notifications to enable this in Android 11.
  • Consolidated keyboard suggestions let Autofill apps and Input Method https://developer.android.com/preview/overview#timeline Editors (IMEs) securely offer context-specific entities and strings directly in an IME’s suggestion strip, where they are most convenient for users.
  • Voice Access, for people who control their phone entirely by voice, now includes an on-device visual cortex that understands screen content and context, and generates labels and access points for accessibility commands.
gif of people features such as prioritize messages across apps from the VIPs in your life

Controls: the latest release of Android can now help you can quickly get to all of your smart devices and control them in one space:

  • Device Controls make it faster and easier than ever for users to access and control their connected devices. Now, by simply long pressing the power button, they’re able to bring up device controls instantly, and in one place. Apps can use a new API to appear in the controls. More here.
  • Media Controls make it quick and convenient for users to switch the output device for their audio or video content, whether it be headphones, speakers or even their TV. You can enable this today from Developer Options, and it will be on by default in an upcoming Beta release. More here.
Controls gif including Smart home controls, payment methods and more, all in one place

Privacy: In Android 11, we’re giving users even more control over sensitive permissions and working to keep devices more secure through faster updates.

  • One-time permission lets users give an app access to the device microphone, camera, or location, just that one time. The app can request permissions again the next time the app is used. More here.
  • Permissions auto-reset: if users haven’t used an app for an extended period of time, Android 11 will “auto-reset” all of the runtime permissions associated with the app and notify the user. The app can request the permissions again the next time the app is used. More here.
  • Background location: In February, we announced developers will need to get approval to access background location in their app to prevent misuse. We're giving developers more time to make changes and won't be enforcing the policy for existing apps until 2021. More here.
  • Google Play System Updates, launched last year, lets us expedite updates of core OS components to devices in the Android ecosystem. In Android 11, we more than doubled the number of updatable modules, and those 12 new modules will help improve privacy, security, and consistency for users and developers.
Privacy gif including more ways to keep your data secure with one-time permissions and permissions auto-reset.

Developer friendliness: We want to make it easy for developers to take advantage of the new release, so to make compat testing easier, we’ve:

  • Gated most breaking changes until you target Android 11 (so they won’t take effect until you explicitly change your manifest)
  • Added new UI in developer options to let you toggle many of these changes for testing
  • added a new Platform Stability release milestone where all API and behavior changes will be complete, so you can finalize your app updates knowing the platform is stable.

Android 11 also includes a number of other developer productivity improvements like wireless ADB debugging, ADB incremental for faster installs of large APKs, and more nullability annotations on platform APIs (to catch issues at build time instead of runtime), and more.

The first Beta for Android 11 is available today, with final SDK and NDK APIs and new features to try in your apps. If you have a Pixel 2, 3, 3a, or 4 device, enroll here to get Android 11 Beta updates over-the-air. As always, downloads for Pixel and the Android Emulator are also available. To learn about all of the developer features in Android 11, visit the Android 11 developer site.

Modern Android development

Over the past several years, the Android team has been hard at work improving the mobile developer experience, to make you more productive. This includes the Android Studio IDE, a great language (Kotlin!), Jetpack libraries to make common tasks easy, and Android App Bundles to improve app distribution. Today we call this modern Android development - bringing you the best of Android to make you as efficient and productive as possible.

Modern android development showcasing new logos gif

Android Studio

Today, we released new features in Android Studio 4.1 Beta and 4.2 Canary, focused on a number of crucial asks from developers:

  • Debugging is simpler with wireless debugging over ADB with Android 11 devices. We also added the Database Inspector and Dependency Injection (Dagger) tools;
  • Device testing is better, with the Android Emulator now hosted directly inside the IDE. Tests now run side-by-side so you can see results from multiple devices at the same time. And we’ve improved the device manager to more easily handle your devices.
  • Machine learning is easier -- you can now import your models for ML Kit and TensorFlow Lite directly in the IDE.
  • Build and deployment are faster thanks to Kotlin Symbol Processing, caching of the task graph in Gradle, and faster app deployment to all devices on Android 11. And the new build analyzer can help you diagnose where your build may have bottlenecks.
  • Games tooling is more powerful with an updated performance profiler UI, an overhauled System Trace tool, and support for native memory profiling.
Android Studio - New Features, 4.1 Beta & 4.2 Canary

Try out the latest: Android Studio 4.1 Beta and Android Studio 4.2 Canary.

Kotlin and Jetpack

Languages and libraries are a major area of investment in modern Android development, with Kotlin’s modern, concise language and Jetpack’s opinionated powerful libraries all focused around making you more productive.

With the rise in Kotlin adoption (with over 70% of top 1000 apps on Google Play now using Kotlin) and so many developers using Kotlin, we can now use it to simplify your experience in new ways. Kotlin coroutines are a language feature of Kotlin which make concurrent calls much easier to write and understand. We’re making coroutines our official recommendation, and we’ve built coroutines support into 3 of the most-used Jetpack libraries -- Lifecycle, WorkManager, and Room -- so you can write even better code.

Kotlin itself also continues to get better with every release, thanks to the awesome team at Jetbrains. Kotlin 1.4 provides faster code completion, more powerful type inference enabled by default, function interfaces, as well as helpful quality of life improvements like mixing named and positioning arguments.

We also continue to push Jetpack forward - a suite of libraries which spans multiple Android releases and is designed to make common mobile development patterns fast and easy. Many of us have long loved Dagger, so we worked with the Dagger team to bring you Hilt, a developer-friendly wrapper on top of Dagger, as a recommended Dependency Injection solution for Android. You’ll find this in alpha ready to try out. We’ve also added a second new library App Startup, to help both app developers and library developers improve app startup time by optimizing initialization of libraries. We have many more updates to existing libraries as well, including a major update to Paging 3, rewritten Kotlin-first with full support for coroutines!

The latest on our new UI toolkit, Compose

There’s one more thing you need to be super productive — and that’s a powerful UI toolkit to quickly and easily build beautiful UIs on Android, with native access to the platform APIs. That’s why we’re building Jetpack Compose, our new modern UI toolkit that brings your app to life with less code, powerful tools, and intuitive Kotlin APIs.

Today we are launching Jetpack Compose Developer Preview 2, packed with features developers have been asking us for:

  • Interoperability with Views (start mixing Composable functions in your existing app) (new!)
  • Animations (new!)
  • Testing (new!)
  • Constraint Layout (new!)
  • Adapter list (new!)
  • Material UI components
  • Text and editable Text (new!)
  • Theming and Graphics
  • Window management
  • Input and Gestures

We've also added a number of new capabilities to Android Studio 4.2, in close partnership with Jetbrains Kotlin team, to help you build apps with Compose:

  • Kotlin compiler plugin for code generation
  • Compose Preview Annotations
  • Real-time interactive Compose previews
  • Deploy individual composables to device
  • Compose Code completion
  • Sample Data API for Compose

Compose isn’t ready for production use yet, in particular as we finish performance optimizations, but we’d love you to give it a try and share feedback. We plan to launch Alpha this summer and 1.0 next year.

An all-new Google Play Console

Google Play is focused on helping developers grow their business. With that mission in mind, we've redesigned the Google Play Console to help you maximize your success on our platform. In addition to being clearer and easier to use, we've added features to help you:

  • Find, discover, and understand features to help you thrive on Google Play
  • Find new guidance on policy changes, release status, and user feedback
  • Better understand performance insights with new acquisition reports
  • Enable everyone on your team to use Play Console features with new user management options

Learn more about the new Google Play Console in this post or join the beta now at play.google.com/console. Your feedback helps us continue to improve Google Play Console for everyone, so please let us know what you think.

Wrapping it all up

But there’s so much more we’re launching that we didn’t get to talk about!

  • We have 12 talks we just posted right on the Android Developers YouTube channel.
  • We’re launching 11 Weeks of Android to keep the conversation going, with new developer content each week on topics you’ve asked for, like UI, Jetpack and Machine Learning. Check out the schedule here to learn more.
  • We’re introducing a global series of online community meetups to discuss what’s new in Android 11, how to make your app compatible, and the essentials and best practices of modern Android development. Find an Android 11 Meetup near you.

Unwrapping the Android 11 Beta, plus more developer updates

Posted by Stephanie Cuthbertson, Director, Product Management

Editor’s note: The global community of Android developers has always been a powerful force in shaping the direction of the Android platform; each and every voice matters to us. We have cancelled the virtual launch event to allow people to focus on important discussions around racial justice in the United States. Instead, we are releasing the Android 11 Beta today in a much different form, via short-form videos and web pages that you can consume at your own pace when the time is right for you. Millions of developers around the world build their business with Android, and we're releasing the Beta today to continue to support these developers with the latest tools. We humbly thank those who are able to offer their feedback on this release.

Today, we’re unwrapping the Beta release for Android 11 as well as the latest updates for developers from Kotlin coroutines, to progress on the Jetpack Compose toolkit, to faster builds in Android Studio, even a refreshed experience for the Play Console.

Android 11 Beta: now available

You’ve been helping us with feedback on the Android 11 developer previews since February, and today we released the first Beta of Android 11 focused on three key themes: People, Controls, and Privacy.

People: we’re making Android more people-centric and expressive, reimagining the way we have conversations on our phones, and building an OS that can recognize and prioritize the most important people in your life:

  • Conversation notifications appear in a dedicated section at the top of the shade, with a people-forward design and conversation specific actions, such as opening the conversation as a bubble, creating a conversation shortcut on the home screen, or setting a reminder.
  • Bubbles help users to keep conversations in view and accessible while multitasking. Messaging and chat apps should use the Bubbles API on notifications to enable this in Android 11.
  • Consolidated keyboard suggestions let Autofill apps and Input Method Editors (IMEs) securely offer context-specific entities and strings directly in an IME’s suggestion strip, where they are most convenient for users.
  • Voice Access, for people who control their phone entirely by voice, now includes an on-device visual cortex that understands screen content and context, and generates labels and access points for accessibility commands.
gif of people features such as prioritize messages across apps from the VIPs in your life

Controls: the latest release of Android can now help you can quickly get to all of your smart devices and control them in one space:

  • Device Controls make it faster and easier than ever for users to access and control their connected devices. Now, by simply long pressing the power button, they’re able to bring up device controls instantly, and in one place. Apps can use a new API to appear in the controls. More here.
  • Media Controls make it quick and convenient for users to switch the output device for their audio or video content, whether it be headphones, speakers or even their TV. You can enable this today from Developer Options, and it will be on by default in an upcoming Beta release. More here.
Controls gif including Smart home controls, payment methods and more, all in one place

Privacy: In Android 11, we’re giving users even more control over sensitive permissions and working to keep devices more secure through faster updates.

  • One-time permission lets users give an app access to the device microphone, camera, or location, just that one time. The app can request permissions again the next time the app is used. More here.
  • Permissions auto-reset: if users haven’t used an app for an extended period of time, Android 11 will “auto-reset” all of the runtime permissions associated with the app and notify the user. The app can request the permissions again the next time the app is used. More here.
  • Background location: In February, we announced developers will need to get approval to access background location in their app to prevent misuse. We're giving developers more time to make changes and won't be enforcing the policy for existing apps until 2021. More here.
  • Google Play System Updates, launched last year, lets us expedite updates of core OS components to devices in the Android ecosystem. In Android 11, we more than doubled the number of updatable modules, and those 12 new modules will help improve privacy, security, and consistency for users and developers.
Privacy gif including more ways to keep your data secure with one-time permissions and permissions auto-reset.

Developer friendliness: We want to make it easy for developers to take advantage of the new release, so to make compat testing easier, we’ve:

  • Gated most breaking changes until you target Android 11 (so they won’t take effect until you explicitly change your manifest)
  • Added new UI in developer options to let you toggle many of these changes for testing
  • added a new Platform Stability release milestone where all API and behavior changes will be complete, so you can finalize your app updates knowing the platform is stable.

Android 11 also includes a number of other developer productivity improvements like wireless ADB debugging, ADB incremental for faster installs of large APKs, and more nullability annotations on platform APIs (to catch issues at build time instead of runtime), and more.

The first Beta for Android 11 is available today, with final SDK and NDK APIs and new features to try in your apps. If you have a Pixel 2, 3, 3a, or 4 device, enroll here to get Android 11 Beta updates over-the-air. As always, downloads for Pixel and the Android Emulator are also available. To learn about all of the developer features in Android 11, visit the Android 11 developer site.

Modern Android development

Over the past several years, the Android team has been hard at work improving the mobile developer experience, to make you more productive. This includes the Android Studio IDE, a great language (Kotlin!), Jetpack libraries to make common tasks easy, and Android App Bundles to improve app distribution. Today we call this modern Android development - bringing you the best of Android to make you as efficient and productive as possible.

Modern android development showcasing new logos gif

Android Studio

Today, we released new features in Android Studio 4.1 Beta and 4.2 Canary, focused on a number of crucial asks from developers:

  • Debugging is simpler with wireless debugging over ADB with Android 11 devices. We also added the Database Inspector and Dependency Injection (Dagger) tools;
  • Device testing is better, with the Android Emulator now hosted directly inside the IDE. Tests now run side-by-side so you can see results from multiple devices at the same time. And we’ve improved the device manager to more easily handle your devices.
  • Machine learning is easier -- you can now import your models for ML Kit and TensorFlow Lite directly in the IDE.
  • Build and deployment are faster thanks to Kotlin Symbol Processing, caching of the task graph in Gradle, and faster app deployment to all devices on Android 11. And the new build analyzer can help you diagnose where your build may have bottlenecks.
  • Games tooling is more powerful with an updated performance profiler UI, an overhauled System Trace tool, and support for native memory profiling.
Android Studio - New Features, 4.1 Beta & 4.2 Canary

Try out the latest: Android Studio 4.1 Beta and Android Studio 4.2 Canary.

Kotlin and Jetpack

Languages and libraries are a major area of investment in modern Android development, with Kotlin’s modern, concise language and Jetpack’s opinionated powerful libraries all focused around making you more productive.

With the rise in Kotlin adoption (with over 70% of top 1000 apps on Google Play now using Kotlin) and so many developers using Kotlin, we can now use it to simplify your experience in new ways. Kotlin coroutines are a language feature of Kotlin which make concurrent calls much easier to write and understand. We’re making coroutines our official recommendation, and we’ve built coroutines support into 3 of the most-used Jetpack libraries -- Lifecycle, WorkManager, and Room -- so you can write even better code.

Kotlin itself also continues to get better with every release, thanks to the awesome team at Jetbrains. Kotlin 1.4 provides faster code completion, more powerful type inference enabled by default, function interfaces, as well as helpful quality of life improvements like mixing named and positioning arguments.

We also continue to push Jetpack forward - a suite of libraries which spans multiple Android releases and is designed to make common mobile development patterns fast and easy. Many of us have long loved Dagger, so we worked with the Dagger team to bring you Hilt, a developer-friendly wrapper on top of Dagger, as a recommended Dependency Injection solution for Android. You’ll find this in alpha ready to try out. We’ve also added a second new library App Startup, to help both app developers and library developers improve app startup time by optimizing initialization of libraries. We have many more updates to existing libraries as well, including a major update to Paging 3, rewritten Kotlin-first with full support for coroutines!

The latest on our new UI toolkit, Compose

There’s one more thing you need to be super productive — and that’s a powerful UI toolkit to quickly and easily build beautiful UIs on Android, with native access to the platform APIs. That’s why we’re building Jetpack Compose, our new modern UI toolkit that brings your app to life with less code, powerful tools, and intuitive Kotlin APIs.

Today we are launching Jetpack Compose Developer Preview 2, packed with features developers have been asking us for:

  • Interoperability with Views (start mixing Composable functions in your existing app) (new!)
  • Animations (new!)
  • Testing (new!)
  • Constraint Layout (new!)
  • Adapter list (new!)
  • Material UI components
  • Text and editable Text (new!)
  • Theming and Graphics
  • Window management
  • Input and Gestures

We've also added a number of new capabilities to Android Studio 4.2, in close partnership with Jetbrains Kotlin team, to help you build apps with Compose:

  • Kotlin compiler plugin for code generation
  • Compose Preview Annotations
  • Real-time interactive Compose previews
  • Deploy individual composables to device
  • Compose Code completion
  • Sample Data API for Compose

Compose isn’t ready for production use yet, in particular as we finish performance optimizations, but we’d love you to give it a try and share feedback. We plan to launch Alpha this summer and 1.0 next year.

An all-new Google Play Console

Google Play is focused on helping developers grow their business. With that mission in mind, we've redesigned the Google Play Console to help you maximize your success on our platform. In addition to being clearer and easier to use, we've added features to help you:

  • Find, discover, and understand features to help you thrive on Google Play
  • Find new guidance on policy changes, release status, and user feedback
  • Better understand performance insights with new acquisition reports
  • Enable everyone on your team to use Play Console features with new user management options

Learn more about the new Google Play Console in this post or join the beta now at play.google.com/console. Your feedback helps us continue to improve Google Play Console for everyone, so please let us know what you think.

Wrapping it all up

But there’s so much more we’re launching that we didn’t get to talk about!

  • We have 12 talks we just posted right on the Android Developers YouTube channel.
  • We’re launching 11 Weeks of Android to keep the conversation going, with new developer content each week on topics you’ve asked for, like UI, Jetpack and Machine Learning. Check out the schedule here to learn more.
  • We’re introducing a global series of online community meetups to discuss what’s new in Android 11, how to make your app compatible, and the essentials and best practices of modern Android development. Find an Android 11 Meetup near you.

Android 11: Beta Plans

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Android 11 Dial logo

When we started planning Android 11, we didn’t expect the kinds of changes that would find their way to all of us, across nearly every region in the world. These have challenged us to stay flexible and find new ways to work together, especially with our developer community.

To help us meet those challenges we’re announcing an update to our release timeline. We’re bringing you a fourth Developer Preview today and moving Beta 1 to June 3. And to tell you all about the release and give you the technical resources you need, we’re hosting an online developer event that we’re calling #Android11: the Beta Launch Show.

Join us for #Android11: The Beta Launch Show

While the circumstances prevent us from joining together with you in-person at Shoreline Amphitheatre for Google I/O, our annual developer conference, we’re organizing an online event where we can share with you all the best of what’s new in Android. We hope you’ll join us for #Android11: The Beta Launch Show, your opportunity to find out what’s new in Android from the people who build Android. Hosted by me, Dave Burke, we’ll be kicking off at 11AM ET on June 3. And we’ll be wrapping it up with a post-show live Q&A; tweet your #AskAndroid questions to get them answered live!

Later that day, we’ll be sharing a number of talks on a range of topics from Jetpack Compose to Android Studio and Google Play–talks that we had originally planned for Google I/O–to help you take advantage of the latest in Android development. You can sign-up to receive updates on this digital event at developer.android.com/android11.

Android 11 schedule update

Our industry moves really fast, and we know that many of our device-maker partners are counting on us to help them bring Android 11 to new consumer devices later this year. We also know that many of you have been working to prioritize early app and game testing on Android 11, based in part on our Platform Stability and other milestones. At the same time, all of us are collaborating remotely and prioritizing the well-being of our families, friends and colleagues.

So to help us meet the needs of the ecosystem while being mindful of the impacts on our developers and partners, we’ve decided to add a bit of extra time in the Android 11 release schedule. We’re moving out Beta 1 and all subsequent milestones by about a month, which gives everyone a bit more room but keeps us on track for final release later in Q3.

Here are some of the key changes in the new schedule:

  • We’re releasing a fourth Developer Preview today for testing and feedback.
  • Beta 1 release moves to June 3. We’ll include the final SDK and NDK APIs with this release and open up Google Play publishing for apps targeting Android 11.
  • Beta 2 moves to July. We’ll reach Platform Stability with this release.
  • Beta 3 moves to August and will include release candidate builds for final testing

By bringing you the final APIs on the original timeline while shifting the other dates, we’re giving you an extra month to compile and test with the final APIs, while also ensuring that you have the same amount of time between Platform Stability and the final release, planned for later in Q3. Here’s a look at the timeline.

Android 11 timeline

You can read more about what the new timeline means to app developers in the preview program overview.

App compatibility

The schedule change adds some extra time for you to test your app for compatibility and identify any work you’ll need to do. We recommend releasing a compatible app update by Android 11 Beta on June 3rd to get feedback from the larger group of Android Beta users who will be getting the update.

With Beta 1 the SDK and NDK APIs will be final, and as we reach Platform Stability in July, the system behaviors and non-SDK greylists will also be finalized. At that time, plan on doing your final compatibility testing and releasing your fully compatible app, SDK, or library as soon as possible so that it is ready for the final Android 11 release. You can read more in the timeline for developers.

You can start compatibility testing today on a Pixel 2, 3, 3a, or 4 device, or you can use the Android Emulator. Just flash the latest build, install your current production app, and test the user flows. Make sure to review the behavior changes for areas where your app might be affected. There’s no need to change the app’s targetSdkVersion at this time, although we recommend evaluating the work since many changes apply once your app is targeting the new API level.

Get started with Android 11

Today we're pushing a Developer Preview 4 with the latest bug fixes, API tweaks, and features to try in your apps. It’s available by manual download and flash for Pixel 2, 3, 3a, or 4 devices, and if you’re already running a Developer Preview build, you’ll get an over-the-air (OTA) update to today’s release.

For complete information on Android 11, visit the Android 11 developer site, and please continue to let us know what you think!

Android 11: Beta Plans

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Android 11 Dial logo

When we started planning Android 11, we didn’t expect the kinds of changes that would find their way to all of us, across nearly every region in the world. These have challenged us to stay flexible and find new ways to work together, especially with our developer community.

To help us meet those challenges we’re announcing an update to our release timeline. We’re bringing you a fourth Developer Preview today and moving Beta 1 to June 3. And to tell you all about the release and give you the technical resources you need, we’re hosting an online developer event that we’re calling #Android11: the Beta Launch Show.

Join us for #Android11: The Beta Launch Show

While the circumstances prevent us from joining together with you in-person at Shoreline Amphitheatre for Google I/O, our annual developer conference, we’re organizing an online event where we can share with you all the best of what’s new in Android. We hope you’ll join us for #Android11: The Beta Launch Show, your opportunity to find out what’s new in Android from the people who build Android. Hosted by me, Dave Burke, we’ll be kicking off at 11AM ET on June 3. And we’ll be wrapping it up with a post-show live Q&A; tweet your #AskAndroid questions to get them answered live!

Later that day, we’ll be sharing a number of talks on a range of topics from Jetpack Compose to Android Studio and Google Play–talks that we had originally planned for Google I/O–to help you take advantage of the latest in Android development. You can sign-up to receive updates on this digital event at developer.android.com/android11.

Android 11 schedule update

Our industry moves really fast, and we know that many of our device-maker partners are counting on us to help them bring Android 11 to new consumer devices later this year. We also know that many of you have been working to prioritize early app and game testing on Android 11, based in part on our Platform Stability and other milestones. At the same time, all of us are collaborating remotely and prioritizing the well-being of our families, friends and colleagues.

So to help us meet the needs of the ecosystem while being mindful of the impacts on our developers and partners, we’ve decided to add a bit of extra time in the Android 11 release schedule. We’re moving out Beta 1 and all subsequent milestones by about a month, which gives everyone a bit more room but keeps us on track for final release later in Q3.

Here are some of the key changes in the new schedule:

  • We’re releasing a fourth Developer Preview today for testing and feedback.
  • Beta 1 release moves to June 3. We’ll include the final SDK and NDK APIs with this release and open up Google Play publishing for apps targeting Android 11.
  • Beta 2 moves to July. We’ll reach Platform Stability with this release.
  • Beta 3 moves to August and will include release candidate builds for final testing

By bringing you the final APIs on the original timeline while shifting the other dates, we’re giving you an extra month to compile and test with the final APIs, while also ensuring that you have the same amount of time between Platform Stability and the final release, planned for later in Q3. Here’s a look at the timeline.

Android 11 timeline

You can read more about what the new timeline means to app developers in the preview program overview.

App compatibility

The schedule change adds some extra time for you to test your app for compatibility and identify any work you’ll need to do. We recommend releasing a compatible app update by Android 11 Beta on June 3rd to get feedback from the larger group of Android Beta users who will be getting the update.

With Beta 1 the SDK and NDK APIs will be final, and as we reach Platform Stability in July, the system behaviors and non-SDK greylists will also be finalized. At that time, plan on doing your final compatibility testing and releasing your fully compatible app, SDK, or library as soon as possible so that it is ready for the final Android 11 release. You can read more in the timeline for developers.

You can start compatibility testing today on a Pixel 2, 3, 3a, or 4 device, or you can use the Android Emulator. Just flash the latest build, install your current production app, and test the user flows. Make sure to review the behavior changes for areas where your app might be affected. There’s no need to change the app’s targetSdkVersion at this time, although we recommend evaluating the work since many changes apply once your app is targeting the new API level.

Get started with Android 11

Today we're pushing a Developer Preview 4 with the latest bug fixes, API tweaks, and features to try in your apps. It’s available by manual download and flash for Pixel 2, 3, 3a, or 4 devices, and if you’re already running a Developer Preview build, you’ll get an over-the-air (OTA) update to today’s release.

For complete information on Android 11, visit the Android 11 developer site, and please continue to let us know what you think!

Android 11: Developer Preview 3

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering
Android 11 Dial logo

Our teams, like all of you, continue getting used to a new normal. For many of us, that means working from living rooms, kitchens, backyards and bedrooms. So, from our homes to yours, we wanted to take a moment to share our most recent developer preview for Android 11. This update includes bug fixes and a set of productivity improvements for developers.

You can see some of the highlights below, and visit the Android 11 developer site for details on all of the new features in Android 11. Today’s release is for developers and not intended for daily or consumer use, so we’re making it available by manual download and flash for Pixel 2, 3, 3a, or 4 devices. If you’re already running a Developer Preview build, you’ll receive an over-the-air (OTA) update to today’s release soon. As always, let us know what you think, and thank you for the helpful feedback you’ve shared so far.

What’s in Developer Preview 3

In today’s release there are a number of new features and changes for you to try, as well as the latest updates to existing features, APIs, and tools. Here are just a few:

App exit reasons updates - Apps can exit for a variety of reasons, from crash to system kill or user action. Across the many device types, memory configurations, and user scenarios that your app runs in, it’s important to understand why the app exited and what the state was at the time. Android 11 makes this easier with an exit reasons API that you can use to request details of the app’s recent exits. In DP3 we’ve updated the APIs based on your input, so please take a look. If you haven’t had a chance to check out this new API yet, we recommend giving it a try and please let us know what you think here.

GWP-ASan heap analysis - Android 11 uses a variety of tools to harden security-critical components in the platform and apps. In DP3, we’re adding GWP-ASan as another way to help developers find and fix memory safety issues. GWP-ASan is a sampling allocation tool that detects heap memory errors with minimal overhead or impact on performance. We’ve enabled GWP-ASan to run by default in platform binaries and system apps, and now you can now enable it for your apps as well. If your app uses native code or libraries, we recommend enabling GWP-ASan and testing as soon as possible. For details, see the documentation.

ADB Incremental - Installing very large APKs with ADB (Android Debug Bridge) during development can be slow and impact your productivity, especially those developers working on Android Games. With ADB Incremental in Android 11, installing large APKs (2GB+) from your development computer to an Android 11 device is up to 10x faster. To use this new developer tool, first sign your APK with the new APK signature scheme v4 format, and then install your APK with the updated ADB command line tool found in the Android 11 Preview SDK. This new feature is part of a broad suite of new tools we're investing in to make you more productive in building games on Android. Note that in DP3, ADB Incremental only works with Pixel 4 / 4XL devices due to a required file system change at the device level. All new devices launching with Android 11 will include this change and will support ADB Incremental. Learn more here.

Wireless Debugging - In Android 11, we’ve completely revamped the debugging experience using ADB over a Wi-Fi connection. With limited USB ports on laptops, and a myriad of USB cables & connections to manage, the Wireless Debugging feature in Android 11 can help you be more productive. Unlike the existing TCP/IP debugging workflow, Wireless Debugging on Android 11 does not need a cable to set up, remembers connections over time, and can utilize the full speed of the latest Wi-Fi standards. In DP3, use the pairing code workflow to get started with this developer feature. We plan to add an integrated experience for Wireless Debugging with QR code scanning in a future Android Studio release, but we want to get your early feedback on the command line tool offered in Android 11 DP3. For details, see the documentation.

Try the new wireless debugging feature in Developer Options

Try the new wireless debugging feature in Developer Options.

Data access auditing updates - In DP3 we renamed several of the APIs for this Android 11 developer feature. If you are already using the APIs, make sure to check out the changes. If you aren’t familiar, data access auditing lets you instrument your app to better understand how it accesses user data and from which user flows. For example, It can help you identify any inadvertent access to private data in your own code or within any SDKs you might be using. Give data access auditing a try in your apps - you can read more here. Let us know your feedback here.

For details on everything that’s changed in Developer Preview 3, take a look at the DP3 diff report and read the release notes for details about known issues.

App compatibility

With Developer Preview 3, we’re well on the way to finalizing features and APIs and shifting our focus to polish and performance. If you haven’t already, now is the time to begin testing your app for compatibility and identify any work you’ll need to do. We recommend releasing a compatible app update by Android 11 Beta to get feedback from the larger group of Android Beta users.

Compatibility testing timeline

When we reach Platform Stability, system behaviors, non-SDK greylists, and APIs are finalized. At that time, plan on doing your final compatibility testing and releasing your fully compatible app, SDK, or library as soon as possible so that it is ready for the final Android 11 release. You can read more in the timeline for developers.

You can start compatibility testing today on a Pixel 2, 3, 3a, or 4 device, or you can use the Android Emulator. Just flash the latest build, install your current production app, and test the user flows. Make sure to review the behavior changes for areas where your app might be affected. There’s no need to change the app’s targetSdkVersion at this time, although we recommend evaluating the work since many changes apply once your app is targeting the new API level.

To help you test, we’ve made many of the targetSdk changes toggleable, so you can force-enable or disable them individually from Developer options or ADB. Check out the details here. Also see the greylists of restricted non-SDK interfaces, which can also be enabled/disabled.

App compatibility toggles in Developer Options

App compatibility toggles in Developer Options.

Get started with Android 11

Developer Preview 3 has everything you need to try the latest Android 11 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. Just download and flash a device system image to a Pixel 2 / 2 XL, Pixel 3 / 3 XL, Pixel 3a / 3a XL, or Pixel 4 / 4 XL device, or set up the Android Emulator through Android Studio. Next, update your Android Studio environment with the latest Android 11 Preview SDK and tools, see the set up guide for details.

As always, your feedback is crucial, so please continue to let us know what you think — the sooner we hear from you, the more of your feedback we can integrate. When you find issues, please report them here.

For complete information on Android 11, visit the Android 11 developer site.

Android 11: Developer Preview 2

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Android 11 Dial logo

It’s been a difficult few months for many around the world. The Android team at Google is a global one, and we, like many of you, are learning how to adapt to these extraordinary times. We want to thank you, our developer community, who have given us valuable feedback on Android 11 amidst these circumstances. We hope you, your families and colleagues are all staying well.

Just as many of you are trying to press on with work where possible, we wanted to share the next milestone release of Android 11 for you to try. It’s still an early build, but you can start to see how the OS is enabling new experiences in this release, from seamless 5G connectivity to wrapping your UI around the latest screens, to a smarter keyboard and faster messaging experience.

There’s a lot to check out in Developer Preview 2 - read on for a few highlights and visit the Android 11 developer site for details. Today’s release is for developers only and not intended for daily or consumer use, so we’re making it available by manual download and flash only for Pixel 2, 3, 3a, or 4 devices. To make flashing a bit easier, you can optionally get today’s release from the Android Flash Tool. For those already running Developer Preview 1 or 1.1, we’re also offering an over-the-air (OTA) update to today’s release.

Let us know what you think, and thank you to everyone who has shared such great feedback so far.

New experiences

5G state API - DP2 adds a 5G state API to let you quickly check whether the user is currently on a 5G New Radio or Non-Standalone network. You can use this to highlight your app’s 5G experience or branding when the user is connected. You can use this API together with the 5G dynamic meteredness API and bandwidth estimator API, as well as existing connectivity APIs, to take advantage of 5G’s improved speeds and latency.

Hinge angle for foldables - A top request for foldable devices has been an API to get the angle of the device screen surfaces. Android 11 now supports a hinge angle sensor that lets apps query directly or through a new AndroidX API for the precise hinge angle, to create adaptive experiences for foldables.

Call screening service improvements - To help users manage robocalls, we’re adding new APIs to let call-screening apps do more to help users. In addition to verifying an incoming call’s STIR/SHAKEN status (standards that protect against caller ID spoofing) as part of its call details, call-screening apps can report a call rejection reason. Apps can also customize a system-provided post call screen to let users perform actions such as marking a call as spam or adding to contacts. We’ll have more to share on this soon.

New ops and controls in Neural Networks API - Activation functions control the output of nodes within a neural network. At Google AI, we discovered a swish activation function allowing for faster training time and higher accuracy across a wide variety of tasks. In Android 11, we’re adding a computationally efficient version of this function, the hard-swish op. This is key to accelerating next-generation on-device vision models such as MobileNetV3 which forms the base model for many transfer learning use cases. Another major addition is the Control ops enabling more advanced machine learning models that support branching and loops. Finally, we’ve also added new execution controls to help you minimize latency for common use cases: Asynchronous Command Queue APIs reduce the overhead when running small chained models. See the NDK sample code for examples using these new APIs.

Privacy and security

We’re adding several more features to help keep users secure and increase transparency and control. Give these a try with your apps right away and let us know what you think.

Foreground service types for camera and microphone - in Android 10 we introduced the manifest attribute foregroundServiceType as a way to help ensure more accountability for specific use-cases. Initially apps could choose from “location” and several others. Now in Android 11 we’re adding two new types - “camera” and “microphone”. If your app wants to access camera or mic data from a foreground service, you need to add the foregroundServiceType value to your manifest.

Scoped storage updates- We’re continuing to iterate on our work to better protect app and user data on external storage. In this release we’ve made further improvements and changes, such as support to migrate files from the legacy model to the new scoped storage model, and better management of cached files. Read more here and watch for more enhancements in subsequent updates.

Read more about these and other Android 11 privacy features here.

Polish and quality

Synchronized IME transitions - A new set of APIs let you synchronize your app’s content with the IME (input method editor, aka soft keyboard) and system bars as they animate on and offscreen, making it much easier to create natural, intuitive and jank-free IME transitions. For frame-perfect transitions, a new insets animation listener notifies apps of per-frame changes to insets while the system bars or the IME animate. Additionally, apps can take control of the IME and system bar transitions through the WindowInsetsAnimationController API. For example, app-driven IME experiences let apps control the IME in response to overscrolling the app UI. Give these new IME transitions a try and let us know what other transitions are important to you.

Synchronized IME transition through insets animation listener. App-driven IME experience through WindowInsetsAnimationController.

Synchronized IME transition through insets animation listener.

App-driven IME experience through WindowInsetsAnimationController.

Variable refresh rate - Apps and games can now set a preferred frame rate for their windows. Most Android devices refresh the display at 60Hz refresh rate, but some devices support multiple refresh rates, such as 90Hz as well as 60Hz, with runtime switching. On these devices, the system uses the app’s preferred frame rate to choose the best refresh rate for the app. The API is available in both the SDK and NDK. See the details here.

Resume on reboot - Android 11 improves the experience of scheduled overnight over-the-air software updates. Like in previous versions of Android, the device must still reboot to apply the OTA update, but with resume on reboot, apps are now able to access Credential Encrypted (CE) storage after the OTA reboot, without the user unlocking the device. This means apps can resume normal function and receive messages right away - important since OTA updates can be scheduled overnight while the device might be unattended. Apps can still support Direct Boot to access Device Encrypted (DE) immediately after all types of reboot. Give resume on reboot a try by tapping “Restart after 2AM” with your next Developer Preview OTA update, more details here.

Camera support in Emulator - The Android emulator now supports front and back emulated camera devices. The back camera supports Camera2 API HW Level 3 (includes YUV reprocessing, RAW capture). It’s a fully CTS-compliant LEVEL_3 device that you can use to test advanced features like ZSL and RAW/DNG support. The front camera supports FULL level with logical camera support (one logical device with two underlying physical devices). This camera emphasizes logical camera support, and the physical camera devices include narrow and wide field of view cameras. With this emulated camera support, you can build and test with any of the camera features added in Android 11. More details coming soon.

App compatibility

We’re working to make updates faster and smoother by prioritizing app compatibility as we roll out new platform versions. In Android 11 we’ve added new processes, tools, and release milestones to minimize the impact of platform updates and make them easier for developers.

With Developer Preview 2, we’re well into the release and getting closer to Beta. so now is the time to start your compatibility testing and identify any work you’ll need to do. We recommend doing the work early, so you can release a compatible update by Android 11 Beta 1. This lets you get feedback from the larger group of Android 11 Beta users.

timeline

When we reach Platform Stability, system behaviors, non-SDK greylists, and APIs are finalized. At this time, plan on doing your final compatibility testing and releasing your fully compatible app, SDK, or library as soon as possible so that it is ready for the final Android 11 release. More on the timeline for developers is here.

You can start compatibility testing on a Pixel 2, 3, 3a, or 4 device, or you can use the Android Emulator. Just flash the latest build, install your current production app, and test all of the user flows. There’s no need to change the app’s targetSdkVersion at this time. Make sure to review the behavior changes that could affect your app and test for impacts.

To help you with testing, we’ve made many of the breaking changes toggleable, so you can force-enable or disable them individually from Developer options or adb. Check out the details here. Also see the greylists of restricted non-SDK interfaces, which can also be enabled/disabled.

App compatibility toggles in Developer Options.

App compatibility toggles in Developer Options.

Get started with Android 11

Developer Preview has everything you need to try the Android 11 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. Just download and flash a device system image to a Pixel 2 / 2 XL, Pixel 3 / 3 XL, Pixel 3a / 3a XL, or Pixel 4 / 4 XL device, or set up the Android Emulator through Android Studio. Next, update your Android Studio environment with the Android 11 Preview SDK and tools, see the set up guide for details.

As always, your feedback is crucial, so please continue to let us know what you think — the sooner we hear from you, the more of your feedback we can integrate. When you find issues, please report them here.