Tag Archives: androidp

Introducing Android 9 Pie

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

After more than a year of development and months of testing by early adopters, we're ready to launch Android 9 Pie, the latest release of Android, to the world.

Android 9 harnesses the power of machine learning to make your phone smarter, simpler, and tailored to you. Read all about the new consumer features here. For developers, Android 9 includes many new ways to enhance your apps and build new experiences to drive engagement.

You've given us tons of feedback along the way--over a thousand bugs and feature requests--thank you! More than 140,000 of you tried our preview builds through the Android Beta program, and seven of our device maker partners also brought our Beta to their flagship devices, enabling users around the world to give their feedback too.

Today we're pushing the source code to Android Open Source Project (AOSP), and starting the Android 9 rollout to all Pixel users worldwide, with Android 9 coming to many more devices in the coming months.

We continue to move Android forward as the premier open platform for developers worldwide to build their businesses. With Android 9 -- together with the powerful new capabilities in Google Play for apps and games -- we're committed to helping you build great experiences, as well as reach and engage the right users safely and cost-effectively around the world.

What's in Android 9?

A smarter smartphone, with machine learning at the core

Android 9 helps your phone learn as you use it, by picking up on your preferences and adjusting automatically. Everything from helping users get the most out of their battery life to surfacing the best parts of the apps they use all the time, right when they need it most, Android 9 keeps things running smoother, longer.

Adaptive Battery

We partnered with DeepMind on a feature called Adaptive Battery that uses machine learning to prioritize system resources for the apps the user cares about most. If your app is optimized for Doze, App Standby, and Background Limits, Adaptive Battery should work well for you right out of the box. If you haven't yet taken optimized your app, make sure to check out the details in the power documentation to see how it works.

Slices

Slices can help users perform tasks faster by enabling engagement outside of the fullscreen app experience. It does this by using UI templates that can display rich, dynamic, and interactive content from your app from within the Google Search app and later in other places like the Google Assistant. You can learn more about building Slices to enhance your app here.

App Actions

App Actions is a new way to raise the visibility of your app and drive engagement. Actions take advantage of machine learning to surface your app to the user at just the right time, based on your app's semantic intents and the user's context.

We'll be sharing more details in the coming weeks on registering your app to handle one or more user intents, so your apps can be enabled for App Actions and surfaced across multiple Google and Android surfaces in response to user queries.

Text Classifier and Smart Linkify

We've extended the ML models that identify entities in content or text input to support more types like Dates and Flight Numbers through the TextClassifier API. Smart Linkify lets you take advantage of the TextClassifier models through the Linkify API, including enriched options for quick follow-on user actions. Smart Linkify also delivers significant improvements in accuracy of detection as well as performance.

Neural Networks API 1.1

Android 9 adds an updated version of the Neural networks API, to extend Android's support for accelerated on-device machine learning. Neural Networks 1.1 adds support for nine new ops -- Pad, BatchToSpaceND, SpaceToBatchND, Transpose, Strided Slice, Mean, Div, Sub, and Squeeze. A typical way to take advantage of the APIs is through TensorFlow Lite.

Getting the most from your phone -- more easily

We're excited about making your smartphone more intelligent. But it's also important that the technology fades to the back for users. In Android 9, we've evolved Android's UI to be simpler and more approachable -- for developers, these changes help improve the way users find, use, and manage your apps.

New system navigation

Android 9 introduces a new system navigation that we've been working on for more than a year. The new design helps make Android's multitasking more approachable and makes discovering apps much easier. You can swipe up from anywhere to see full-screen previews of recently used apps and simply tap to jump back into one of them.

Display cutout

Now your app can take full advantage of the latest edge-to-edge screens through display cutout support in Android 9. For most apps, supporting display cutout is seamless, with the system managing status bar height to separate your content from the cutout. If you have immersive content, you can use the display cutout APIs to check the position and shape of the cutout and request full-screen layout around it. To help with development and testing, we've added a Developer Option that simulates several cutout shapes on any device.

Apps with immersive content can display content fullscreen on devices with a display cutout.

Notifications and smart reply

Android 9 makes notifications even more useful and more actionable. Messaging apps can take advantage of the new MessagingStyle APIs to show conversations, attach photos and stickers, and even suggest smart replies. You'll soon be able to use ML Kit to generate smart reply suggestions for your app.

MessagingStyle notifications with conversations and smart replies [left], images and stickers [right].

Text Magnifier

In Android 9 we've added a Magnifier widget to improve the user experience of selecting text. The Magnifier widget lets users precisely position the cursor or the text selection handles by viewing zoomed text through a draggable pane. You can attach it to any view that is attached to a window, so you can use it in custom widgets or during custom text-rendering. The Magnifier widget can also provide a zoomed-in version of any view or surface, not just text.

Check out our recent blog post for more about this and other Text features, such as PrecomputedText and line height and baseline text alignment.

Security and privacy for users

Biometric prompt

With a range of biometric sensors in use for authentication, we've made the experience more consistent across sensor types and apps. Android 9 introduces a system-managed dialog to prompt the user for any supported type of biometric authentication. Apps no longer need to build their own dialog--instead they use the BiometricPrompt API to show the standard system dialog. In addition to Fingerprint (including in-display sensors), the API supports Face and Iris authentication.

If your app is drawing its own fingerprint auth dialogs, you should switch to using the BiometricPrompt API as soon as possible. See this post for more information.

Protected Confirmation

Android 9 introduces Android Protected Confirmation, which uses the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to guarantee that a given prompt string is shown and confirmed by the user. Only after successful user confirmation will the TEE then sign the prompt string, which the app can verify.

Stronger protection for private keys

We've added StrongBox as a new KeyStore type, providing API support for devices that provide key storage in tamper-resistant hardware with isolated CPU, RAM, and secure flash. You can set whether your keys should be protected by a StrongBox security chip in your KeyGenParameterSpec.

DNS over TLS

Android 9 adds built-in support for DNS over TLS, automatically upgrading DNS queries to TLS if a network's DNS server supports it. Users can manage DNS over TLS behavior in a new Private DNS Mode in Network & internet settings. Apps that perform their own DNS queries can use a new API, LinkProperties.isPrivateDnsActive(), to check the DNS mode. More in this post.

HTTPS by default

As part of a larger effort to move all network traffic away from cleartext (unencrypted HTTP) to websites secured with TLS (HTTPS), we're changing the defaults for Network Security Configuration to block all cleartext traffic. You'll now need to make connections over TLS, unless you explicitly opt-in to cleartext for specific domains. See the details here.

Compiler-based security mitigations

In Android 9 we've expanded our use of compiler-level mitigations to harden the platform through run-time detection of dangerous behavior. Control Flow Integrity (CFI) techniques help to prevent code-reuse attacks and arbitrary code execution. In Android 9 we've greatly expanded CFI usage within the media framework and other security-critical components, such as NFC and Bluetooth. We've also introduced CFI kernel support into the Android common kernel when building with LLVM.

We've also expanded our use of Integer overflow sanitizers to mitigate memory-corruption and information-disclosure vulnerabilities. We've prioritized sanitizers in libraries with past vulnerabilities or where complex untrusted input is processed, such as libui, libnl, libmediaplayerservice and others. See this post for details.

Privacy for users

Android 9 safeguards privacy in a number of new ways. The system now restricts access to mic, camera, and all SensorManager sensors from apps that are idle. While your app's UID is idle, the mic reports empty audio and sensors stop reporting events. Cameras used by your app are disconnected and will generate an error if the app tries to use them. In most cases, these restrictions should not introduce new issues for existing apps, but we recommend removing these requests from your apps.

Android 9 also gives the user control over access to the platform's build.serial identifier by putting it behind the READ_PHONE_STATE permission. To access the build.serial identifier, you should use the Build.getSerial() method.

Read more about all of the privacy changes here.

New experiences in camera, audio, and graphics

Multi-camera API and other camera updates

With Android 9 you can now open streams from two or more physical cameras simultaneously on devices that support the multi-camera API. On devices with either dual-front or dual-back cameras, you can create innovative features not possible with just a single camera, such as seamless zoom, bokeh, and stereo vision. The API also lets you call a logical or fused camera stream that automatically switches between two or more cameras.

Other improvements in camera include new Session parameters that help to reduce delays during initial capture, and Surface sharing that lets camera clients handle various use-cases without the need to stop and start camera streaming. We've also added APIs for display-based flash support and access to OIS timestamps for app-level image stabilization and special effects.

HDR VP9 Video and HEIF image compression

Android 9 adds built-in support for HDR VP9 Profile 2, so you can now deliver HDR-enabled movies to your users on HDR-capable devices.

We're excited to add HEIF (heic) image encoding to the platform. HEIF is a popular format for photos that improves compression to save on storage and network data. With platform support on Android 9 devices, it's easy to send and utilize HEIF images from your backend server. Once you've made sure that your app is compatible with this data format for sharing and display, give HEIF a try as an image storage format in your app. You can do a jpeg-to-heic conversion using ImageDecoder or BitmapFactory to obtain a bitmap from jpeg, and you can use HeifWriter in the AndroidX library to write HEIF still images from YUV byte buffer, Surface, or Bitmap.

Enhanced audio with Dynamics Processing

The Dynamics Processing API lets you use a new audio effect to isolate specific frequencies and lower loud or increase soft sounds to enhance the acoustic quality of your app. For example, you can improve the sound of someone who speaks quietly in a loud, distant or otherwise acoustically challenging environment. The API gives you access to a multi-stage, multi-band dynamics processing effect that includes a pre-equalizer, a multi-band compressor, a post-equalizer and a linked limiter.

ImageDecoder for bitmaps and drawables

An ImageDecoder API gives you an easier way to decode images to bitmaps or drawables. You can create a bitmap or drawable from a byte buffer, file, or URI. The API offers several advantages over BitmapFactory, including support for exact scaling, single-step decoding to hardware memory, support for post-processing in decode, and decoding of animated images. You can read more here.

Connectivity and location

Wi-Fi RTT for indoor positioning

Android 9 lets you build indoor positioning features into your apps through platform support for the IEEE 802.11mc Wi-Fi protocol -- also known as Wi-Fi Round-Trip-Time (RTT). On Android 9 devices with hardware support, location permission, and location enabled, your apps can use RTT APIs to measure the distance to nearby Wi-Fi Access Points (APs). The device doesn't need to connect to the APs to use RTT, and to maintain privacy, only the phone is able to determine the distance, not the APs.

Knowing the distance to 3 or more APs, you can calculate the device position with an accuracy of 1 to 2 meters. With this accuracy you can support use-cases like in-building navigation; fine-grained location-based services such as disambiguated voice control (e.g. 'Turn on this light'); and location-based information (e.g. 'Are there special offers for this product?').

Data cost sensitivity in JobScheduler

JobScheduler is Android's central service to help you manage scheduled tasks or work across Doze, App Standby, and Background Limits. In Android 9, JobScheduler handles network-related jobs better for the user, coordinating with network status signals provided separately by carriers. Jobs can now declare their estimated data size, signal prefetching, and specify detailed network requirements—carriers can report networks as being congested or unmetered. JobScheduler then manages work according to the network status. For example, when a network is congested, JobScheduler might defer large network requests. When unmetered, it can run prefetch jobs to improve the user experience, such as prefetching headlines.

Open Mobile API for NFC payments and secure transactions

Android 9 adds an implementation of the GlobalPlatform Open Mobile API to Android. On supported devices, apps can use the OMAPI API to access secure elements (SE) to enable smart-card payments and other secure services. A hardware abstraction layer (HAL) provides the underlying API for enumerating the variety of Secure Elements (eSE, UICC, and others) available.

Performance for apps

ART performance

Android 9 brings performance and efficiency improvements to all apps through the ART runtime. We've expanded ART's use of execution profiles to optimize apps and reduce the in-memory footprint of compiled app code. ART now uses profile information for on-device rewriting of DEX files, with reductions up to 11% across a range of popular apps. We expect these to correlate closely with reductions in system DEX memory usage and faster startup times for your apps.

Optimized for Kotlin

Kotlin is a first-class language on Android, and if you haven't tried it yet, you should! We've made an enduring commitment to Kotlin in Android and continue to expand support including optimizing the performance of Kotlin code. In Android 9, you'll see the first results of this work--we've improved several compiler optimizations, especially those that target loops, to extract better performance. We're also continuing to work in partnership with JetBrains to optimize Kotlin's generated code. You can get all of the latest Kotlin performance improvements just by keeping Android Studio's Kotlin plugin up-to-date.

Today, we are also releasing an update to the Android 9 - API 28 SDK (rev. 6), which contains nullability annotations in some of the most frequently used APIs. We'll provide more details about this in an upcoming post.

Modern Android

As part of Android 9 we are modernizing the foundations of Android and the apps that run on it, as part of our deep, sustained investments in security, performance, and stability.

As we announced last year, Google Play will require all app updates to target Android Oreo (targetSdkVersion 26 or higher) by November 2018. In line with that, if your app targets a platform earlier than Android 4.2 (API level 17), users installing it will see a warning dialog after that day. Here's a checklist of resources for help and support as you migrate -- we're looking forward to seeing your apps getting the most from modern Android.

Get your apps ready for Android 9!

With Android 9 coming to Pixel users starting today, and to other devices in the months ahead, it's important to test your app for compatibility as soon as possible. Just install your current app from Google Play on a device or or emulator running Android 9. As you work through the flows, make sure your app runs and looks great, and that it handles the Android 9 behavior changes properly.

Also watch for uses of non-SDK interfaces in your app. Android 9 restricts access to selected non-SDK interfaces, so you should reduce your reliance on them. See our recent post for details.

After you've made any necessary updates, we recommend publishing to Google Play right away. without changing the app's platform targeting. This lets you ensure a great experience for Android 9 users while you work on enhancing your app with Android 9 APIs and targeting.

Enhance your app with Android 9 features and APIs

When you're ready, dive into Android 9 and build with the new features and APIs in Android 9.

To get started, just download the official API 28 SDK and the latest tools and emulator images into Android Studio 3.1, or use the latest version of Android Studio 3.2. Then update your project's compileSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion to API 28. When you change your targeting, make sure your app supports all of the applicable behavior changes.

As soon as you're ready, publish your APK updates to Google Play. A common strategy is to use Google Play's beta testing feature to get early feedback from a small group of users and then do a staged rollout to production.

Visit the Android 9 site for details and developer documentation. Also check out this video and the Google I/O Android Playlist for more on what's new in Android 9 for developers.

Coming to a device near you

Starting today, an over-the-air update to Android 9 will begin rolling out to Pixel phones. And devices that participated in the Beta program from Sony Mobile, Xiaomi, HMD Global, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, and Essential, as well as all qualifying Android One devices, will receive this update by the end of this fall! We are also working with a number of other partners to launch or upgrade devices to Android 9 this year.

As always, the system images for Pixel devices are available here for manual flash and download. If you're looking for the Android 9 source, you'll find it here in the Android Open Source Project repository under the Android 9 branches.

What's next?

Now that we've reached the official release, we're bringing the Developer Preview to a close. We'll soon be closing the Developer Preview issue tracker to new issues, so if you have feedback, feel free to file a new issue against Android 9 in the AOSP issue tracker.

Thanks again to the many developers and early adopters who participated in the Android 9 Developer Preview and public beta. Your contributions have been critical to making the Android 9 platform a great one for developers and consumers.

Final preview update, official Android P coming soon!

Posted By Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Android P is almost here! As we put the finishing touches on the new platform, today we're bringing you Android P Beta 4.

Beta 4 is the last preview milestone before we launch the official Android P platform later this summer. Take this opportunity to test your apps and publish updates, to make sure you offer a great experience for users transitioning to Android P!

What's in this update?

Today's Beta 4 update includes a release candidate build with final system behaviors and the official Android P APIs (API level 28), available since Beta 2. It includes everything you need to wrap up your testing in time for the upcoming official Android P release.

Get your apps ready for Android P

With the consumer launch coming soon, it's important to test your app for compatibility with Android P. Just install your current app from Google Play on an Android P Beta device or emulator. As you work through the flows, make sure your app runs and looks great, and that it handles the Android P behavior changes properly.

Also watch for uses of non-SDK interfaces in your app. Android P restricts access to selected non-SDK interfaces, so you should reduce your reliance on them. See our recent post for details..

After you've made any necessary updates, we recommend publishing to Google Play right away without changing the app's platform targeting. This lets you ensure a great experience for Android P users while you work on enhancing your app with Android P APIs and targeting.

Enhance your app with Android P features and APIs

When you're ready, dive into Android P and learn about the new features and APIs that you can use in your apps, like multi-camera support, display cutout, enhanced notifications, ImageDecoder, TextClassifier, and others.

To build with the new APIs, just download the official API 28 SDK and tools into Android Studio 3.1, or use the latest version of Android Studio 3.2. Then update your project's compileSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion to API 28. When you change your targeting, make sure your app supports all of the applicable behavior changes.

As soon as you're ready, publish your APK updates that are compiled against, or optionally targeting, API 28. A common strategy is to use Google Play's beta testing feature to get early feedback from a small group of users and then do a staged rollout to production.

Visit the Developer Preview site for details and documentation. Also check out this video and the Google I/O Android playlist for more on what's new in Android P for developers.

How do I get Beta 4?

It's easy - you can get Android P Beta 4 on Pixel devices by enrolling here. If you're already enrolled in our Android Beta program, you'll automatically get the Beta 4 update soon. As always, downloadable system images for Pixel devices are also available. Partners who are participating in the Android P Beta program will also be updating their devices to Beta 4 over the coming weeks.

What's next?

Stay tuned for the official Android P launch coming soon! You can continue to share your feedback or requests in the meantime, and feel free to use our hotlists for platform issues, app compatibility issues, and third-party SDK issues.

Thanks for your feedback so far, and thank you to everyone who participated in our recent Reddit AMA on r/androiddev!

What’s new for text in Android P

Posted by Florina Muntenescu, Developer Advocate & Siyamed Sinir Android Text Technical Lead

In "What's new in Android P Beta" we mentioned two of the new text features in Android.. Now that Android P Beta 2 and the final APIs are here, it's time to dive deeper into what's new for text. We know that TextView is one of the most critical components of the Android view system. This is why we continue to invest in both developer- and user-facing features and API improvements.

PrecomputedText

Displaying text can be complex, encompassing features like multiple fonts, line spacing, letter spacing, text direction, line breaking, hyphenation and more. TextView has to do a lot of work to measure and lay out the given text: reading the font file, finding a glyph, decide the shape, measure the bounding box, and caching the word in an internal word cache. What's more, all of this work takes place on the UI thread, where it could potentially cause your app to drop frames.

We found that measuring text can take up to 90% of the time required to set the text. To solve this problem, in Android P and as part of Jetpack, we introduced a new API: PrecomputedText. This API is available as far back as API 14 via PrecomputedTextCompat.

PrecomputedText enables an app to perform the most time-consuming parts of text layout beforehand, even on a background thread, caching the layout result and returning valuable measurement data. The result of PrecomputedText.create(CharSequence, params) can then be set on a TextView. With this, only about 10% of the work remains to be done by the TextView.

Percentage of time taken to measure and layout text

Percentage of time taken to measure and layout text

// UI thread
val params: PrecomputedText.Params = textView.getTextMetricsParams()
val ref = WeakReference(textView)
executor.execute {
    // background thread
    val text = PrecomputedText.create("Hello", params)
    val textView = ref.get()
    textView?.post {
        // UI thread
        val textViewRef = ref.get()
        textViewRef?.text = text
    }
}

Magnifier

Even with features like Smart Text Selection, precisely selecting text can be challenging. Android P introduces the text Magnifier to improve the user experience of selecting text. The magnifier helps users precisely position the cursor or the text selection handles by viewing magnified text through a pane that can be dragged over the text.

Magnifying text in Android P

Magnifying text in Android P

We wanted users to have the same experience across all apps, whether in custom widgets or during custom text-rendering, so we provided a Magnifier widget that can be applied to any view that is attached to a window. The Magnifier widget can provide a zoomed-in version of any view or surface, not just text.

The Magnifier has 3 main methods: show, update and dismiss. For example, you could call these methods when implementing onTouchEvent-handling for your custom view. This would cause the Magnifier to follow the user's finger along the screen. 

fun onTouchEvent(event: MotionEvent): Boolean {
    when (event.actionMasked) {
        MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN -> 
              magnifier.show(event.x, event.y)
        MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE -> 
             magnifier.show(event.x, event.y)
        MotionEvent.ACTION_UP -> 
             magnifier.dismiss()
    }
}

Smart Linkify

The Linkify class, which has existed since API 1, allows adding links to text using regexes. On top of that, finding physical addresses spins up a WebView instance to produce the results, which can degrade the performance of the app requesting links. To make link resolution more accurate, especially for internationalized text, and to mitigate the performance degradation caused by the WebView, we created Smart Linkify. Smart Linkify can be accessed using TextClassifier API.

Smart Linkify uses machine-learning algorithms and models to recognize entities in text. This improves the reliability of the entities recognized. Smart Linkify can, based on entity type,suggest actions that the user can perform. For example, if Smart Linkify recognizes a phone number, the API suggests actions such as sending a text message, making a call, or adding to contacts.

Smart Linkify in Android P

Smart Linkify in Android P

To improve the performance of your app, move the work of generating and applying links to a background thread. 

// UI thread
val text: Spannable = ...
val request = TextLinks.Request.Builder(text)
val ref = WeakReference(textView)
executor.execute {
    // background thread
    TextClassifier.generateLinks(request).apply(text)
    val textView = ref.get()
    textView?.post {
        // UI thread
        val textViewRef = ref.get()
        textViewRef?.text = text
    }
}

Line Height and Baseline Text Alignment

Designers sometimes provide layout specifications to developers that do not match existing TextView attributes perfectly. On Android P and in Jetpack we added three attributes, together with their corresponding functions, to help bridge this gap between how designers and developers work.

Setting line height

Before Android P, the spacing between lines could be controlled using the lineSpacingExtra and lineSpacingMultiplier attributes. However, designers will commonly provide these values as a simple line height, instead. For this reason, on Android P, we added the lineHeight attribute to set the line height of the text: that is, the distance between the top and bottom of a line (or distance between subsequent baselines). Under the hood, this attribute actually uses and modifies the existing lineSpacingExtra and lineSpacingMultiplier attributes.

Size of line height and font size

Size of line height and font size

<TextView
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:text="Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet"
    app:lineHeight="50sp"/>

// or in code
TextView.setLineHeight(@Px int)

Setting the baseline text alignment

To control the distances of the first and last baselines from the view boundaries, we added two new attributes: firstBaselineToTopHeight and lastBaselineToBottomHeight.

firstBaselineToTopHeight: Sets the distance between the TextView's top boundary and the baseline of the first line of the TextView. Under the hood this attribute updates the top padding.

lastBaselineToBottomHeight: Sets the distance between the TextView's bottom boundary and the baseline of the last line of the TextView. Under the hood, this attribute actually updates the bottom padding.

Distances between first base line to top and last baseline to bottom

Distances between first base line to top and last baseline to bottom

<TextView
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:text="Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet"
    app:firstBaselineToTopHeight="28sp"
    app:lastBaselineToBottomHeight="20sp"/>

// or in code
TextView.setFirstBaselineToTopHeight(@Px int)
TextView.setLastBaselineToBottomHeight(@Px int)

Text plays an important role in a vast majority of apps - it's a crucial part of an app's design language. Text is consumed by users, and it even renders emoji ?. We're continuing to invest in text, improving the experience of both app users and developers.

To learn more about working with text APIs and what's new in Android P for text, check out the Google I/O 2018 talk on "Best practices with text":

What’s new in Android P Beta

Posted By Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Earlier today we unveiled a beta version of Android P, the next release of Android. Android P puts AI at the core of the operating system and focuses on intelligent and simple experiences. You can read more about the new user features here.

For developers, Android P beta offers a range of ways to take advantage of these new smarts, especially when it comes to increasing engagement with your apps.

You can get Android P beta on Pixel devices by enrolling here. And thanks to Project Treble, you can now get the beta on top devices from our partners as well -- Essential, Nokia, Oppo, Sony, Vivo, and Xiaomi, with others on the way.

Visit android.com/beta for the full list of devices, and details on how to get Android P beta on your device. To get started developing with Android P beta, visit developer.android.com/preview.

A smarter smartphone, with machine learning at the core

Android P makes a smartphone smarter, helping it learn from and adapt to the user. Your apps can take advantage of the latest in machine intelligence to help you reach more users and offer new kinds of experiences.

Adaptive Battery

Battery is the number one priority we hear from mobile phone users, regardless of the device they are using. In Android P we've partnered with DeepMind on a new feature we call Adaptive Battery that optimizes how apps use battery.

Adaptive Battery uses machine learning to prioritize access to system resources for the apps the user cares about most. It puts running apps into groups with different restrictions using four new "App Standby buckets" ranging from "active" to "rare". Apps will change buckets over time, and apps not in the "active" bucket will have restrictions in: jobs, alarms, network and high-priority Firebase Cloud Messages.

If your app is optimized for Doze, App Standby, and Background Limits, Adaptive Battery should work well for you right out of the box. We recommend testing your app in each of the four buckets. Check out the documentation for the details.

App Actions

App Actions are a new way to raise the visibility of your app to users as they start their tasks. They put your app's core capabilities in front of users as suggestions to handle their tasks, from key touch-points across the system like the Launcher and Smart Text Selection, Google Play, Google Search app, and the Assistant.

Actions use machine learning to surface just the right apps to users based on their context or recent interactions. Because Actions highlight your app where and when it's most relevant, they're a great way to reach new users and re-engage with existing users.

To support App Actions, just define your app's capabilities as semantic intents. App Actions use the same catalog of common intents as conversational Actions for the Google Assistant, which surface on voice-activated speakers, Smart displays, cars, TVs, headphones, and more. There's no API surface needed for App Actions, so they will work on any supported Android platform version.

Actions will be available soon for developers to try, sign up here if you'd like to be notified.

Slices

Along with App Actions we're introducing Slices, a new way for your apps to provide remote content to users. With Slices you can surface rich, templated UI in places like Google Search and Assistant. Slices are interactive with support for actions, toggles, sliders, scrolling content, and more.

Slices are a great new way to engage users and we wanted them to be available as broadly as possible. We added platform support in Android P, and we built the developer APIs and templates into Android Jetpack, our new set of libraries and tools for building great apps. Through Jetpack, your Slices implementation can target users all the way back to Kitkat -- across 95% of active Android devices. We'll also be able to update the templates regularly to support new use cases and interactions (such as text input).

Check out the Getting Started guide to learn how to build with Slices -- you can use the SliceViewer tool to see how your Slices look. Over time we plan to expand the number of places that your Slices can appear, including remote display in other apps.

Smart reply in notifications

The Smart Reply feature in Gmail and Inbox are excellent examples of how machine intelligence can positively transform an app experience. In Android P we've brought Smart Replies to Notifications with an API to let you provide this optimization to your users. To make it easier to populate replies in your notifications, you'll soon be able to use ML Kit -- see developers.google.com/mlkit for details.

Text Classifier

In Android P we've extended the ML models that identify entities in content or text input to support more types like Dates and Flight Numbers and we're making those improvements available to developers through the TextClassifier API. We're also updating the Linkify API that automatically creates links to take advantage of these TextClassification models and have enriched the options the user has for quick follow on actions. Developers will have additional options of linkifying any of the entities recognized by the TextClassifier service. Smart Linkify has significant improvements in accuracy and precision of detection and performance.

Even better, the models are now updated directly from Google Play, so your apps can take advantage of model improvements using the same APIs. Once the updated models are installed, all of the entity recognition happens on-device and data is not sent over the network.

Simplicity

We put a special emphasis on simplicity in Android P, evolving Android's UI to streamline and enhance user tasks. For developers, the changes help improve the way users find, use, and manage your apps.

New system navigation

We're introducing a new system navigation in Android P that gives users easier access to Home, Overview, and the Assistant from a single button on every screen. The new navigation simplifies multitasking and makes discovering related apps much easier. In the Overview, users have a much larger view of what they were doing when they left each app, making it much easier to see and resume the activity. The Overview also provides access to search, predicted apps, and App Actions, and takes users to All Apps with another swipe.

Text Magnifier

In Android P we've also added a new Magnifier widget, designed to make it easier to select text and manipulate the text cursor in text. By default, classes that extend TextView automatically support the magnifier, but you can use the Magnifier API to attach it to any custom View, which opens it up to a variety of uses.

Background restrictions

We're making it simple for users to identify and manage apps that are using battery in the background. From our work on Android Vitals, Android can detect battery-draining app behaviors such as excessive wake locks and others. Now in Android P, Battery Settings lists such apps and lets users restrict their background activities with a single tap.

When an app is restricted, its background jobs, alarms, services, and network access are affected. To stay off of the list, pay attention to your Android Vitals dashboard in the Play Console, which can help you understand performance and battery issues.

Background Restrictions ensures baseline behaviors that developers can build for across devices and manufacturers. Although device makers can add restrictions on top of the core set, they must provide user controls via Battery Settings.

We've added a standard API to let apps check whether they are restricted, as well as new ADB commands to let you manually apply restrictions to your apps for testing. See the documentation for details. We also plan to add restrictions related metrics to your Play Console Android Vitals dashboard in the future.

Enhanced audio with Dynamics Processing

Android P introduces a new Dynamics Processing Effect in the Audio Framework that lets developers improve audio quality. With Dynamics Processing, you can isolate specific frequencies and lower loud or increase soft sounds to enhance the acoustic quality of your application. For example, your app can improve the sound of someone who speaks quietly in a loud, distant or otherwise acoustically challenging environment.

The Dynamics Processing API gives you access to a multi-stage, multi-band dynamics processing effect that includes a pre-equalizer, a multi-band compressor, a post-equalizer and a linked limiter. It lets you modify the audio coming out of Android devices and optimize it according to the preferences of the listener or the ambient conditions. The number of bands and active stages is fully configurable, and most parameters can be controlled in realtime, such as gains, attack/release times, thresholds, etc.

To see what you can do with the Dynamics Processing Effect, please see the documentation.

Security

Biometric prompt

Android P provides a standard authentication experience across the growing range of biometric sensors. Apps can use the new BiometricPrompt API instead of displaying their own biometric auth dialogs. This new API replaces the FingerprintDialog API added in DP1. In addition to supporting Fingerprints (including in-display sensors), it also supports Face and Iris authentication, providing a system-wide consistent experience. There is a single USE_BIOMETRIC permission that covers all device-supported biometrics. FingerprintManager and the corresponding USE_FINGERPRINT permission are now deprecated, so please switch to BiometricPrompt as soon as possible.

Protected Confirmation

Android P introduces Android Protected Confirmation, which use the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to guarantee that a given prompt string is shown and confirmed by the user. Only after successful user confirmation will the TEE then sign the prompt string, which the app can verify.

Stronger protection for private keys

We've added StrongBox as a new KeyStore type, providing API support for devices that provide key storage in tamper-resistant hardware with isolated CPU, RAM, and secure flash. You can set whether your keys should be protected by a StrongBox security chip in your KeyGenParameterSpec.

Android P Beta

Bringing a new version of Android to users takes a combined effort across Google, silicon manufacturers (SM), device manufacturers (OEMs), and carriers. The process is technically challenging and can take time -- to make it easier, we launched Project Treble last year as part of Android Oreo. Since then we've been working with partners on the initial bring-up and now we're seeing proof of what Treble can do.

Today we announced that 6 of our top partners are joining us to release Android P Beta on their devices -- Sony Xperia XZ2, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S, Nokia 7 Plus, Oppo R15 Pro, Vivo X21UD and X21, and Essential PH‑1. We're inviting early adopters and developers around the world to try Android P Beta on any of these devices -- as well as on Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel, and Pixel XL.

You can see the full list of supported partner and Pixel devices at android.com/beta. For each device you'll find specs and links to the manufacturer's dedicated site for downloads, support, and to report issues. For Pixel devices, you can now enroll your device in the Android Beta program and automatically receive the latest Android P Beta over-the-air.

Try Android P Beta on your favorite device today and let us know your feedback! Stay tuned for updates on Project Treble coming soon.

Make your apps compatible

With more users starting to get Android P Beta on their devices, now is the time to test your apps for compatibility, resolve any issues, and publish an update as soon as possible. See the migration guide for steps and a recommended timeline.

To test for compatibility, just install your current app from Google Play onto a device or emulator running Android P Beta and work through the user flows. The app should run and look great, and handle the Android P behavior changes properly. In particular, pay attention to adaptive battery, Wi-Fi permissions changes, restrictions on use of camera and sensors from the background, stricter SELinux policy for app data, and changes in TLS enabled by default, and Build.SERIAL restriction.

Compatibility through public APIs

It's important to test your apps for uses of non-SDK interfaces. As noted previously, in Android P we're starting a gradual process to restrict access to selected non-SDK interfaces, asking developers -- including app teams inside Google -- to use the public equivalents instead.

If your apps are using private Android interfaces and libraries, you should move to using public APIs from the Android SDK or NDK. The first developer preview displayed a toast warning for uses of non-SDK interfaces -- starting in Android P Beta, uses of non-SDK interfaces that are not exempted will generate errors in your apps -- so you'll now get exceptions thrown instead of a warning.

To help you identify reflective usage of non-SDK APIs, we've added two new methods in StrictMode. You can use detectNonSdkApiUsage() to warn when your app accesses non-SDK APIs via reflection or JNI, and you can use permitNonSdkApiUsage() to suppress StrictMode warnings for those accesses. This can help you understand your app's use of non-SDK APIs -- even if the APIs are exempted at this time, it's best to plan for the future and eliminate their use.

In cases where there is no public API that meets your use-case, please let us know immediately. We want to make sure that the initial rollout only affects interfaces where developers can easily migrate to public alternatives. More about the restrictions is here.

Test with display cutout

It's also important to test your app with display cutout. Now you can use several of our partner devices running Android Beta to make sure your app looks its best with a display cutout. You can also use the emulated cutout support that's available on any Android P device through Developer options.

Get started with Android P

When you're ready, dive into Android P and learn about the many new features and APIs you can take advantage of in your apps. To make it easier to explore the new APIs, take a look at the API diff reports (API 27->DP2, DP1->DP2) along with the Android P API reference. Visit the Developer Preview site for details. Also check out this video highlighting what's new for developers in Android P Beta.

To get started with Android P, download the P Developer Preview SDK and tools into Android Studio 3.1 or use the latest version of Android Studio 3.2. If you don't have a device that runs Android P Beta, you can use the Android emulator to run and test your app.

As always, your feedback is critical, so please 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. We have separate hotlists for filing platform issues, app compatibility issues, and third-party SDK issues.

Previewing Android P

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Last week at Mobile World Congress we saw that Android's ecosystem of developers, device makers, and silicon partners continues to bring amazing experiences to users worldwide.

Looking ahead, today we're sharing the first developer preview of Android P, the newest version of Android. It's an early baseline build for developers only -- you're our most trusted reviewers and testers ;-) Early feedback from our developer community is crucial in helping us evolve the platform to meet your needs. We'd love to get you started exercising the new features and APIs in P, and as always, we depend on your early feedback and ideas, so please give us your input!

This first developer preview of Android P is just the start - we'll have lots more to share at Google I/O in May, stay tuned!

New features to try in your apps

Here's a look at some of the cool features in this first preview of Android P that we want you to try and give feedback on.

Indoor positioning with Wi-Fi RTT

Accurate indoor positioning has been a long-standing challenge that opens new opportunities for location-based services. Android P adds platform support for the IEEE 802.11mc WiFi protocol -- also known as WiFi Round-Trip-Time (RTT) -- to let you take advantage of indoor positioning in your apps.

On Android P devices with hardware support, location permission, and location enabled, your apps can use RTT APIs to measure the distance to nearby WiFi Access Points (APs). The device doesn't need to connect to the APs to use RTT, and to maintain privacy, only the phone is able to determine the distance, not the APs.

Knowing the distance to 3 or more APs, you can calculate the device position with an accuracy of 1 to 2 meters. With this accuracy, you can build new experiences like in-building navigation; fine-grained location-based services such as disambiguated voice control (e.g.,'Turn on this light'); and location-based information (e.g., 'Are there special offers for this product?').

Display cutout support

Now apps can take full advantage of the latest device screens with fullscreen content. We've added display cutout into the platform, along with APIs that you can use to manage how your content is displayed.

Cutout support works seamlessly for apps, with the system managing status bar height to separate your content from the cutout. If you have critical, immersive content, you can also use new APIs to check the cutout shape and request full-screen layout around it. You can check whether the current device has a cutout by calling getDisplayCutout(), and then determine the location and shape of the cutout area using DisplayCutout. A new window layout attribute, layoutInDisplayCutoutMode, lets you tell the system how and when lay out your content relative to the cutout area. Details are here.

To make it easier to build and test cutout support in your app, we've added a Developer Option that simulates a cutout on any device. We recommend testing your existing apps with display cutout enabled to ensure that your content displays properly.

Apps with immersive content can display content fullscreen on devices with a display cutout.

Improved messaging notifications

In Android P we've put a priority on improving visibility and function in notifications. Try the new MessagingStyle notification style -- it highlights who is messaging and how you can reply. You can show conversations, attach photos and stickers, and even suggest smart replies. See the details here.

In MessagingStyle notifications you can now show conversations and smart replies [left] and even attach images and stickers [right].

Multi-camera API

You can now access streams simultaneously from two or more physical cameras on devices running Android P. On devices with either dual-front or dual-back cameras, you can create innovative features not possible with just a single camera, such as seamless zoom, bokeh, and stereo vision. The API also lets you call a logical or fused camera stream that automatically switches between two or more cameras. We're looking forward to seeing your new and exciting creations as Android P devices supporting multiple cameras reach the market in the year ahead.

Other improvements in camera include new Session parameters that help to reduce delays during initial capture, and Surface sharing that lets camera clients handle various use-cases without the need to stop and start camera streaming. We've also added APIs for display-based flash support and access to OIS timestamps for app-level image stabilization and special effects.

ImageDecoder for bitmaps and drawables

Android P gives you an easier way to decode images to bitmaps or drawables -- ImageDecoder, which deprecates BitmapFactory. ImageDecoder lets you create a bitmap or drawable from a byte buffer, file, or URI. It offers several advantages over BitmapFactory, including support for exact scaling, single-step decoding to hardware memory, support for post-processing in decode, and decoding of animated images.

You can decode and scale to an exact size just by calling setResize() with the target dimensions. You can also call getSampledSize() to get the image dimensions at a specific sample rate, then scale to those dimensions. If you want post-process an image -- such as applying rounded corners for circle masks or more complicated effects -- you can pass ImageDecoder any android.graphics.PostProcessor. You can also create Drawables directly, with ImageDecoder.decodeDrawable(). If the encoded image is an animated GIF or WebP, the Drawable will be an instance of the new AnimatedImageDrawable.

HDR VP9 Video, HEIF image compression, and Media APIs

Android P adds built-in support for HDR VP9 Profile 2, so you can now deliver HDR-enabled movies to your users from YouTube, Play Movies, and other sources on HDR-capable devices.

We're excited to add HEIF (heic) image encoding to the platform. HEIF is a popular format for photos that improves compression to save on storage and network data. With platform support on Android P devices, it's easy to send and utilize HEIF images from your backend server. Once you've made sure that your app is compatible with this data format for sharing and display, give HEIF a try as an image storage format in your app. You can do a jpeg-to-heic conversion using ImageDecoder or BitmapFactory to obtain a bitmap from jpeg, and you can use HeifWriter in the new Support Library alpha to write HEIF still images from YUV byte buffer, Surface, or Bitmap.

We're also in the process of enhancing and refactoring the media APIs to make them easier to develop and integrate with -- watch for details coming later this year.

Data cost sensitivity in JobScheduler

JobScheduler is Android's central service to help you manage scheduled tasks or work across Doze, App Standby, and Background Limits changes. In Android P, JobScheduler handles network-related jobs better for the user, coordinating with network status signals provided separately by carriers.

Jobs can now declare their estimated data size, signal prefetching, and specify detailed network requirements—carriers can report networks as being congested or unmetered. JobScheduler then manages work according to the network status. For example, when a network is congested, JobScheduler might defer large network requests. When unmetered, it can run prefetch jobs to improve the user experience, such as by prefetching headlines.

When you are adding jobs, try using setEstimatedNetworkBytes(), setIsPrefetch() and setRequiredNetwork() to let JobScheduler handle the work properly. When your job executes, be sure to use the Network object returned by JobParameters.getNetwork(), otherwise you'll implicitly use the device's default network which may not meet your requirements, causing unintended data usage.

Neural Networks API 1.1

We introduced the Neural Networks API in Android 8.1 to accelerate on-device machine learning on Android. In Android P we're expanding and improving this API, adding support for nine new ops -- Pad, BatchToSpaceND, SpaceToBatchND, Transpose, Strided Slice, Mean, Div, Sub, and Squeeze. If you have a Pixel 2 device, the DP1 build now includes an Qualcomm Hexagon HVX driver with acceleration for quantized models.

Autofill improvements

In Android P we're continuing to improve the Autofill Framework based on feedback from users and developers. Along with key bugfixes, this release includes new APIs that allow password managers to improve the Autofill user experience, such as better dataset filtering, input sanitization, and compatibility mode. Compatibility mode in particular has a high impact on end users because it lets password managers take the accessibility-based approach in apps that don't yet have full Autofill support, but without impacts on performance or security. See all the details on what's new here.

Open Mobile API for NFC payments and secure transactions

Android P adds an implementation of the GlobalPlatform Open Mobile API to Android. On supported devices, apps can use the OMAPI API to access secure elements (SE) to enable smart-card payments and other secure services. A hardware abstraction layer (HAL) provides the underlying API for enumerating a variety of Secure Elements (eSE, UICC, and others) available.

Strengthening Android's foundations

In Android P we're continuing our long-term investment to make Android the best platform for developers.

Security for apps

In Android P we're moving to a more consistent UI for fingerprint authentication across apps and devices. Android now provides a standard system dialog to prompt the user to touch the fingerprint sensor, managing text and placement as appropriate for the device. Apps can trigger the system fingerprint dialog using a new FingerprintDialog API. We recommend switching to the new system dialog as soon as possible.

As part of a larger effort to move all network traffic away from cleartext (unencrypted HTTP) to TLS, we're also changing the defaults for Network Security Configuration to block all cleartext traffic. If you are using a Network Security Configuration, you'll now need to make connections over TLS, unless you explicitly opt-in to cleartext for specific domains.

Privacy for users

To better ensure privacy, Android P restricts access to mic, camera, and all SensorManager sensors from apps that are idle. While your app's UID is idle, the mic reports empty audio and sensors stop reporting events. Cameras used by your app are disconnected and will generate an error if the app tries to use them. In most cases, these restrictions should not introduce new issues for existing apps, but we recommend removing these requests from your apps.

We will also enable encryption of Android backups with a client-side secret. This feature is still in active development and will be launched in a future Android P preview release.

Longer term we're working to bring support for per-network randomization of associated MAC addresses to the platform. On supported devices running Android P, you can enable this experimentally for testing as a new developer option.

Android P also gives the user control over access to the platform's build.serial identifier by putting it behind the READ_PHONE_STATE permission. Direct access to this identifier has been deprecated since Android 8.0. In order to access the build.serial identifier, you should use the Build.getSerial() method.

ART performance

We're working to bringing performance and efficiency improvements to all apps through the ART runtime. We've expanded ART's use of execution profiles to optimize apps and reduce in-memory footprint of compiled app code. ART now uses profile information for on-device rewriting of DEX files, with reductions up to 11% across a range of popular apps. We expect these to correlate closely with reductions in system DEX memory usage and faster startup times for your apps.

Optimized Kotlin

Kotlin is a first-class language on Android, and if you haven't tried it yet, you should! We've made an enduring commitment to Kotlin in Android and continue to expand support including optimizing the performance of Kotlin code. In P you'll see the first results of this work -- we've improved several compiler optimizations, especially those that target loops, to extract better performance. We're also continuing to work in partnership with JetBrains to optimize Kotlin's generated code. You can get all of the latest Kotlin performance improvements just by keeping Android Studio's Kotlin plugin up-to-date.

Power efficiency

In Android P we continue to refine Doze, App Standby, and Background Limits to further improve battery life; please be sure to try your apps with these and send feedback.

Targeting modern Android

Android P is shaped by our longer-term initiatives to modernize the foundations of Android and the apps that run on it. As we announced recently, Google Play will require all app updates to target Android Oreo (targetSdkVersion 26 or higher) by November 2018, with support for 64-bit hardware on the horizon for 2019.

In line with these changes, Android P will warn users with a dialog when they install an app that targets a platform earlier than Android 4.2 (targetSdkVersion less than 17), and future platform versions will continue to increment that lower bound. We're encouraging every Android developer to start planning the migration to target API 26 now, and to start the migration work as soon as possible. Here's a checklist of resources for help and support -- we're looking forward to seeing your apps getting the most from modern Android.

Improving app compatibility through public APIs

A key issue for users and developers is app compatibility -- making sure that apps are ready for new platform versions as they arrive, without risk of crashes for users and emergency rollouts for developers. Apps that use Android's public APIs from the SDK or NDK are in a good position to be compatible, but apps that use private Android interfaces and libraries are not.

So with Android P we're starting a gradual process to restrict access to selected non-SDK interfaces, asking developers -- including app teams inside Google -- to use the public equivalents instead. In cases where there is no public equivalent for your use-case, please let us know -- we want to make sure that this process is as smooth as possible for developers, so we'll use your feedback to ensure the initial rollout only affects APIs where developers can easily migrate to public alternatives. More about the restrictions is here.

Get started in a few simple steps

First, make your app compatible to give your users a seamless transition to Android P. Just download a device system image or emulator system image, install your current app, and test -- the app should run and look great, and handle behavior changes properly. After you've made any necessary updates, we recommend publishing to Google Play right away without changing the app's platform targeting.

Remember, you don't need a supported Pixel device to test or develop on Android P. For most uses we highly recommend setting up an Android Virtual Device on the Android Emulator as a test environment instead. If you haven't tried the emulator recently, you'll find that it's incredibly fast , boots in under 6 seconds, convenient to use, and you can even model next-gen screens -- such as long screens and screens with camera cutout.

Next, change your app's targeting to "P" and run it with the full Android P experience. Set your app's targetSdkVersion to 'P' and compileSdkVersion to android-P, build, and test. Make sure to read the behavior changes for apps targeting P to find areas you will want to test and might need to adjust.

When you're ready, dive into Android P and learn about the many new features and APIs you can take advantage of in your app. To make it easier to explore the new APIs, take a look at the API diff report, along with the Android P API reference. Visit the P Developer Preview site for details on the preview timeline and support resources. Also check out this video highlighting what's new in Android P for developers.

To get started building with Android P, download the P Developer Preview SDK and tools into Android Studio 3.1 or use the latest Android Studio 3.2 canary version. We're also releasing an alpha version of the 28.0.0 support library for you to try.

What's ahead?

The Android P Developer Preview includes an updated SDK with system images for testing on the official Android Emulator and on Pixel, Pixel XL Pixel 2, and Pixel 2 XL devices.

We plan to update the preview system images and SDK regularly throughout the preview. This initial 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. Downloads and instructions are here.

As we get closer to a final product, we'll be inviting consumers to try it out as well, and we'll open up enrollments through Android Beta at that time. Stay tuned for details, but for now please note that Android Beta is not currently available for Android P.

As always, your feedback is critical, so please 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. We have separate hotlists for filing platform issues, app compatibility issues, and third-party SDK issues.