Tag Archives: Developer Preview

Android 12 Beta 3 and final APIs

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Each month we’re bringing Android 12 closer to its final form, with innovative features, a new UI that adapts to you, performance improvements, privacy enhancements, security benefits, and much more. Many of you are already developing and testing on Android 12 through our Beta program - thank you for all of the feedback you’ve shared so far!

There’s still a lot to do to land this release, though, and today we’re pushing out the third Beta of Android 12 for you to try. Along with updates like scrolling screenshots, privacy indicator APIs, and enhanced auto-rotate, Beta 3 also includes the final Android 12 APIs and the official SDK. WIth these, you can start testing and updating your app ahead of Platform Stability, coming up next at Beta 4. Now is the time to make sure your apps are ready!

You can get Beta 3 today on your Pixel device by enrolling here for over-the-air updates, and if you previously enrolled, you’ll automatically get today’s update. You can also get Android 12 Beta 3 on select devices from several of our device-maker partners like Sharp and TCL - learn more at android.com/beta. Visit the Android 12 developer site for details on how to get started.

What’s new in Beta 3?

Beta 3 includes a number of updates to improve functionality, user experience, and performance. Here are a few highlights.

Scrolling screenshots - To make it easier to capture and share scrolling content, we’re adding scrolling screenshots. Starting in Beta 3, when users capture a screenshot of content that’s scrollable, they’ll now see a “Capture more” button to extend the screenshot to the full content and they can then adjust the crop.

Capturing a scrolling screenshot in the Settings app

Scrolling screenshots work out-of-the-box for most apps -- if your app uses a standard View-based UI, no changes should be needed. For apps and UI toolkits that are not using View-based UI or that use highly customized UI, we’re introducing a new ScrollCapture API to support scrolling screenshots. With this API, the system notifies your app of scroll capture requests and provides a Surface for you to draw your UI into. We’re continuing to iterate on scrolling screenshots and in Beta 4 you’ll see improvements to the default support, such as for scrolling ListViews. We're also working to provide support for a wider variety of content (such as web content). Let us know what you think!

On-device search - With Beta 3 we’re highlighting platform support for AppSearch, a new high-performance on-device search engine. With AppSearch, apps can index structured data and search over it with built-in full-text search capabilities, and they can use native features like highly-efficient indexing and retrieval, multi-language support, and relevancy ranking.

AppSearch comes in two flavors: a local index for your app to use that’s backward-compatible through a new AppSearch Jetpack library, and a central index that’s maintained for the entire system in Android 12 (and later releases). When you participate in the central index, the system will be able to display your app’s data on System UI surfaces unless you choose to opt out. Additionally, you can securely share data with other apps, allowing them to search your app’s data as well as their own. More here.

Privacy indicator APIs in WindowInsets - In Beta 2 we added support for privacy indicators in the status bar that show when an app is using the device camera or microphone. Since the indicators can be displayed when an app is in immersive mode and could potentially cover controls or content, apps need to know where the indicators can be drawn and make any adjustments needed to prevent useful content from being covered. In Beta 3 we’ve added new privacy indicator APIs to WindowInsets that let you get the maximum bounds of the indicators and their relative placement on the screen, taking into account the current orientation and language settings. More here.

Camera and microphone toggles configurable for enterprises - In Beta 2 we also introduced new toggles that let users instantly turn off access to the device microphone and camera for all apps. We’ve now made these accessible to enterprise administrators who can set any restrictions needed on fully managed devices. More here.

New permission for CDM-paired apps starting foreground services - To better support companion apps carrying out core functionality while providing transparency to the system, apps paired with Companion Device Manager (CDM) can launch foreground services from the background by declaring a new normal permission. More here.

Better, faster auto-rotate - We’ve enhanced Android’s auto-rotate feature with face detection, using the front-facing camera to more accurately recognize when to rotate the screen. This is especially helpful for people who are using their devices while lying down on a couch or in bed, for example. For developers, this means that the auto-rotation behavior will provide a better user experience for users who have opted in through Settings. The enhanced auto-rotate feature lives within our recently announced Private Compute Core, so images are never stored or sent off the device. In Beta 3 this feature is available on Pixel 4 and later Pixel devices.

To make screen rotation as speedy as possible on all devices, we’ve also optimized the animation and redrawing and added an ML-driven gesture-detection algorithm. As a result, the latency for the base auto-rotate feature has been reduced by 25%, and the benefits of the face detection enhancement build on top of those improvements. Give the auto-rotate improvements a try and let us know what you think.

Android 12 for Games - With Game Mode APIs, you can react to the players' performance profile selection for your game - like better battery life for a long commute, or performance mode to get peak frame rates. These APIs will be tied to the upcoming game dashboard which provides an overlay experience with quick access to key utilities during gameplay. The game dashboard will be available on select devices later this year.

Play as you download on Android 12 with Touchgrind BMX

Meanwhile, play as you download will allow game assets to be fetched in the background during install, getting your players into gameplay faster.

Visit the Android 12 developer site to learn more about all of the new features in Android 12.

Final APIs and SDK

Over the past several weeks we've been working to finalize the Android 12 APIs and today we're releasing them with Beta 3, along with the official API Level 31 SDK. We plan to reach full Platform Stability at Beta 4, when all app-facing system behaviors and non-SDK interface restrictions will also be final, in addition to the API surfaces.

If you’re compiling your app against the Android 12 APIs, we recommend using today’s release to update your environment and recompile your apps with the final SDK and latest tools.

App compatibility

With many early-adopter users and developers getting Android 12 Beta on Pixel and other devices, now is the time to make sure your apps are compatible and ready for them to use!

To test your app for compatibility with Beta 3, just install the published version from Google Play or other source onto a device or emulator running Android 12 Beta. Work through all of the app’s flows and watch for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing on areas where underlying changes may affect your app. There’s no need to change your app’s targetSdkVersion at this time, so once you’ve resolved any issues, we recommend publishing an update as soon as possible for your Android 12 Beta users.

As mentioned earlier, Android 12 will reach Platform Stability in the next release, Beta 4. With Platform Stability, all app-facing system behaviors, SDK/NDK APIs, and non-SDK restrictions will be finalized. At that time, you can begin your final compatibility testing and release a fully compatible version of your app, SDK, or library. More on the Android 12 timeline for developers is here.

Get started with Android 12!

Today’s Beta release has everything you need to try the latest Android 12 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. Just enroll any supported Pixel device to get the update over-the-air. To get started developing, set up the Android 12 SDK.

You can also get Android 12 Beta 3 on devices from some of our top device-maker partners like Sharp and TCL. Visit android.com/beta to see the full list of partners participating in Android 12 Beta. For even broader testing, you can try Android 12 Beta on Android GSI images, and if you don’t have a device you can test on the Android Emulator.

Beta 3 is also available for Android TV, so you can check out the latest TV features and test your apps on the all-new Google TV experience. Try it out with the ADT-3 developer kit. More here.

For complete details on Android 12 Beta, visit the Android 12 developer site.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Android 12 Beta 2 Update

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Just a few weeks ago at Google I/O we unwrapped the first beta of Android 12, focusing on a new UI that adapts to you, improved performance, and privacy and security at the core. For developers, Android 12 gives you better tools to build delightful experiences for people on phones, laptops, tablets, wearables, TVs, and cars.

Today we’re releasing the second Beta of Android 12 for you to try. Beta 2 adds new privacy features like the Privacy Dashboard and continues our work of refining the release.

End-to-end there’s a lot for developers in Android 12 - from the redesigned UI and app widgets, to rich haptics, improved video and image quality, privacy features like approximate location, and much more. For a quick look at related Google I/O sessions, see Android 12 at Google I/O later in the post.

You can get Beta 2 today on your Pixel device by enrolling here for over-the-air updates, and if you previously enrolled for Beta 1, you’ll automatically get today’s update. Android 12 Beta is also available on select devices from several of our partners - learn more at android.com/beta.

Visit the Android 12 developer site for details on how to get started.

What’s new in Beta 2?

Beta 2 includes several of the new privacy features we talked about at Google I/O, as well as various feature updates to improve functionality, stability, and performance. Here are a few highlights.

Privacy Dashboard - We’ve added a Privacy Dashboard to give users better visibility over the data that apps are accessing. The dashboard offers a simple and clear timeline view of all recent app accesses to microphone, camera, and location. Users can also request details from an app on why it has accessed sensitive data, and developers can provide this information in an activity by handling a new system intent, ACTION_VIEW_PERMISSION_USAGE_FOR_PERIOD. We recommend that apps take advantage of this intent to proactively help users understand accesses in the given time period. To help you track these accesses in your code and any third-party libraries, we recommend using the Data Auditing APIs. More here.

Privacy Dashboard and location access gif

Privacy dashboard and location access timeline.

Mic and camera indicators - We’ve added indicators to the status bar to let users know when apps are using the device camera or microphone. Users can go to Quick Settings to see which apps are accessing their camera or microphone data and manage permissions if needed. For developers, we recommend reviewing your app’s uses of the microphone and camera and removing any that users would not expect. More here.

Microphone & camera toggles - We’ve added Quick Settings toggles on supported devices that make it easy for users to instantly disable app access to the microphone and camera. When the toggles are turned off, an app accessing these sensors will receive blank camera and audio feeds, and the system handles notifying the user to enable access to use the app’s features. Developers can use a new API, SensorPrivacyManager, to check whether toggles are supported on the device. The microphone and camera controls apply to all apps regardless of their platform targeting. More here.

Clipboard read notification - To give users more transparency on when apps are reading from the clipboard, Android 12 now displays a toast at the bottom of the screen each time an app calls getPrimaryClip(). Android won’t show the toast if the clipboard was copied from the same app. We recommend minimizing your app’s reads from the clipboard, and making sure that you only access the clipboard when it will be expected by users. More here.

More intuitive connectivity experience - To help users understand and manage their network connections better, we’re introducing a simpler and more intuitive connectivity experience across the Status Bar, Quick Settings, and Settings. The new Internet Panel helps users switch between their Internet providers and troubleshoot network connectivity issues more easily. Let us know what you think!

New Internet controls through Quick Settings.

Visit the Android 12 developer site to learn more about all of the new features in Android 12.

Android 12 at Google I/O

At Google I/O we talked about everything that’s new in Android for developers - from Android 12 to Modern Android Development tools, new form factors like Wear and foldables, and Google Play. Here are the top 3 things to know about Android 12 at Google I/O.

#1 A new UI for Android - Android 12 brings the biggest design change in Android's history. We rethought the entire experience, from the colors to the shapes, light and motion, making Android 12 more expressive, dynamic, and personal, under a single design language called Material You.

Watch the What's new in material design talk to learn more. Also check out the Unveiling Material You blog post for an overview of the principles for designers and developers.
If your app offers widgets, watch the Refreshing widgets talk to learn about new capabilities in Android 12. You can also learn more in the docs or check out our AppWidget sample code.

#2 Performance - With Android 12, we made significant and deep investments in performance, from foundational system performance and battery life to foreground service changes, media quality and performance, and new tools to optimize apps.

Watch Effective background tasks on Android to learn about foreground services in Android 12 and how to manage background work. Also see the docs for details.
Take a look at the What's new in Android Media session for a walkthrough of new features for performance and quality, such as video quality and transcoding, performance class, ExoPlayer updates, and real-time audio.
The Measuring jank and startup with Macrobenchmark talk introduces the new Macrobenchmark library and shows how to improve performance in your app.

#3 Privacy and security - In Android 12 we’re continuing to give users more transparency and control while keeping their devices and data secure.

Watch the What's new in Android privacy session or read the blog post to learn about the latest features for privacy and how to support them in your apps. Try the approximate location codelab to learn more about this new option in Android 12.
Try the State of Android security session for the latest updates on security and our work with the security community.

For an overview of Android 12 for developers, watch this year’s What's new in Android talk, and check out Top 12 tips to get ready for Android 12 for an overview of where to test your app for compatibility. The full list of Android content at Google I/O is here.

App compatibility

With more early-adopter users and developers getting Android 12 beta on Pixel and other devices, now is the time to make sure your apps are ready!

To test your app for compatibility, install the published version from Google Play or other source onto a device or emulator running Android 12 Beta. Work through all of the app’s flows and watch for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing. There’s no need to change your app’s targetSdkVersion at this time, so when you’ve resolved any issues, publish an update as soon as possible for your Android 12 Beta users.

With Beta 2, Android 12 is closing in on Platform Stability in August 2021. Starting then, app-facing system behaviors, SDK/NDK APIs, and non-SDK lists will be finalized. At that time, you should finish up your final compatibility testing and release a fully compatible version of your app, SDK, or library. More on the timeline for developers is here.

Get started with Android 12!

You can also get Android 12 Beta 2 on devices from some of our top device-maker partners like Sharp. Visit android.com/beta to see the full list of partners participating in Android 12 Beta. For even broader testing, you can try Android 12 Beta on Android GSI images, and if you don’t have a device you can test on the Android Emulator.

Beta 2 is also available for Android TV, so you can check out the latest TV features and test your apps on the all-new Google TV experience. Try it out with the ADT-3 developer kit. More here.

For complete details on Android 12 Beta, visit the Android 12 developer site.

Source: Android Developers Blog

What’s new in Android 12 Beta

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Today at Google I/O we unveiled the first Beta of Android 12, one of our most ambitious releases ever. We focused on a new UI that adapts to you, improving performance, with privacy and security at the core. For developers, we’re giving you more tools to build delightful experiences for people on phones, laptops, tablets, wearables, TVs, and cars.

There’s a lot to explore in Beta 1, starting with the most significant UI update to Android yet, created with a design language that we call Material You. There are new privacy features to try too, like approximate location, and a new standard called Performance Class that lets apps and users identify high-performing devices.

Try Android 12 Beta today on Pixel devices by enrolling here. Thanks to our device-maker partners who are working to accelerate updates, you can now get the Beta on other devices as well, including select devices from ASUS, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, TCL, Transsion, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE, with others on the way. Visit android.com/beta to learn more.

Read on for more highlights of what’s new and visit the Android 12 developer site for details on everything in Android 12 and how to get started developing.

A new UI for Android

As we highlighted in our consumer blog post, Android 12 brings the biggest design change in Android's history. We rethought the entire experience, from the colors to the shapes, light and motion, making Android 12 more expressive, dynamic, and personal. This work is being done in deep collaboration between our software, hardware and Material Design teams, and we’re unifying our software and hardware ecosystems under a single design language called Material You.

We’ve extended the new design language across the platform and UI components, so your apps will get these upgrades automatically.

Redesigned widgets - Along with the design changes in Android 12 we’ve refreshed app widgets to make them more useful, beautiful, and discoverable. We added new interactive controls like checkboxes, switches, and radio buttons and made personalizing widgets easier. Android 12 widgets look great with our system UI and themes, with rounded corners and padding automatically adapted to every launcher and home screen. Responsive layouts let you adapt widgets to phones, tablets, foldables, and other screens. We also added dynamic color APIs so your widgets can use system colors to create a personalized but consistent look. And we’re making widgets easier to discover through an improved widget picker and an integration with the Assistant. Check out sample code and give the updated widgets a try. More here.

Stretch overscroll - We’re also adding a new system-wide “stretch” overscroll effect to let users know they’ve scrolled past the end of the available content in your UI. The stretch effect provides a natural vertical and horizontal scroll-stop indicator that’s common across all apps, and it’s enabled by default for scrolling containers across the platform and AndroidX. The new stretch overscroll replaces the glow overscroll supported in previous versions. Make sure to test your apps and content with the new scrolling behavior, and if needed you can opt out. More here.

Smoother audio transitions - UI isn't just about the visuals. We've also improved the way that audio focus is handled. When an app loses audio focus, its audio is automatically faded out, providing a smoother transition between apps which play audio, and preventing apps from playing over each other. This is particularly relevant in foldable and multi-screen Android environments. More here.

Performance

With Android 12, we’ve made significant and deep investments in performance - from foundational performance that makes the system and apps faster and smoother, to a new standard for high-performing devices that helps developers deliver richer experiences on those devices.

Faster, more efficient system performance - We reduced the CPU time needed for core system services by 22%, so devices will be faster and more responsive. We also improved Android's power efficiency by reducing the use of big cores by the system server by 15% to help devices run longer before needing to charge.

We improved transitions and app startup times by reducing lock contention and latency variability, and we optimized I/O for faster app loading. In PackageManager, a read-only snapshot reduced lock contention by as much as 92%. In Binder, lightweight caching radically improved latencies up to 47x in targeted calls. In I/O, we accelerated dex/odex/vdex files to improve app load times, especially on low-memory phones. Our restriction on notification trampolines also helps reduce latency for apps started from a notification. For example, the Google Photos app now launches 34% faster after moving away from notification trampolines.

To improve database query performance we’ve optimized CursorWindow by inlining results in Binder transactions. For small windows, CursorWindow is 36% faster, and for windows over 1000 rows the improvements are as high as 49x.

Performance class - Starting with Android 12 and working together with our ecosystem partners, we’re introducing a common standard for high-performing Android devices.

This standard, called performance class, defines a set of capabilities that go beyond Android's baseline requirements. Devices that meet the performance class requirements can support more demanding use-cases and deliver higher quality content. Developers can check for performance class at runtime and then reliably deliver enhanced experiences that take full advantage of the device’s performance.

Initially, we’re focusing performance class capabilities on media use-cases, with requirements including camera startup latency, codec availability and encoding quality, as well as minimum memory size, screen resolution and read/write performance. More here.

Private by design

Privacy is at the heart of everything we do, and in Android 12 we’re continuing to give people more transparency and control while keeping their devices and data secure. Today we announced several new privacy features that will be coming in Beta 2 - Privacy Dashboard, microphone and camera indicators, and microphone and camera toggles. Stay tuned for more on these features. Here’s what’s new in Beta 1.

App hibernation - Last year we launched permissions auto-reset, and over the last two weeks, Android has reset permissions for over 8.5 million apps that weren’t being used - so apps that people have forgotten about can’t still access their data. In Android 12 we’re building on permissions auto-reset by intelligently hibernating apps that have gone unused for an extended period - optimizing for device storage, performance and safety. Hibernation not only revokes permissions granted previously by the user, but it also force-stops the app and reclaims memory, storage and other temporary resources. In this state the system also prevents apps from running jobs in the background or receiving push notifications, helping to keep users safe. Hibernation should be transparent for most apps, but if needed, direct users to Settings to turn off this feature for your app. More here.

Nearby device permissions - Previously, Bluetooth scanning required apps to have the location permission, which was a challenge for apps that needed to pair with nearby devices but didn’t actually need the device location. We’re now allowing apps to scan for nearby devices without needing location permission. Apps targeting Android 12 can scan using the new BLUETOOTH_SCAN permission with the usesPermissionFlags="neverForLocation" attribute. After pairing with a device, use the BLUETOOTH_CONNECT permission to interact with it. These permissions promote privacy-friendly app design while reducing friction for apps. More here.

Approximate location - Recently we’ve given people better ways to manage access to location, such as through separate permissions for foreground and background access and an “only this time” option. Now for apps targeting Android 12, we’re offering even more control with a new “approximate location” option. When apps request precise location data, users can now choose to grant either precise or approximate location. Users can also change an app’s location precision at any time from Settings. If your app requests precise location data (ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION), keep these changes in mind and make sure your app functions properly with approximate location only. For almost all general uses of location, we recommend asking for approximate location (ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION) only. More here.

App compatibility

If you haven’t tested your app for compatibility with Android 12 yet, now is the time to do it! With Android 12 in Beta, we’re opening up access to early-adopter users as well as developers, on Pixel and other devices. This means that in the weeks ahead, expect many more users to be trying your app on Android 12 and raising any issues that they find.

To test for compatibility, install your published app from Google Play or other source on a device or emulator running Android 12 Beta and work through all of the app’s flows. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing. After you’ve resolved any issues, publish an update as soon as possible.

With Beta we’re getting closer to Platform Stability in August 2021. Starting then, app-facing system behaviors, SDK/NDK APIs, and non-SDK lists will be finalized. At that time, finish up your final compatibility testing and release a fully compatible version of your app, SDK, or library. More on the timeline for developers is here.

Get started with Android 12!

Today’s Beta release has everything you need to try the Android 12 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. Just enroll any supported Pixel device here to get the update over-the-air. If you’ve already installed a preview build, you’ll automatically get Beta updates. To get started developing, set up the SDK.

You can also get Android 12 Beta on devices from some of our top device-maker partners who are participating in the Android 12 Developer Preview program. Visit android.com/beta to see the full list of partners, with links to their sites with details on their supported devices. Each partner will handle their own enrollments and support, and provide the Beta updates to you directly.

For even broader testing on supported devices, try Android 12 Beta on Android GSI images, and if you don’t have a device you can test on the Android Emulator -- just download the latest emulator system images via the SDK Manager in Android Studio.

For complete details on how to get the Beta, visit the Android 12 developer site.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Android 12 Developer Preview 3

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Google I/O 2021 is just a few weeks away and we’re looking forward to sharing all of the latest news in Android with you soon! To take us one step closer, today we’re sharing Developer Preview 3, the next milestone release of Android 12, for your testing and feedback.

In Android 12 we’re continuing to focus on making the OS smarter, easier to use, and better performing, with privacy and security at the core. We’re also working to give you new tools for building great experiences for users on phones, laptops, tablets, TVs, or cars. Some things to check out in today’s release include a new app launch experience, new video and camera capabilities to help you get more out of underlying hardware support, and a new permission for exact alarms to help users save battery.

Read on for more highlights and visit the Android 12 developer site for details and downloads for Pixel. If you’re already running a Developer Preview 2 build, watch for an over-the-air (OTA) update coming to you soon! As always, let us know what you think, and thanks for all of the feedback you’ve shared so far.

Better user experience tools

Today’s release includes new tools to help you deliver a polished experience and better performance for users. Here are some of the updates.

Improved app launch experience - In Android 12 we’re making app startup a more consistent and delightful experience. We’ve added a new app launch animation for all apps from the point of launch, a splash screen showing the app icon, and a transition to the app itself. The new experience brings standard design elements to every app launch, but we’ve also made it customizable so apps can maintain their unique branding. For example, you can use new splashscreen APIs and resources to manage the splash screen window’s background color; you can replace the static launcher icon with a custom icon or an animation; you can control the timing to reveal the app; and you can set light mode or dark mode, and manage exit animation.

There’s nothing you need to do to take advantage of the new experience - it’s enabled by default for all apps. We recommend testing your app with the new experience soon, especially if you’re already using a splash screen. To customize the experience, check out the new APIs and let us know what you think. More here.

New call notification template - Incoming and ongoing calls are important to users and they need to be easy to see and manage. In Android 12 we’re improving call notifications to give them more visibility and scannability, and improve their consistency with other notification components. If your app handles calls - such as a dialer app or chat app with video calling - you’ll want to try our new CallStyle template. You can use the template to create notifications for incoming, outgoing, and screened calls. Each type supports multiple actions, including default actions and custom actions that are specific to your app. You can also attach a large avatar image, provide text, and set button color hints. The OS gives CallStyle notifications high visibility, such as bringing them to the top of the notifications shade. More here.

New permission for exact alarms - Alarms are an important way for apps to schedule work. In most cases, apps should use inexact alarms, which have the advantage of being battery-friendly. Android manages these alarms to minimize wakeups and battery impacts, such as through Doze and App Standby. For cases where you need alarms with precise timing - for example alarm clocks and timers - you can use exact alarms instead. These are convenient and reliable, but they can also cause battery drain, especially when overused. So in Android 12, we’re making some changes to give users more control.

Apps targeting Android 12 that want to use exact alarms will now need to request a new permission, SCHEDULE_EXACT_ALARM. It’s a normal permission, so once you’ve declared it in your manifest, you’ll be automatically granted it at first startup. However, we’re also giving users visibility over the apps that have this permission and letting them grant and revoke it from Special App Access Permissions in Settings. If your app requires exact alarms, make sure you handle cases where it no longer has the permission. We’ve added a new API, canScheduleExactAlarms(), to let you check the permission status for your app. In general, we recommend migrating your apps away from uses of exact alarms wherever possible. More here.

Improved web linking - In Android 12 we’re making some changes to help users get to their content faster and more seamlessly. First, we’ve changed the default handling of links that aren’t verified through Android App Links or manually approved for links by the user. Now the OS will directly open them in the default browser, rather than showing a chooser dialog. To make it easier for users to approve your app for links, we’ve added a new Intent that takes them to “Open by default” in Settings. If you want to ensure that only your app can handle links from your domain, you can use App Links. We’ve added new adb commands to help you configure and test your links. More here.

Rich haptic experiences - We’re expanding the tools we offer for creating informative haptic feedback for UI events, immersive and delightful effects for gaming, and attentional haptics for productivity. We’ve added expressive effects like low tick that take advantage of the broader frequency bandwidth of the latest actuators. Game developers can now access multiple, different actuators independently in game controllers to deliver the same effect synchronously or different haptic effects on multiple actuators. For developers, we recommend using the constants and primitives as building blocks for rich haptic effects - constants to enhance UI events and haptic composer to sequence primitives for more complex effects. You can try these APIs to the fullest on Pixel 4 devices today, and we’re continuing to work with our device-maker partners to bring the latest in haptics support to users across the ecosystem.

Video encoding improvements - Android 12 standardizes the set of keys for controlling the range of the video Quantization Parameters (QP), allowing developers to avoid vendor-specific code. The new keys are available in the MediaFormat API and also in the NDK Media library. Video encoders must specify a minimum video quality threshold to ensure that users don't experience extremely low quality when videos are complex.

Camera2 vendor extensions - Many of our device manufacturer partners have built custom camera effects—such as bokeh, HDR, night mode, and others—that they want apps to use to create differentiated experiences on their devices. We’ve already supported these custom effects through a set of vendor extensions in our CameraX library, and now in Android 12 we’re exposing the vendor extensions directly in the platform as well. This helps apps that have complex Camera2 implementations to take advantage of the extensions without having to make significant changes to legacy code. The extension APIs expose exactly the same set of effects as in CameraX, and those are already supported on many different devices, so you can use them right out of the box. More here.

Quad bayer camera sensor support - Many Android devices today ship with ultra high-resolution camera sensors, typically with Quad / Nona Bayer patterns, and these offer great flexibility in terms of image quality and low-light performance. In Android 12, we’re introducing new platform APIs that let third-party apps take full advantage of these versatile sensors. The new APIs support the unique behavior of these sensors and take into account that they might support different stream configurations and combinations when operating in full resolution or ‘maximum resolution’ mode vs ‘default’ mode.

Faster machine learning - In Android 12, we invested in key areas so that developers can make the most of ML accelerators and always get the best possible performance through the Neural Networks API. In terms of performance improvements - we have more than halved inference call overhead by introducing improvements such as padding, sync fences and reusable execution objects. We’ve also made ML accelerator drivers updatable outside of platform releases, through Google Play services. This will make it easier for developers to take advantage of the latest drivers on any compatible device, and make sure that ML performance improvements and bug fixes reach users faster than ever before.

Standardizing GPU compute - We are deprecating the RenderScript APIs in favor of cross-platform GPU compute solutions such as Vulkan and OpenGL. We want you to have confidence that your high-performance workloads will run on GPU hardware, and many devices are already shipping with only CPU support for RenderScript. The existing APIs will continue to work for the time-being, and we've open-sourced a library for RenderScript intrinsics such as blur that uses the highly-optimized intrinsics platform code. Samples and a migration guide for using Vulkan to implement image processing are also available. More here.

Better debugging for native crashes - You've told us that debugging NDK-related crashes can be challenging. We’re making this easier in Android 12 by giving you more actionable diagnostics. In the platform, we use crash dump files called tombstones to debug our native crashes, and they contain the information required to diagnose a variety of issues; this includes unwinding through ART, integrating with fdsan, and recording all the stacks involved in a GWP-ASan, HWASan, or MTE crash. Now we’re giving your app access to its tombstone files through the App Exit Reasons API. When your app uses `ApplicationExitInfo` with `REASON_CRASH_NATIVE`, you can now call `getTraceInputStream()` to get the tombstone data as a protocol buffer.

More-flexible backup configurations - Android’s backup service lets users restore or migrate their data to a new device effortlessly. Apps are central to the experience, enabling users to easily transfer app data and continue where they left off. The backup service supports both cloud backups to Google Drive and device-to-device transfers, and developers can take advantage of these with minimal changes in their apps. For apps targeting Android 12, we’re improving the service to give you more flexibility and control. We’ve updated the XML configuration format so you can now set different rules for cloud backups and device-to-device transfers. With this, for example, you could exclude a large file from cloud backups but include it in device-to-device transfers. You can also set encryption requirements separately for backups or transfers. Last, if you’d like to opt-out of Auto Backup for device-to-device transfers, please use the new configuration format instead of the allowBackup manifest attribute. More here.

You can read more about all of the Android 12 features and behavior changes here.

App compatibility

We’re working to make updates faster and smoother by prioritizing app compatibility as we roll out new platform versions. In Android 12, we’ve made most app-facing changes opt-in to give you more time, and we’ve updated our tools and processes to help you get ready sooner.

With Developer Preview 3, we’re moving closer to our first Beta release as we continue to improve stability. Now is the time to try the new features and changes and let us know how these work with your apps. Please visit the feedback page to share your thoughts with us or report issues.

With the first Beta coming soon, it’s time to start your compatibility testing to make sure your app is ready. We recommend releasing a compatible update over the next few weeks. There’s no need to change your app’s targetSdkVersion at this time, although you can use the behavior change toggles to get a preliminary idea of how your app might be affected by opt-in changes in Android 12.

As we reach Platform Stability in August 2021, all of the app-facing system behaviors, SDK/NDK APIs, and non-SDK lists will be finalized. At that point, you can finish up your final compatibility testing and release a fully compatible version of your app, SDK, or library. More on the timeline for developers is here.

App compatibility toggles in Developer Options.

Get started with Android 12

Today’s Developer Preview has everything you need to try the Android 12 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. You can get started today by flashing a device system image to a Pixel 3 / 3 XL, Pixel 3a / 3a XL, Pixel 4 / 4 XL, Pixel 4a / 4a 5G, or Pixel 5 device or using the Android Emulator. If you’ve already installed a preview build to your Pixel device, you’ll automatically get this update and future Beta updates over-the-air. More details on how to get Android 12 are here.

For complete information, visit the Android 12 developer site.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Android 12 Developer Preview 2

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Last month we shared the first preview of Android 12, an early look at the next version of Android. Today we’re bringing you the next milestone build in this year’s release, with more new features and changes for you to try with your apps. Our program of early previews is driven by our core philosophy of openness and collaboration with you, our community. Your input helps us make Android a better platform for developers and users, so keep the feedback coming!

In Android 12 we’re making the OS smarter, easier to use, and better performing, with privacy and security at the core. We’re also working to give you new tools for building great experiences for users, whether they’re using phones, laptops, tablets, TVs, or cars. Some things to look for in today’s release include new rounded corners APIs, improved picture-in-picture APIs, better companion device management, easier effects like blur and color filter, app overlay controls, and more.

There’s a lot to check out in Developer Preview 2 - read on for a few highlights and visit the Android 12 developer site for details and downloads for Pixel. 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.

Trust and safety

We’re continuing to focus on giving users more transparency and control while keeping their devices and data secure. In today’s release, we’ve added some new features to check out and test with your apps.

App overlay controls - Android’s system alert window gives apps a way to get users’ attention for important actions by showing an overlay on top of the active app. These windows can interrupt the user, though, so we already require apps to request permission before displaying them. Now in Android 12 we’re giving you control over whether these overlays can be shown over your content. After you’ve declared a new permission, your app can call Window#setHideOverlayWindows() to indicate that all TYPE_APPLICATION_OVERLAY windows should be hidden when your app’s window is visible. You might choose to do this when displaying sensitive screens, such as transaction confirmation flows. More here.

Extended security for lockscreen notification actions - Android 12 adds finer-grained privacy and security controls for notifications displayed on the device lockscreen. You can now configure notification actions so that when triggered from the lockscreen, they will always generate an authentication challenge. This extends the notification visibility controls already available through the notification APIs. For example, this enables a messaging app to require authentication before deleting a message or marking it as read. More here.

Access to app digests - For apps that need to validate the integrity of app packages installed on Android devices, we’re introducing a new API that lets you query the platform directly for the checksum of an installed app. You can choose from several digest algorithms such as SHA256, SHA512, Merkle Root, and others. To request a checksum, call PackageManager.requestChecksums() with an app’s package name, the checksum types you need, the installer certs you trust, and a listener to receive the checksums. The platform returns the matching checksums, either precomputed and provided by the installer app (such as Google Play) or computed by the platform. Results are filtered based on package visibility guidelines, so you’ll need to declare the packages of interest in your manifest. This new API provides a simpler, more efficient way to obtain checksums and gives you the stability of a standard, public API that’s optimized for speed and security. For backward compatibility, we’re working on a Jetpack library that provides the same functionality back to API 15 - watch for more details coming soon.

You can read more about these and other privacy and security changes here.

Better user experience tools

We’re working to give you more tools to help you deliver a polished experience and better performance for users. Here are some of the updates in today’s release.

Support for Rounded corners - Many modern devices use screens with rounded corners, giving them a clean modern look, but also introducing some extra considerations for app developers. To deliver a great UX on these devices, developers need to account for the rounded corners and adjust any nearby UI elements to prevent them from being truncated.

To help with this, we’re introducing new APIs to let you query for rounded corners and get their details. A RoundedCorner holds the details for a corner, including its radius, centerpoint, and other data. You can call Display.getRoundedCorner() to get the absolute details for each rounded corner. You can also call WindowInsets.getRoundedCorner() to get the corner details relative to your app’s bounds. With these, you can manage the position of UI elements and content as needed. More here.

Picture in Picture (PIP) improvements - for people using gesture nav, we’ve improved how apps transition to picture-in-picture (PIP) mode on swipe up-to-home. If an app enables auto-PIP, the system now directly transitions the app to PIP mode on up-to-home, instead of waiting for the up-to-home animation to complete. This makes the transition smoother and improves perceived performance. We’ve also improved PIP window resizing for non-video content. Apps can now enable seamless resize to let the system resize the PIP Activity when needed. Android 12 also supports stashing the PiP window by dragging it to the left or right edge of the screen. Also, to make PIP windows easier to manipulate, we’ve updated the tap behaviors. Single-tapping now displays controls, and double-tapping toggles the PIP window size. More here.

Keeping companion device apps awake - For apps that manage companion devices like smartwatches and fitness trackers, it can be a challenge to make sure the app is running and connected whenever an associated companion device is nearby. To make this easier, we’re extending the Companion Device Manager with a new CompanionDeviceService API. Apps that manage companion devices can implement this service to let the system wake the app whenever the associated companion device is nearby. The system keeps the service bound whenever the device is nearby, and notifies the service when the device goes in and out of range or is turned off, to let the app clean up state as needed. Apps can also use a new companion device profile when connecting to a watch, which simplifies enrollment by bundling related permissions into a single grant. More here.

Bandwidth estimation improvements - for developers who need to know the typical bandwidth available to each user so you can tailor their experience, we now provide improved bandwidth estimation. We’ve enhanced the existing bandwidth estimation APIs to let you retrieve an estimate of aggregate throughput per carrier or Wi-Fi SSID, network type, and signal level, for all users on the device. The new estimation is likely to be easier and more accurate than most other estimation methods, give it a try and let us know how it works for you.

Easier blurs, color filters and other effects - In Android 12, we’re making it easier to apply common graphics effects to your Views and rendering hierarchies. You can use RenderEffect to apply blurs, color filters, and more to any RenderNode. You can combine these effects as chain effects (which compose an inner and outer effect in order) or blend them. You can also apply effects directly to Views (leveraging the underlying RenderNode) by calling View.setRenderEffect(RenderEffect).

view.setRenderEffect(RenderEffect.createBlurEffect(radiusX, radiusY, SHADER_TILE_MODE))

Blurring a View with RenderEffect

This allows you to blur the contents of an ImageView without having to get the bitmap data, process the image, create a new Bitmap, and set it back into the ImageView. RenderEffect leverages the existing rendering pipeline to minimize excess calculation.

Give these a try and let use know what you think! More here.

You can also create a frosted glass effect for your window background using a new Window.setBackgroundBlurRadius() API. With this you can set a radius to control the density and scope and the platform applies the blur to the background content within the bounds of your app’s window only. You can also use blurBehindRadius to blur all of the content behind the window to create a depth effect for a floating window.

A dialog window with background blur and blur behind...

App compatibility

With Developer Preview 2, we’re well into the release and continuing to improve overall stability, so now is the time to try the new features and changes and give us your feedback. We’re especially looking for input on our APIs, as well as details on how the platform changes affect your apps. Please visit the feedback page to share your thoughts with us or report issues.

It’s also a good 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 12 Beta 1. There’s no need to change your app’s targetSdkVersion at this time, but we do recommend using the behavior change toggles to get a preliminary idea of how your app might be affected by opt-in changes in Android 12.

As we reach Platform Stability in August 2021, all of the app-facing system behaviors, SDK/NDK APIs, and non-SDK lists will be finalized. At that point, you can wind up your final compatibility testing and release a fully compatible version of your app, SDK, or library. More on the timeline for developers is here.

App compatibility toggles in Developer Options.

Get started with Android 12

The Developer Preview has everything you need to try the Android 12 features, test your apps, and give us feedback. You can get started today by flashing a device system image to a Pixel 3 / 3 XL, Pixel 3a / 3a XL, Pixel 4 / 4 XL, Pixel 4a / 4a 5G, or Pixel 5 device or using the Android Emulator. If you’ve already installed a preview build to your Pixel device, you’ll automatically get future updates over-the-air for all later previews and Betas. More details on how to get Android 12 are here.

You can also test your apps on Android TV using today’s release and try the all-new Google TV experience. Learn more here and get started with your ADT-3 developer kit.

For complete information, visit the Android 12 developer site.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Android 11 Developer Preview on Android TV

Posted by Xiaodao Wu, Developer Advocate

With the rise in quality content that’s keeping us glued to the big screen, it’s no surprise watch time on the TV continues to grow. As users spend more time in their living rooms, they are also looking to get more from their smart TVs and streaming devices. To help developers meet these needs, we are always working to support the latest Android features on Android TV.

Today, we are releasing an Android 11 Developer Preview for Android TV with many privacy, performance, accessibility and connectivity features. More information can be found on the Android 11 Developer Preview web page.

The Android 11 Developer Preview on TV is for developers (not for consumer use), this image is for ADT-3 developer devices only, it is available by manual download and flash. All user data on the ADT-3 device will be wiped out after flash. Once the device has been flashed to Android 11, you will not be able to go back to the previous Android 10 build.

Download the system image (link) and unzip the file.
Plug in the ADT-3 developer kit for Android TV and enable Developer options.
Run flash-all.sh in the unzipped folder to perform manual system image installation to the ADT-3 device.

The flash-all script uses fastboot and adb tools to upgrade the system. The latest version of fastboot is recommended; developers can find it in the Android SDK Platform-Tools package.

We encourage you to test your Android TV app on the Android 11 Developer Preview. If you have any feedback, please reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you.

Tune in to the Android Beyond Phones week of the #11WeeksOfAndroid on August 10th for even more developer resources from Android TV.

Source: Android Developers Blog

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.

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.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Unwrapping the Android 11 Beta, plus more developer updates

Posted by Stephanie Cuthbertson, Director, Product Management

Android 11 Beta: now available

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.

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.

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.

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.

Modern Android development

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.

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

Kotlin and Jetpack

The latest on our new UI toolkit, Compose

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

An all-new Google Play Console

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

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.

Source: Google Developers Blog

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.

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!

Source: Google Developers Blog

Android 11: Beta Plans

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Android 11 Dial logo

Join us for #Android11: The Beta Launch Show

Android 11 schedule update

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

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

App compatibility

Get started with Android 11

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