Tag Archives: Featured

What’s new in Android Health

Posted by Sara Hamilton, Developer Relations Engineer

Health and fitness data is interconnected – sleep, nutrition, workouts and more all inform one another. For example, consider that your sleep impacts your recovery, which impacts your readiness to run your favorite 5k. Over time, your recovery and workout habits drive metrics like heart rate variability, resting heart rate, VO2Max and more! Often this data exists in silos, making it hard for users to get a holistic view of their health data.

We want to make it simple for people to use their favorite apps and devices to track their health by bringing this data together. They should have full control of what data they share, and when they share it. And, we want to make sure developers can enable this with less complexity and fewer lines of code.

This is why we’ve continued to improve our Android Health offerings, and why today at I/O 2023, we’re announcing key updates across both Health Connect and Health Services for app developers and users.

What is Android Health?

Android Health brings together two important platforms for developers to deliver robust health and fitness app to users; Health Connect and Health Services.

Health Connect is an on-device data store that provides APIs for storing and sharing health and fitness data between Android apps. Before Health Connect, there was not a consistent way for developers to share data across Android apps. They had to integrate with many different APIs, each with a different set of data types and different permissions management frameworks.

Now, with Health Connect, there is less fragmentation. Health Connect provides a consistent set of 40+ data types and a single permissions management framework for users to control data permissions. This means that developers can share data with less effort, enabling people to access their health data in their favorite apps, and have more control over data permissions.

Screenshot of permissions via Health Connect

Health Services is our API surface for accessing sensor data on Wear OS devices in a power-efficient way. Before Health Services, developers had to work directly with low-level sensors, which required different configurations on different devices, and was not battery-efficient.

With Health Services, there is now a consistent API surface across all Wear OS 3+ devices, allowing developers to write code once and run it across all devices. And, the Health Services architecture means that developers get great power savings in the process, allowing people to track longer workouts.

Health Connect is coming to Android 14 with new features

Health Connect and Android 14 logos with an X between them to indicate collaboration

Health Connect is currently available for download as an app on the Play Store. We are excited to announce that starting with the release of Android 14 later this year, Health Connect will be a core part of Android and available on all Android mobile devices. Users will be able to access Health Connect directly from Settings on their device, helping to control how their health data is shared across apps.

Screenshot showing Health Connect avaialble in the privacy settings of an Android device

Several new features will be shipped with the Health Connect Android 14 release. We’re adding a new exercise routes feature to allow users to share maps of their workouts through Health Connect. We’ve also made improvements to make it easier for people to log their menstrual cycles. And, Health Connect updates will be delivered through Google Play System Updates, which will allow new features to be updated often.

Health Services now supports more uses cases with new API capabilities

We’ve released several exciting changes to Health Services this year to support more use cases. Our new Batching Modes feature allows developers to adjust the data delivery frequency of heart rate data to support home gym use cases. We’ve also added new API capabilities, like golf shot detection.

The new version of Wear OS arrives later this year. Wear OS 4 will be the most performant yet, delivering improved battery life for the next generation of Wear OS watches. We will be releasing additional Health Services updates with this change, including improved background body sensor permissions.

Our developer ecosystem is growing

There are over 50 apps already integrated with Health Connect and hundreds of apps with health services, including Peloton, Withings, Oura, and more. These apps are using Health Connect to incorporate new data, to give people an interconnected health experience, without building out many new API integrations. Learn more about how these health and fitness apps are creating new experiences for users in areas like sleep, exercise, nutrition, and more in our I/O technical session.

We also have over 100 apps integrated with Health Services. Apps using Health Services are seeing higher engagement from users with Wear apps, and are giving their users longer battery life in the process. For example, Strava found that users with their Wear app did 25% more activities than those without.

Get started with Health Connect

We hope many more developers will join us in bringing unique experiences within Android Health to your users this year.

If you’d like to create a more interconnected health experience for your users, we encourage you to integrate with Health Connect. And if you are a Wear developer, make sure you are using Health Services to get the best battery performance and future proofing for all upcoming Wear OS devices.

Check out our Health Services documentation, Health Connect documentation, and code samples to get started!

To learn more, watch the I/O session:

I/O 2023: What’s new in Google Play

Posted by Alex Musil, Senior Director of Engineering and Product, Google Play

Over the past year, our teams have built exciting new features and made major changes to help you thrive with us. These updates have focused on:

  • Being the best partner to help you grow your audiences across the lifecycle of your business,
  • Being the best platform to help you effectively monetize your users at scale, and
  • Being the safest place to publish and distribute your hard work with Android.

Watch our video for more details, or keep reading to get the highlights.



More store listing enhancements designed to drive growth

Attracting users is the foundation of any app business, and it all starts with your store listing. These updates can help you craft better and more personalized content to drive more audience growth.

  • Last year, we gave every title the ability to create at least 50 custom store listings. Now, in addition to tailoring by country and pre-registration status, you can also customize your listing for inactive users, highlighting why they should give your app or game another chance.
  • Soon, we’ll launch custom store listings for Google Ads App campaign ad groups. These will allow you to serve custom listings to users coming from specific ads on AdMob and YouTube so you can create a more seamless user experience from Google Ads to Google Play.
  • All these new tools mean managing more listings, so we’re launching store listing groups to streamline the process. Now you can design for different audiences by simply creating a base listing, then overriding specific elements.
Image showing an example of a store lisitng group in Google Play
Create a base listing as your primary template and modify elements for different audiences with store listing groups.
  • To help you connect with people in their native language, we just launched new machine translation models for 10 languages from Google Translate in Play Console. It can translate your app and store listing in minutes, at no cost.
    •  

AI-powered features to highlight the best of your app

We’re bringing the benefits of AI to Google Play to make it easier for you and your users to get things done. From helping you showcase your app or game in the best possible light to helping users discover your title, these AI-powered features help you highlight the best of your app experience with ease.

  • Starting today, you can use Google’s generative AI technology to help you get started with store listings in English. This is an experimental feature to help you draft content with less effort. Just open our AI helper, enter a couple of prompts like audience and key theme, and it will generate a draft you can edit, discard, or use. You’re always in complete control of what you submit and publish.
Moving image of using Generative AI to create a custom store listing in Google Play
Draft an AI-generated store listing with just a few prompts
  • To help users learn from each other about what makes your app or game special at a glance, we’re launching review summaries powered by Google’s generative AI technology. Starting with an experiment in English, and expanding later this year.
screenshot of user review summaries in Google Play on a mobile device
Review summaries highlight what users are saying about your app or game at a glance


New opportunities to boost user discovery

Google Play can also help you grow your audience by partnering with you to promote important events, new content, or exciting offers. Use Promotional content to let us know when these are happening so we can amplify your growth. Almost 25,000 apps and games already have access to Promotional content, and we’re rolling out to more titles later this year.

  • We’re launching multiple new, dedicated high-traffic surfaces to showcase your most exciting content, including via Play notifications. Participating games are seeing a median 20% uplift in store-wide acquisitions and reacquisitions, driven by increases of over 60% from organic Explore traffic. 
image of four mobile screens displays side-by-side showing new high-traffic surfaces
New Play surfaces showcase your most exciting content
  • To enhance how and where your Promotional content is viewed on Play, we’re updating our reporting so you can track and optimize your events’ direct performance. Check it out in Play Console under “Promotional content performance reports.”

To be eligible for these new growth opportunities, your app or game needs to be of high quality and deliver the great experiences your users expect. Because it’s so important, we’re sharing more insights into how we think about quality and improving our tooling to help you meet these goals.

  • Today, we launched a unified framework for app and game quality that explains how we evaluate quality across a number of dimensions for promotion and featuring. Learn more with this article and I/O session, “What great quality looks like on Play.”

More effective monetization features

We’re also rolling out new features that leverage Play’s reach, expertise, and technologies to help you more effectively generate revenue.

  • Soon, you’ll be able to run price experiments for in-app products right within Play Console. Experiment with different price points across markets and identify when you may be pricing yourself out of a sale or undervaluing your in-app products.
View of price experiments in Google Play Console
Find the right price point for your in-app products with our experiments tool in Play Console
  • Also coming soon is a new type of Promotional content called “featured products” that will allow you to sell your in-app items directly on Play. Feature specific in-app items in different countries or offer discounts to excite users and increase conversions.
moving image showing in-app items on the details page in Google Play
Feature in-app products on your store listing and nominate them for further promotion across Play surfaces
  • We’ve also made new updates to subscriptions to help you expand your reach, increase conversions, and improve retention. This year, we launched multiple prices per billing period so you can provide different auto-renewing and prepaid plan prices as desired, like giving “VIP” users recurring discounts.
  • Our commerce platform continues to evolve by improving access to buyers with new payment methods, exploring expanded billing options through our user choice billing pilot, and investing in secure purchase experiences that prevented over $2 billion in fraudulent and abusive transactions in 2022.

Learn more in our “Boost your revenue with Play Commerce” session.

Finally, we’re also working to increase the effectiveness of your marketing-to-sales funnel.

  • Last year, we launched a Play Console page dedicated to deep links. This page flags broken deep links and provides contextual guidance on how to fix them. Coming soon, we’ll make it easier for you to rationalize your web-to-app mapping with a convenient way to review your top website URLs alongside their deep link status. To help you validate your deep links, we're adding a simple way to compare your app to your web experience for a given URL, side-by-side.

Find out more in our deep links talk, “Optimize app experiences with deep linking.”


Enhanced privacy and security protection for developers and users

Protecting your users and your work is critical to a successful ecosystem, so we’ve continued to strengthen our platform-wide protections and roll out more tools to help you protect your apps.

  • Google Play Protect scans billions of apps each day across billions of Android devices to keep users safe from threats like malware and unwanted software. Last year we prevented 1.4 million policy-violating apps from entering Google Play. 
  • Play Integrity API lets you check that user actions and server requests come from unmodified versions of your app, running on genuine Android devices. We’re rolling out a new beta integration option which gives Play Integrity API verdicts 10x faster. We launched status.play.google.com so you can monitor Play Integrity API service status and be notified of any issues.
  • We’re also expanding access to Automatic integrity protection for apps and games so anti-tamper and anti-piracy protection can be applied in “one-click” with no need to integrate an API in a backend server. Developers who use these products see a reduction in unauthorized usage of 80% on average.
  • Finally, we are building new tools to help you steer users away from broken app versions with prompts to update. First, automatic update prompts for crashing apps are triggered if your app crashes in the foreground and a more stable version is available. And second, you can prompt users on specific app versions to update. No prior integration is required and it will be available to all apps built with app bundles in the coming months.

We’re also continuing to improve Google Play and Play Console to help you provide safe, trustworthy experiences to users.

  • Last year, we launched the Data safety section to help explain what data your app may collect or share, and why. Since the launch, we’ve seen millions of users engaging with this feature every day, and it’s become an important way for users to evaluate an app’s safety before installing it.

    Now, we're enhancing this feature with new data deletion options both inside and outside an app, and policy requirements to help you build trust and empower users with greater clarity and control. You also have the option to give users the choice to clean up their account and request that data like activity history, images, and videos be deleted, rather than their entire account.

  • The redesigned App content page makes outstanding tasks clearer, so you can quickly identify what you need to do to comply with our policies. And soon, you’ll see upcoming declaration requirements and deadlines, so you have more time to plan.

Finally, we rebuilt the Play Console App around modern developer needs. The new app is more customized, so you can tailor the homepage with the metrics you care about most, and integrates Inbox so you can stay up to date with key messages from Google Play. Join the open beta and let us know what you think.

We understand how exciting and challenging building and running a mobile business can be, and our teams are dedicated to building the tools and opportunities you need to succeed across your app lifecycle. Thank you for partnering with us, and please continue to share your feedback as we work together to build the future of Google Play.


Price in-app products with confidence by running price experiments in Play Console

Posted by Phalene Gowling, Product Manager, Google Play

At this year’s Google I/O, our “Boost your revenue with Play Commerce” session highlights the newest monetization tools that are deeply integrated into Google Play, with a focus on helping you optimize your pricing strategy. Pricing your products or content correctly is foundational to driving better user lifetime value and can result in reaching new buyers, improving conversion, and encouraging repeat orders. It can be the difference between a successful sale and pricing yourself out of one, or even undervaluing your products and missing out on key sales opportunities.

To help you price with confidence, we’re excited to announce price experiments for in-app products in Play Console, allowing you to test price points and optimize for local purchasing power at scale. Price experiements will launch in the coming weeks - so read on to get the details on the new tool and learn how you can prepare to take full advantage when it's live.

  • A/B test to find optimal local pricing that’s sensitive to the purchasing power of buyers in different markets. Adjusting your price to local markets has already been an industry-wide practice amongst developers, and at launch you will be able to test and manage your global prices, all within Play Console. An optimized price helps reach both new and existing buyers who may have previously been priced out of monetized experiences in apps and games. Additionally, an optimized price can help increase repeat purchases by buyers of their favorite products.
    • Image of two mobile devices showing A/B price testing in Google Play Console
    Illustrative example only. A/B test price points with ease in Play Console 
  • Experiment with statistical confidence: price experiments enables you to track how close you are to statistical significance with confidence interval tracking, or for a quick summary, you can view the top of the analysis when enough data has been collected in the experiment to determine a statistically significant result. To help make your decision on whether to apply the ‘winning’ price easier, we’ve also included support for tracking key monetization metrics such as revenue uplift, revenue derived from new installers, buyer ratio, orders, and average revenue per paying user. This gives you a more detailed understanding of how buyers behave differently for each experiment arm per market. This can also inspire further refinements towards a robust global monetization strategy.
  • Improve return on investment in user acquisition. Having a localized price and a better understanding of buyer behavior in each market, allows you to optimize your user acquisition strategy having known how buyers will react to market-specific products or content. It could also inform which products you chose to feature on Google Play.

Set up price experiments in minutes in Play Console

Price experiments will be easy to run with the new dedicated section in Play Console under Monetize > Products > Price experiments. You’ll first need to determine the in-app products, markets, and the price points you’d like to test. The intuitive interface will also allow you to refine the experiment settings by audience, confidence level and sensitivity. And once your experiment has reached statistical significance, simply apply the winning price to your selected products within the tool to automatically populate your new default price point for your experiment markets and products. You also have the flexibility to stop any experiment before it reaches statistical significance if needed.

You’ll have full control of what and how you want to test, reducing any overhead of managing tests independently or with external tools – all without requiring any coding changes.

Learn how to run an effective experiment with Play Academy

Get Started

You can start preparing now by strategizing what type of price experiment you might want to run first. For a metric-driven source of inspiration, game developers can explore strategic guidance, which can identify country-specific opportunities for buyer conversion. Alternatively, start building expertise on running effective pricing experiments for in-app products by taking our new Play Academy course, in
preparation for price experiments rolling out in the coming weeks.



Build smarter Android apps with on-device Machine Learning

Posted by Thomas Ezan, Developer Relations

In the past year, the Android team made significant improvements to on-device machine learning to help developers create smarter apps with more features to process images, sound, and text. In the Google I/O talk Build smarter Android apps with on-device Machine Learning, David Miro-Llopis PM on ML Kit and Thomas Ezan Android Developer Relation Engineer review new Android APIs and solutions and showcase applications using on-device ML.

Running ML processes on-device enables low-latency, increases data-privacy, enables offline support and potentially reduces cloud bill. Applications such as Lens AR Translate or the document scanning feature available in Files in India, benefit from the advantages of on-device ML.

To deploy ML features on Android, developers have two options:

  • ML Kit: which offers production-ready ML solutions to common user flows, via easy-to-use APIs.
  • Android’s custom ML stack: which is built on top of Tensorflow Lite, and provides control over the inference process and the user experience.

ML Kit released new APIs and improved existing features

Over the last year, the ML Kit team worked on both improving existing APIs and launching new ones: face mesh and document scanner. ML Kit is launching a new document scanner API in Q3 2023, that will provide a consistent scanning experience across apps in Android. Developers will be able to use it only with a few lines of code, without needing camera permission and with low apk size impact (given that it will be distributed via Google Play Services. In a similar fashion, Google code scanner is now generally available and provides a consistent scanning experience across apps, without needing camera permission, via Google Play Services.

Image a series of three photos of two girls smiling to show how face mesh improves facial recognition

Additionally, ML Kit improved the performance of the following APIs: barcode detection (by 17%), text recognition, digital ink recognition, pose detection, translation, and smart reply. ML Kit also integrated some APIs to Google Play Services so you don’t have to bundle the models to your application. Many developers are using ML Kit to easily integrate machine learning into their apps; for example, WPS uses ML Kit to translate text in 43 languages and save $65M a year.


Acceleration Service in Android’s custom ML stack is now in public beta

To support custom machine learning, the Android ML team is actively developing Android’s custom ML stack. Last year, TensorFlow Lite and GPU delegates were added to the Google Play Services which lets developers use TensorFlow Lite without bundling it to their app and provides automatic updates. With improved inference performance, hardware acceleration can in turn also significantly improve the user experience of your ML-enabled Android app. This year, the team is also announcing Acceleration Service, a new API enabling developers to pick the optimal hardware acceleration configuration at runtime. It is now in public beta and developers can learn more and get started here.

To learn more, watch the video:

Get ready for I/O ‘23: start planning your sessions, and take a look at some of Android’s favorite moments!

Posted by Maru Ahues Bouza, Director, Android Developer Relations

Google I/O 2023 is just a week away, kicking off on Wednesday May 10 at 10AM PT with the Google Keynote and followed at 12:15PM PT by the Developer Keynote. The program schedule launched last week, allowing you to save sessions to your calendar and start previewing content.

To help you get ready for this year's Google I/O, we’re taking a look back at some of Android’s favorite moments from past Google I/Os, as well as a playlist of developer content to help you prepare. Take a look below, and start getting ready!


Modern Android Development

Helping you stay more productive and create better apps, Modern Android Development is Android’s set of tools and APIs, and they were born across many Google I/Os. Tor Norbye, Director of Engineering for Android, reflects on how Android development tools, APIs, and best practices have evolved over the years, starting in 2013 when he and the team announced Android Studio. Here are some of the talks we’re excited for in developer productivity at this year’s Google I/O:



Building for a multi-device world

From the launch of Android Auto and Android Wear in 2014 to last year’s preview of the Google Pixel Tablet, Google I/O has always been an important moment for seeing the new form factors that Android is extending to. Sara Hamilton, Developer Relations Engineer for Android, discusses how we are continuing to invest in multi-device experiences and making it easier for you to build for the entire Android device ecosystem. Sara shares her excitement for developers continuing to bring unique experiences to all screen sizes and types, from tablets and foldables, to watches and tvs. Some of our favorite talks at this year’s Google I/O in the multi-device world include:




The platform and app quality

From originally playing a smaller part in Google I/O keynotes in the early days to announcing 3 billion monthly active users in 2021, Dan Sandler, Software Engineer for Android, looks back at the tremendous growth of the Android platform and how it’s continuing to evolve. With a focus on helping you make quality apps, here are some of our favorite Android platform talks this year:




We can’t wait to show you all that’s new across Android in just under a week. Be sure to tune in on the Google I/O website on May 10 to catch the latest Android updates and announcements this year!

Get ready for I/O ‘23: start planning your sessions, and take a look at some of Android’s favorite moments!

Posted by Maru Ahues Bouza, Director, Android Developer Relations

Google I/O 2023 is just a week away, kicking off on Wednesday May 10 at 10AM PT with the Google Keynote and followed at 12:15PM PT by the Developer Keynote. The program schedule launched last week, allowing you to save sessions to your calendar and start previewing content.

To help you get ready for this year's Google I/O, we’re taking a look back at some of Android’s favorite moments from past Google I/Os, as well as a playlist of developer content to help you prepare. Take a look below, and start getting ready!


Modern Android Development

Helping you stay more productive and create better apps, Modern Android Development is Android’s set of tools and APIs, and they were born across many Google I/Os. Tor Norbye, Director of Engineering for Android, reflects on how Android development tools, APIs, and best practices have evolved over the years, starting in 2013 when he and the team announced Android Studio. Here are some of the talks we’re excited for in developer productivity at this year’s Google I/O:



Building for a multi-device world

From the launch of Android Auto and Android Wear in 2014 to last year’s preview of the Google Pixel Tablet, Google I/O has always been an important moment for seeing the new form factors that Android is extending to. Sara Hamilton, Developer Relations Engineer for Android, discusses how we are continuing to invest in multi-device experiences and making it easier for you to build for the entire Android device ecosystem. Sara shares her excitement for developers continuing to bring unique experiences to all screen sizes and types, from tablets and foldables, to watches and tvs. Some of our favorite talks at this year’s Google I/O in the multi-device world include:




The platform and app quality

From originally playing a smaller part in Google I/O keynotes in the early days to announcing 3 billion monthly active users in 2021, Dan Sandler, Software Engineer for Android, looks back at the tremendous growth of the Android platform and how it’s continuing to evolve. With a focus on helping you make quality apps, here are some of our favorite Android platform talks this year:




We can’t wait to show you all that’s new across Android in just under a week. Be sure to tune in on the Google I/O website on May 10 to catch the latest Android updates and announcements this year!

Get ready for Google I/O

Posted by Timothy Jordan, Director, Developer Relations & Open Source

I/O is just a few days away and we couldn’t be more excited to share the latest updates across Google’s developer products, solutions, and technologies. From keynotes to technical sessions and hands-on workshops, these announcements aim to help you build smarter and ship faster.

Here are some helpful tips to maximize your experience online.


Start building your personal I/O agenda

Starting now, you can save the Google and developer keynotes to your calendar and explore the program to preview content. Here are just a few noteworthy examples of what you’ll find this year:

What's new in Android
Get the latest news in Android development: Android 14, form factors, Jetpack + Compose libraries, Android Studio, and performance.
What’s new in Web
Explore new features and APIs that became stable across browsers on the Web Platform this year.
What’s new in Generative AI
Discover a new suite of tools that make it easy for developers to leverage and build on top of Google's large language models.
What’s new in Google Cloud
Learn how Google Cloud and generative AI will help you develop faster and more efficiently.

For the best experience, create or connect a developer profile and start saving content to My I/O to build your personal agenda. With over 200 sessions and other learning material, there’s a lot to cover, so we hope this will help you get organized.

This year we’ve introduced development focus filters to help you navigate content faster across mobile, web, AI, and cloud technologies. You can also peruse content by topic, type, or experience level so you can find what you’re interested in, faster.


Connect with the community

After the keynotes, you can talk to Google experts and other developers online in I/O Adventure chat. Here you can ask questions about new releases and learn best practices from the global developer community.

If you’re craving community now, visit the Community page to meet people with similar interests in your area or find a watch party to attend.

We hope these updates are useful, and we can’t wait to connect online in May!

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

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

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


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


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


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


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


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


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

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

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


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


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


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


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

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


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Android Studio Flamingo is stable

Posted by Steven Jenkins, Product Manager, Android Studio

Today, we are thrilled to announce the stable release of Android Studio Flamingo🦩: The official IDE for building Android apps!

This release includes improvements to help you build pixel-perfect UI with Live Edit, new features that assist with inspecting your app, IntelliJ updates, and more. Read on or watch the video to learn more about how Android Studio Flamingo🦩 can help supercharge your productivity and download the latest stable version today!

  

UI Tools

Jetpack Compose and Material 3 templates – Jetpack Compose is now recommended for new projects so the templates use Jetpack Compose and Material 3 by default.

Live Edit (Compose) experimental – Iteratively build an app using Compose by pushing code changes directly to an attached device or emulator. Push changes on file save or automatically and watch your UI update in real time. Live Edit is experimental and can be enabled in the Editor Settings. There are known limitations. Please send us your feedback so that we can continue to improve it. Learn more.

Moving image illustrating a live edit
Live edit

Themed app icon Preview support – You can now use the System UI Mode selector on the toolbar to switch wallpapers and see how your themed app icons react to the chosen wallpaper. (Note: required in apps targeting API level 33 and higher.)

Moving image illustrating preview of themed app icons across different wallpapers
Previewing Themed app icons across different wallpapers
Dynamic color Preview

Enable dynamic color in your app and use the new wallpaper attribute in an @Preview composable to switch wallpapers and see how your UI reacts to different wallpapers. (Note: you must use Compose 1.4.0 or higher.)

Moving image illustrating dynamic color wallpaper in Compose Preview
Compose Preview: dynamic color wallpaper

Build

Build Analyzer task categorization – Build Analyzer now groups tasks by categories such as Manifest, Android Resources, Kotlin, Dexing and more. Categories are sorted by duration and can be expanded to display a list of the corresponding tasks for further analysis. This makes it easy to know which categories have the most impact on build time.

Image of Build Analyzer Task Categorization
Build Analyzer Task Categorization

One-click automated profileable build and run – When you are profiling your app, you want to avoid profiling a debuggable build. These are great during development, but the results can be skewed. Instead, you should profile a non-debuggable build because that is what your users will be running. This is now more convenient with one-click automated profileable build and run. Easily configure a profileable app and profile it with one click. You can still choose to profile your debuggable build by selecting Profile app with complete data. Read more on the blog.

Image illustrating One-click Automated Profileable Build and Run
One-click Automated Profileable Build and Run

Lint support for SDK extensions – SDK extensions leverage modular system components to add APIs to the public SDK for previously released API levels. Now, you can scan for and fix SDK extension issues with lint support. Android Studio automatically generates the correct version checks for APIs that are launched using SDK extensions.

Image showing Lint Support for SDK Extensions
Lint Support for SDK Extensions

Android Gradle Plugin 8.0.0 – Android Studio Flamingo ships with a new, major version of the Android Gradle plugin. The plugin brings many improvements, but also introduces a number of behavior changes and the Transform API removal. Please make sure to read about the required changes before you upgrade the AGP version in your projects.

Inspect

Updates to App Quality Insights – Discover, investigate, and reproduce issues reported by Crashlytics with App Quality Insights. You can filter by app version, Crashlytics signals, device type, or operating system version. In the latest update you can now close issues or add useful annotations in the Notes pane.

Image showing how you can annotate and close issues inside the notes pane
Annotate and close issues inside the notes pane

Network Inspector traffic interception – Network Inspector now shows all traffic data for the full timeline by default. Create and manage rules that help test how your app behaves when encountering different responses such as status codes, and response headers and bodies. The rules determine what responses to intercept and how to modify these responses before they reach the app. You can choose which rule to enable or disable by checking the Active box next to each rule. Rules are automatically saved every time you modify them.

Image showing Network Inspector Traffic Interception
Network Inspector Traffic Interception

Auto-connect to foreground process in Layout Inspector – Layout Inspector now automatically connects to the foreground process. You no longer have to click to attach it to your app.

IntelliJ

IntelliJ Platform Update – Android Studio Flamingo (2022.2.1) includes the IntelliJ 2022.2 platform release, which comes with IDE performance improvements, enhanced rendering performance on macOS thanks to the Metal API and more. It also improves the IDE performance when using Kotlin, which positively impacts code highlighting, completion, and find usages. Read the IntelliJ release notes here.

Summary

To recap, Android Studio Flamingo (2022.2.1) includes these new enhancements and features:

UI Tools
  • Live Edit (Compose) - Experimental
  • Themed app icon Preview support
  • Dynamic color Preview
  • Jetpack Compose and Material 3 Templates

Build
  • Build Analyzer Task Categorization
  • One-click Automated Profileable Build and Run
  • Lint Support for SDK Extensions
  • Breaking changes in Android Gradle Plugin 8.0

Inspect
  • Updates to App Quality Insights
  • Network Inspector Traffic Interception
  • Auto-connect to foreground process in Layout Inspector

IntelliJ
  •  IntelliJ Platform 2022.2 Update

Check out the Android Studio release notes, Android Gradle plugin release notes, and the Android Emulator release notes for more details.

Download Studio Today!

Now is the time to download Android Studio Flamingo (2022.2.1) to incorporate the new features into your workflow. As always, we appreciate any feedback on things you like and issues or features you would like to see. If you find a bug or issue, please file an issue and also check out known issues. Remember to also follow us on Twitter, Medium, or YouTube for more Android development updates!