Tag Archives: Google Play

Introducing new Android Excellence apps and games on Google Play

Kacey Fahey, Developer Marketing, Google Play

Congratulations to the latest apps and games featured in the Android Excellence program on Google Play. As a reminder, these collections are refreshed every three months and recognize apps and games that set the bar for high quality, great user experience, and strong technical performance.

If you're looking for some new apps, here are a few highlights.

  • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC: Capture, edit, and share your photos with the power of Lightroom on your mobile device. Use presets for quick and easy edits, or dive in with the advanced editing tools.
  • Seven - 7 Minute Workout Training Challenge: Use this app to fit seven minute workouts into your busy lifestyle. Grab your phone, or even your Wear OS device to work out anywhere and anytime. Keep it up to earn achievements and join the 7 Club for even more support.
  • SoloLearn: Learn to Code for Free: Learn one of many new coding languages by joining a community of millions. Tap in to the 24/7 peer support, or create your own lessons to become a community influencer.

Here are a few of our favorite new games joining the collection.

  • CodyCross: Crossword Puzzles: Try this game for a fun new style of crossword puzzles. Play for free on adventure mode or subscribe for special themed packs, varying difficulty levels and fresh content added weekly.
  • MARVEL Contest of Champions: Play with your favorite Marvel Super Heroes and Super Villians in iconic locations from the Marvel Universe. Assemble your team of champions to play through the exciting storyline and even build alliances with your friends.
  • Orbital 1: Test your skills in this real-time multiplayer game with beautiful 3D graphics. Collect and upgrade fighters and weapons to build out your perfect squad for quick battles and new daily quests.

See the full list of Android Excellence apps and games.

New Android Excellence apps New Android Excellence games
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC

Dashlane

Holstelworld

iCook

Keeper Password Manager

Keepsafe Photo Vault

Mobisystems OfficeSuite

PhotoGrid

Runtastic Results

Seven - 7 Minute Workout Training Challenge

SoloLearn: Learn to Code for Free

Tube Map

WPS Office

Angry Birds 2

Azur Lane アズールレーン

CodyCross

Into the Dead 2

Little Panda Restaurant

MARVEL Contest of Champions

Orbital 1

Rooms of Doom

Sky Dancer Run

Sling Kong

Soul Knight

Explore other great apps and games in the Editors' Choice section on Google Play and discover best practices to help you build quality apps and games.

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New ways to read more with audiobooks from Google Play

Two months ago we launched audiobooks from Google Play to help you fit more books into your life. Today we have a few updates to make it even easier to enjoy a great book, whether you like to listen on the go with your phone or at home with the Google Assistant on Google Home.

  • Never lose your place with Smart Resume.Interruptions happen all the time, and sometimes you need to pause your audiobook in the middle of a sentence or word because your mom calls or maps tells you to turn in 200 feet. When the book picks back up, you have no idea what’s going on. Smart Resume for audiobooks will intelligently rewind you to the beginning of the word or sentence when you pick up your audiobook again, so you’ll be able to jump right back into where you left off.
  • Revisit your favorite moments with Bookmarks.Now you can save all of your favorite moments with Bookmarks in the Google Play Books app. While listening on Android or iOS device, just tap the bookmark icon to save this spot and revisit your favorite quote anytime.
  • Fit in more reading time with routines on the Google Assistant.Every morning you may type in your work address to Google Maps to see traffic, check your appointments in Google Calendar, and fire up an audiobook for your drive. You can do this all in one step, hands free with the Google Assistant’s support for Routines. In the Google Home app, add audiobooks to your routine. Once added, just say “Ok Google, tell me about my day” for an easy transition into your morning—and your book. 
  • Speed it up—or slow it way down—with greater speed controls.Sometimes you just just can’t wait to figure out whodunnit. Now, you can listen to audiobooks at 3x speed to get through your book even faster, or slow books down to 0.5x in order to really savor the language. The pace is up to you.
  • Share with Family Library in 13 new countries.With Family Library, you can share audiobooks and ebooks with up to five family members for free (depending on the book). Shared books can then be read on Android, iOS and the web. Today, we’re rolling this out to even more families in 13 new countries, including Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Chile, Mexico, Japan (audiobooks only) and South Africa.

These new features are rolling out starting today on Android, iOS, and on devices with the Google Assistant. Time to get back to my book.

Google Play helps you find what to watch and where to watch it

There’s no shortage of entertainment to enjoy online. With so many different streaming apps out there, it’s not only challenging to figure out what to watch, but where and how to watch it. Google Play wants to change that. Now you can browse the latest new release movies, see which streaming app is playing your favorite show, or find something entirely new to watch with the Google Play Movies & TV app.

Check out what’s new:

  • Find the right streaming service: In both the Google Play Movies & TV app and in the Play Store, you can easily discover if your favorite show or movie is available on a streaming service. For example, just search for “This is Us” and you’ll see that the latest season is for sale on Play Movies & TV, but also that it’s available to stream on the NBC app (with a cable subscription) or on Hulu. To start, we’ll have support for more than two dozen streaming and TV everywhere apps, including ABC, CBS, FOX NOW, NBC, Hulu, HBO NOW, HBO Go, Showtime, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Now, HGTV, BET Now, Comedy Central and many more. We’ll continue to add more partners over time. Once you’ve found what you want to watch, it’s just one tap and we’ll send you right to the app that lets you stream it. From there, you can also cast to your TV.
  • Find something new to watch: Instead of scrolling endlessly to find a movie on a Friday night, now you can narrow down your search with just a few taps. Explore more than tens of thousands of shows and movies on Google Play by genre to quickly find comedy TV shows, an award winning drama, family movies and more to watch for free, rent or buy.
GooglePlay_Demo_blog.gif
  • Tell us what you like, and what you don’t:Now in Play Movies & TV, we’ll show you TV shows and films based on what you watch and what you like—just use thumbs up/thumbs down to rate stuff you’ve already seen.
  • New watchlist tab:We’ve made it even easier to save shows and movies to watch later. All you have to do is long press on any show or movie and add it to your watchlist. In the watchlist tab, we’ll show you when it becomes available to buy or rent on Play, if the price has recently dropped, or if it is now available to stream.

Google Play helps you find what to watch and where to watch it

There’s no shortage of entertainment to enjoy online. With so many different streaming apps out there, it’s not only challenging to figure out what to watch, but where and how to watch it. Google Play wants to change that. Now you can browse the latest new release movies, see which streaming app is playing your favorite show, or find something entirely new to watch with the Google Play Movies & TV app.

Check out what’s new:

  • Find the right streaming service: In both the Google Play Movies & TV app and in the Play Store, you can easily discover if your favorite show or movie is available on a streaming service. For example, just search for “This is Us” and you’ll see that the latest season is for sale on Play Movies & TV, but also that it’s available to stream on the NBC app (with a cable subscription) or on Hulu. To start, we’ll have support for more than two dozen streaming and TV everywhere apps, including ABC, CBS, FOX NOW, NBC, Hulu, HBO NOW, HBO Go, Showtime, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Now, HGTV, BET Now, Comedy Central and many more. We’ll continue to add more partners over time. Once you’ve found what you want to watch, it’s just one tap and we’ll send you right to the app that lets you stream it. From there, you can also cast to your TV.
  • Find something new to watch: Instead of scrolling endlessly to find a movie on a Friday night, now you can narrow down your search with just a few taps. Explore more than tens of thousands of shows and movies on Google Play by genre to quickly find comedy TV shows, an award winning drama, family movies and more to watch for free, rent or buy.
GooglePlay_Demo_blog.gif
  • Tell us what you like, and what you don’t:Now in Play Movies & TV, we’ll show you TV shows and films based on what you watch and what you like—just use thumbs up/thumbs down to rate stuff you’ve already seen.
  • New watchlist tab:We’ve made it even easier to save shows and movies to watch later. All you have to do is long press on any show or movie and add it to your watchlist. In the watchlist tab, we’ll show you when it becomes available to buy or rent on Play, if the price has recently dropped, or if it is now available to stream.

Want to Change The Game? Design one with Google Play

Of the hundreds of millions of people around the world who enjoy games on Google Play, 49% are women, yet only 23% of game developers identify as women. To help address this disparity, last year we created Change the Game—a program to empower the next generation of female gamemakers and celebrate women as players and creators.

Now we’re joining forces withGirls Make Games andESA Foundation, to launch the Change The Game Design Challenge to inspire and empower teens to design a game they’d like to play. Along with their game idea, they’ll share their vision for the future of gaming for a chance to win a $10,000 college scholarship and $15,000 for their school’s or community center’s technology program.

The top five finalists will also receive an all-expense paid trip to Los Angeles to attend E3 and showcase their game design in June, where the grand prize winner will be announced. The finalists will join a celebration of women in gaming, get a VIP tour of Google Los Angeles with female leaders in the industry, a scholarship to attend Girls Make Games Summer Camp and more.

The contest is open to U.S. residents only and for more information, including submission guidelines and how to enter, please visit play.google.com/about/changethegame/#challenge

What will be next in mobile gaming? It could be one of your designs.

Introducing Google Play Instant, a faster way to try apps and games

People all over the world come to Google Play to discover great games. In the last year, the number of Android users who installed a game has more than doubled. To help you discover new games or get to the ones you already love, we’ve redesigned our Google Play Games app. In the new “Arcade” tab, you can check out game video trailers or use tags like “New” or “Action” to find a particular type of game. We’ll also show you news and YouTube videos related to your favorite games to help you boost your skills and become a game master.

Comp 1_5.gif

To make it even easier to dive right in and enjoy new apps and games on Android devices, we’re also introducing Google Play Instant. With Google Play Instant, you can just tap and try a game without having to download it first—whether you’re looking to storm a castle on Clash Royale or become a wordmaster with Words with Friends 2. Google Play Instant experiences will be available in the Google Play Store, the Google Play Games app, or wherever game links are shared. Today you can check out some of the titles from the Instant Gameplay collection. Love what you’re experiencing? Just tap the “Install now!” button to install the game.


To start, we’ll have a handful of games to play instantly on more than 1 billion Android devices worldwide. Check back later this year as more games become available to play right away.

Cryptography Changes in Android P

Posted by Adam Vartanian, Software Engineer

We hope you're enjoying the first developer preview of Android P. We wanted to specifically call out some backward-incompatible changes we plan to make to the cryptographic capabilities in Android P, which you can see in the developer preview.

Changes to providers

Starting in Android P, we plan to deprecate some functionality from the BC provider that's duplicated by the AndroidOpenSSL (also known as Conscrypt) provider. This will only affect applications that specify the BC provider explicitly when calling getInstance() methods. To be clear, we aren't doing this because we are concerned about the security of the implementations from the BC provider, rather because having duplicated functionality imposes additional costs and risks while not providing much benefit.

If you don't specify a provider in your getInstance() calls, no changes are required.

If you specify the provider by name or by instance—for example, Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/PKCS7PADDING", "BC") or Cipher.getInstance("AES/CBC/PKCS7PADDING", Security.getProvider("BC"))—the behavior you get in Android P will depend on what API level your application targets. For apps targeting an API level before P, the call will return the BC implementation and log a warning in the application log. For apps targeting Android P or later, the call will throw NoSuchAlgorithmException.

To resolve this, you should stop specifying a provider and use the default implementation.

In a later Android release, we plan to remove the deprecated functionality from the BC provider entirely. Once removed, any call that requests that functionality from the BC provider (whether by name or instance) will throw NoSuchAlgorithmException.

Removal of the Crypto provider

In a previous post, we announced that the Crypto provider was deprecated beginning in Android Nougat. Since then, any request for the Crypto provider by an application targeting API 23 (Marshmallow) or before would succeed, but requests by applications targeting API 24 (Nougat) or later would fail. In Android P, we plan to remove the Crypto provider entirely. Once removed, any call to SecureRandom.getInstance("SHA1PRNG", "Crypto") will throw NoSuchProviderException. Please ensure your apps have been updated.

Google Play celebrates women who change the game

In honor of International Women’s Day, Google Play is celebrating women who inspire us. Starting this week in the Play Store, you’ll see collections of games and apps made by female developers from around the world as well as books, movies and TV shows featuring strong female protagonists.

Change the playing field with these games made by women

Google Play launched Change the Game last fall to empower and celebrate women players and creators—making mobile gaming for everyone. We’ll highlight these popular games made by women, including 80 Days, Zen Koi 2, Race for the Galaxy and Kami 2. On March 8, we’ll also partner with top YouTube creators OMGItsFireFoxx, CyberNova, Gloom and Rosanna Pansino who will share videos telling personal stories on how they got into gaming.

Meet the women behind some of Google Play’s best apps

Melanie Perkins, Founder of Canva, wanted to make design software easier for everyone. Ida Tin, CEO of female health app Period Tracker Clue, wanted to help women monitor their health. Get to know these women and other female visionaries behind popular apps and games like Kitchen Stories, CastBox, Simple Habit, Cuponeria - Cupons de desconto, Abjjad, Homage and many more. Learn about how they got their start and the challenges they faced along the way.

Get inspired by these strong female protagonists

We’re also showcasing hundreds of books, movies and TV shows as well as games  featuring our favorite female leads like Lara Croft GO and Layton’s Mystery Journey, best-selling books “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Brave,” female-directed films “Wonder Woman” and “Frida,” and popular TV series like “Girls” and “Call The Midwife.”

There are so many women out there who inspire us—from our app and game developers to leading ladies on the screen—and Google Play is a place for them to shine not only on International Women’s Day, but every day. Stop by the Play Store and check out their great work!

Congratulations to the winners of the Google Play Indie Games Contest 2017 in Europe

Posted by Adriana Puchianu, Developer Marketing Google Play

We have just wrapped up the second edition of the Google Play Indie Games Contest in Europe! The iconic Saatchi Gallery in London welcomed 20 developers, from 12 countries, who showcased their games to the audience of gamers, industry experts, and journalists.

The finalists' games were on show to the public, who spent three hours trying out their games and voting for their favourites, alongside the Google Play team. The top 10 finalists were then selected, and went on to pitch their games, and compete for the big prizes in front of our jury.

Please join us in congratulating the winners! They will be bringing home a well-deserved diploma, along with a prize package that will help them reach more gamers worldwide; including premium placement on the Google Play Store, marketing campaigns of up to 100,000 EUR and influencer campaigns of up to 50,000 EUR, the latest Google hardware, tickets to Google I/O, and much more.

It's really inspiring to see the excitement around this second edition, and great to see the new wave of indie games coming from Europe. We are already looking forward to playing the games that will be developed in 2018!

Check out the main winners and the other finalists on the Google Play Store!

Winner

Bury me, my love

Playdius

France

A reality-inspired interactive fiction designed for mobile phones. It tells the story of Nour, a Syrian woman trying to reach Europe in hope of a better life.

Runners up

Old Man's Journey

Broken Rules Interactive Media GmbH

Austria

A story game about life's precious moments, broken dreams, and changed plans.

Yellow

Bart Bonte

Belgium

A puzzle game for you! A love letter to a marvelous colour and to the little wonder called touchscreens. Warning: very yellow!

The other games that have made it into top 10 are:

Captain Tom Galactic Traveler

Picodongames

France

An open world platformer and space exploration game. Embark on an exploratory mission, discover planets, collect oxygen, play with gravity.

I Love Hue

Zut!

United Kingdom

A minimalist, ambient puzzle game influenced by mindfulness apps and abstract art. Players arrange shuffled mosaics of coloured tiles into perfectly ordered palettes.

Jodeo

Gamebra.in

Turkey

Jodeo is a 2D jelly critter. There's something it's curious about: what if 3D objects and 2D physics are in the same game? How can 2D objects interact with 3D objects?

Kami 2

State of Play

United Kingdom

The calming yet addictive puzzle game is back! With over 100 handcrafted puzzles, it takes you on a mind-twisting journey that combines logic and problem-solving.

Kenshō

FIFTYTWO

Russia

A tile sliding puzzle with a wonderful soundtrack. Mysterious things happen in a ruined room. Doors inside that room lead to different worlds and beautiful landscapes.

No More Buttons

Tommy Søreide Kjær

Norway

A hand-drawn platformer where the buttons are part of the environment.

The Big Journey

Catfishbox

Ukraine

Designed for kids and adults alike, this a beautiful, casual adventure. Tilt to roll around and explore a beautiful world with Mr. Whiskers.

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