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Compose for Wear OS is now 1.0: time to build wearable apps with Compose!

Posted by Kseniia Shumelchyk, Android Developer Relations Engineer

Today we’re launching version 1.0 of Compose for Wear OS, the first stable release of our modern declarative UI toolkit designed to help developers create beautiful, responsive apps for Google’s smartwatch platform.

Compose for Wear OS was built from the bottom up in Kotlin with assumptions of modern app architecture. It makes building apps for Wear OS easier, faster, and more intuitive by following the declarative approach and offering powerful Kotlin syntax.

The toolkit not only simplifies UI development, but also provides a rich set of UI components optimized for the watch experience with built-in support of Material design for Wear OS, and it’s accompanied by many powerful tools in Android Studio to streamline UI iteration.

What this means

The Compose for Wear OS 1.0 release means that the API is stable and has what you need to build production-ready apps. Moving forward, Compose for Wear OS is our recommended approach for building user interfaces for Wear OS apps.

Your feedback has helped shape the development of Compose for Wear OS; our developer community has been with us each step of the way, engaging with us on Slack and providing feedback on the APIs, components, and tooling. As we are working on bringing new features to future versions of Compose for Wear OS, we will continue to welcome developer feedback and suggestions.

We are also excited to share how developers have already adopted Compose in their Wear OS apps and what they like about it.

What developers are saying

Todoist helps people organize, plan and collaborate on projects. They are one of the first companies to completely rebuild their Wear OS app using Compose and redesign all screens and interactions:

“When the new Wear design language and Compose for Wear OS were announced, we were thrilled. It gave us new motivation and opportunity to invest into the platform.”

Todoist application

Relying on Compose for Wear OS has improved both developer and user experience for Todoist:

“Compose for Wear OS helped us tremendously both on the development side and the design side. The guides and documentation made it easy for our product designers to prepare mockups matching the new design language of the platform. And the libraries made it very easy for us to implement these, providing all the necessary widgets and customizations. Swipe to dismiss, TimeText, ScalingLazyList were all components that worked very well out-of-the-box for us, while still allowing us to make a recognizable and distinct app.”

Outdooractive helps people plan routes for hiking, cycling, running, and other outdoor adventures. As wearables are a key aspect of their product strategy, they have been quick to update their offering with an app for the user's wrist.

Outdooractive application

Outdooractive has already embraced Wear OS 3, and by migrating to Compose for Wear OS they aimed for developer-side benefits such as having a modern code base and increased development productivity:

“Huge improvement is how lists are created. Thanks to ScalingLazyColumn it is easier (compared to RecyclerView) to create scrolling screens without wasting resources. Availability of standard components like Chip helps saving time by being able to use pre-fabricated design-/view-components. What would have taken us days now takes us hours.”

The Outdooractive team also highlighted that Compose for Wear OS usage help them to strive for better app quality:

“Improved animations were a nice surprise, allowing smoothly hiding/revealing components by just wrapping components in “AnimatedVisibility” for example, which we used in places where we would normally not have invested any time in implementing animations.”

Another developer we’ve been working with, Period Tracker helps keep track of period cycles, ovulation, and the chance of conception.

Period Tracker application

They have taken advantage of our UI toolkit to significantly improve user interface and quickly develop new features available exclusively on Wear OS:

“Compose for Wear OS provided us with many kits to help us bring our designs to life. For example, we used Chips to design the main buttons for period recording, water drinking, and taking medication, and it also helped us create a unique look for the latest version of Kegel workout.”

Similarly to other developers, Period Tracker noted that Compose for Wear OS helped them to achieve better developer experience and improved collaboration with design and development teams:

“For example, before Chips components were available, we had to use a custom way to load images on buttons which caused a lot of adaptation work. Yes, Compose for Wear OS improved our productivity and made our designers more willing to design a better user experience on wearables.”

Check out the in-depth case studies to learn more about how other developers are using Jetpack Compose.

1.0 release

Let’s look into the key features available with 1.0 release:

Material: The Compose Material catalog for Wear OS already offers more components than are available with View-based layouts. The components follow material styling and also implement material theming, which allows you to customize the design for your brand.
Declarative: Compose for Wear OS leverages Modern Android Development and works seamlessly with other Jetpack libraries. Compose-based UIs in most cases result in less code and accelerate the development process as a whole, read more.
Interoperable: If you have an existing Wear OS app with a large View-based codebase, it's possible to gradually adopt Compose for Wear OS by using the Compose Interoperability APIs rather than having to rewrite the whole codebase.
Handles different watch shapes: Compose for Wear OS extends the foundation of Compose, adding a DSL for all curved elements to make it easy to develop for all Wear OS device shapes: round, square, or rectangular with minimal code.
Performance: Each Compose for Wear OS library ships with its own baseline profiles that are automatically merged and distributed with your app’s APK and are compiled ahead of time on device. In most cases, this achieves app performance for production builds that is on-par with View-based apps. However, it’s important to know how to configure, develop, and test your app’s performance for the best results. Learn more.

Note that using version 1.0 of Compose for Wear OS requires using the version 1.2 of androidx.compose libraries and therefore Kotlin 1.7.0. Read more about Jetpack Compose 1.2 release here.

Tools and libraries

Android Studio

The declarative paradigm shift also alters the development workflow. The Compose tooling available in Android Studio will help you build apps more productively.

Android Studio Dolphin includes a new project template with Compose for Wear OS to help you get started.

The Composable Preview annotation allows you to instantly verify how your app’s layout behaves on different watch shapes and sizes. You can configure the device preview to show different Wear OS device types (round, rectangle, etc):

import androidx.compose.ui.tooling.preview

@Preview(

device = Devices.WEAR_OS_LARGE_ROUND,

showSystemUi = true,

backgroundColor = 0xff000000,

showBackground = true

)

@Composable

fun PreviewCustomComposable() {

CustomComposable(...)

}

Starting with Android Studio Electric Eel, Live Edit supports iterative code development for Wear OS, providing quick feedback as you make changes in the editor and immediately reflecting UI in the Preview or running app on the device.

Horologist

Horologist is a group of open-source libraries from Google that supplement Wear OS development, which we announced with the beta release of Compose for Wear OS. Horologist has graduated a number of experimental APIs to stable including TimeText fadeAway modifiers, WearNavScaffold, the Date and Time pickers.

Date and Time pickers from Horologist library

Learning Compose

If you are unfamiliar with using Jetpack Compose, we recommend starting with the tutorial. Many of the development principles there also apply to Compose for Wear OS.

To learn more about Compose for Wear OS check out:

Compose for Wear OS codelab for hands-on experience
Documentation for a quick start guide and implementation guidance
Learning pathway for a step-by-step journey
Wear OS samples repository on GitHub.

Now that Compose for Wear OS has reached its first stable release, it’s time to create beautiful apps built for the wrist with Compose!

Join the community

Join the discussion in the Kotlin Slack #compose-wear channel to connect with the team and other developers and share what you’re building.

Provide feedback

Please keep providing us feedback on the issue tracker and let us know your experience!

For more information about building apps for Wear OS, check out the developer site.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Independent versioning of Jetpack Compose libraries

Posted by Jolanda Verhoef, Android Developer Relations Engineer

Starting today, the various Jetpack Compose libraries will move to independent versioning schemes. This creates the possibility for sub-groups such as androidx.compose.compiler or androidx.compose.animation to follow their own release cycles.

Allowing these libraries to be versioned independently will decouple dependencies which were previously implicitly coupled, thereby making it easier to incrementally upgrade your application and therefore stay up-to-date with the latest Compose features.

The first library to break away from the single Compose version is the Compose Compiler. Today we’re releasing the 1.2.0 stable version that brings support for Kotlin 1.7.0! The release is both backwards and forwards compatible with the Compose UI libraries and the Compose Runtime library. This means you can upgrade your Compose Compiler to 1.2.0 stable and use Kotlin 1.7.0, while leaving your other Compose libraries on their current version, for example 1.1.0 stable.

To upgrade the version of the Compose Compiler in your app, specify the kotlinCompilerExtensionVersion in your build.gradle file.

android {
    composeOptions {
        kotlinCompilerExtensionVersion = "1.2.0"
    }
}

Compose and Kotlin are highly coupled, and we’ve heard your feedback that Compose compiler updates are needed to allow you to upgrade your Kotlin version. We want to make sure that you can use the latest and greatest features (and bug fixes) from both Compose and Kotlin, which is why we plan to release stable versions of the Compose Compiler on a much more regular basis. This means the Compose Compiler version numbers will progress at a faster pace than most other Compose libraries. Since the Compose Compiler is both forwards and backwards compatible, you will be able to upgrade it as soon as a new version is released.

The Compose Compiler is built as a Kotlin Compiler Plugin, and so you must use a version of the Compose Compiler which is compatible with the version of Kotlin that you have chosen. To help you choose the version that matches your project, check out the Compose-Kotlin compatibility map.

Moving the Compiler library to a different versioning scheme is the first step in decoupling versioning for the different Compose library groups. You’ll see new stable releases for the other Compose libraries in the next few weeks, and then they will then start following their own release cycles independent of the Compose Compiler.

Prepare your build for individual versioning and start using the latest Compose Compiler and Kotlin versions now!

We look forward to seeing what you build with Compose!

Source: Android Developers Blog

Privacy Sandbox Developer Preview 3: Support for conversion measurement, custom audiences, and ad selection

Posted by Fred Chung, Android Developer Relations

The Privacy Sandbox on Android aims to develop new solutions that preserve user privacy and enable effective, personalized advertising experiences for apps. Since our first developer preview, we've shared progress updates and continue to engage the industry on everything from the Developer Preview timeline, to Topics taxonomy, to SDK version management. We appreciate your feedback!

Today, we’re releasing Developer Preview 3, which includes APIs and developer resources for conversion measurement and remarketing use cases. In addition to the preview of SDK Runtime and Topics APIs released earlier, you can for the first time begin testing and evaluating impact on all key APIs for Privacy Sandbox on Android.

Event-Level and Aggregate Attribution Reporting APIs

These APIs allow developers to measure when an ad click or view event leads to a conversion, such as the download of a new game. They support key use cases for attribution across apps and the web, and improve user privacy by removing reliance on cross-party user identifiers.

This release includes a developer guide and sample apps to help you understand client- and server-side set up and interactions for key parts of the attribution reporting workflow, including:

Registering attribution source and trigger events.
Receiving event reports and unencrypted aggregatable reports.

release notes

To help facilitate testing, the release also supports ADB commands to override reporting time windows. Refer to the API reference to learn more about the Android client APIs.

Custom Audience and Ad Selection APIs

Part of FLEDGE for Android, these APIs provide the building blocks to serve customized ads to users based on previous app engagement, without third-party data sharing. You’ll be able to:

Manage Custom Audience membership and observe how its parameter values may affect auction outcomes
Fetch JavaScript auction code from remote endpoints
Configure and initiate on-device ad auctions
Handle impression reporting

To learn more, refer to the Custom Audience and Ad Selection API reference pages, as well as the release notes.

Other key features

If you’re just starting to explore the Developer Preview, please also review the supported features described in the SDK Runtime and Topics API developer guides.

If you need a refresher on key technologies for the Privacy Sandbox on Android, we recommend watching this overview video and reviewing the design proposals.

Get started with the Developer Preview

Today’s Developer Preview release provides the resources you need to begin early testing of features and share feedback. To get started developing, see instructions to set up the SDK and system images on the emulator or supported Pixel devices.

For more information on the Privacy Sandbox on Android Developer Preview, visit the developer site and sign up for our newsletter to receive regular updates.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Google Play @ Google I/O – 3 updates you need to know

Posted by Tom Grinsted - Group Product Manager, Google Play

Here at Google Play, we’re always working on new ways to help developers grow their businesses, whether that’s by increasing installs, improving engagement, or boosting monetization. So in case you missed it, here are the top 3 new ways to grow your business that we announced at this year’s Google I/O:

#1: Improved custom store listings

Custom store listings have gotten a major update, giving you new ways to make a great first impression by showing the right message to each person.

You can now generate unique deep links to your custom listings, so you can show different listings to users depending on which channel or site they come from. And because Play Console provides analytics for each of your custom listings, you can see how effective each variation is and optimize them over time.

All developers can create up to 50 custom store listings, so you can create more tailored narratives for your users than ever before. With up to 5 experiments per listing, the opportunities for optimization are huge!

Custom store listings have gotten a major update, giving you new ways to improve your conversion rate.

#2: LiveOps open beta

LiveOps are self-service merchandising units in the Play Store that promote limited-time events, offers, and major updates for your game or app. Developers in our beta can submit content to help inspire installs, increase engagement, and drive sales.

Plus, they can now use deep links to drop users directly into the most relevant part of their app or game, then measure success with the new LiveOps reporting dashboard in Play Console. These reports give a granular view of the performance metrics of each event, displaying the results over time and by outcome – whether that’s acquisitions, opens, or updates.

Learn more about LiveOps and express interest in our beta program here.

Developers in our LiveOps beta can submit content to be featured on the Google Play Store.

#3: New flexible tools to grow your subscriptions

As subscription business models evolve, many developers have asked us for more flexibility and less complexity in how they sell subscriptions. In a major update, we launched new subscription capabilities, allowing you to configure multiple base plans and offers for each subscription. Acquire new subscribers, incentivize upgrades, and retain existing subscribers, by creating multiple offers supporting different stages of the subscription lifecycle, all while significantly reducing the cost and complexity of managing an ever-increasing number of SKUs.

For each subscription, you can now configure multiple base plans and offers, without needing to manage an ever-increasing number of SKUs.

Plus, you can now offer prepaid plans that give users access for a fixed amount of time, and make a great option for regions where pay-as-you-go is standard or for users not ready to commit to an auto-renewing plan. Users can easily extend their access period at any time before plan expiration, with a top-up in your app, or right on the Play Store subscription screen.

That was just three launches from a whole bunch of great updates to help you grow and thrive with Play. Want to see more? Be sure to catch the full playlist on Google Play from Google I/O.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Android 13 Beta 3 and Platform Stability

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Android13 Logo

Today we’re releasing the third Beta of Android 13, taking us into the final phase of our cycle where we’re focusing on polish and performance. With Android 13, we’ve built on our core themes of privacy and security, developer productivity, and tablet and large screen support.

There’s a lot to explore in Android 13, from privacy features like the new notification permission and photo picker, to productivity features like themed app icons and per-app language support, as well as modern standards like HDR video, Bluetooth LE Audio, and MIDI 2.0 over USB. We’ve also extended the newer updates we made in 12L, giving you better tools to take advantage of the 270+ million tablet and large screen devices in active use.

Beta 3 takes Android 13 to Platform Stability, which means that the developer APIs and all app-facing behaviors are now final. We’re thankful for all the feedback you’ve shared to help us get to this point! For developers, the focus is now on compatibility testing and quality as you prepare your apps for the official release later in the year!

You can get Beta 3 on your Pixel device by enrolling here for over-the-air updates. If you previously enrolled, you’ll automatically get today’s update. You can also try Android 13 Beta on select devices from several of our partners - learn more at android.com/beta. Read on for a quick look at how to get your app ready, and visit the Android 13 developer site for details.

Platform Stability

With Beta 3, Android 13 reaches Platform Stability, a milestone that means all app-facing behaviors and APIs, including the official API Level 33 SDK and NDK APIs, are now final. So from Beta 3, you can confidently develop and release your compatibility updates knowing that the platform won’t change.

We’re asking all app and game developers to start your final compatibility testing now and prepare to publish your compatibility updates as soon as possible ahead of the final release.

For all SDK, library, tools, and game engine developers, it’s even more important to start testing now and release your compatible updates as soon as possible -- your downstream app and game developers may be blocked until they receive your updates. So when you’ve released a compatible update, be vocal and let your developers know!

App compatibility

App compatibility means that your app runs as intended on a new version of the platform. With each release, we make integral changes to the platform that improve privacy and security and the overall user experience across the OS. These can affect your apps, so it’s important to test your app now, make any updates needed, and publish a compatible update to your users ahead of the final release. It’s a basic but critical level of quality that your users will appreciate as they explore what’s new in Android 13.

To test your app for compatibility, just install your production app from Google Play or other source onto a device running Android 13 Beta 3. Work through all of the app’s flows and watch for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing. Here are some changes to watch for:

Runtime permission for notifications - Android 13 introduces a new runtime permission for sending notifications from an app. Make sure you understand how the new permission works, and plan on targeting Android 13 (API 33) as soon as possible. More here.
Clipboard preview - Make sure your app hides sensitive data in Android 13’s new clipboard preview, such as passwords or credit card information. More here.
JobScheduler prefetch - JobScheduler now tries to anticipate the next time your app will be launched and will run any associated prefetch jobs ahead of that time. If you use prefetch jobs, test that they are working as expected. More here.

Also remember to test the libraries and SDKs in your app for compatibility. If you find any issues, try updating to the latest version of the library or SDK or reaching out to the developer for help.

Once you’ve published the compatible version of your current app, you can start the process to update your app's targetSdkVersion. Review the behavior changes for apps targeting Android 13 and use the compatibility framework to help you detect issues quickly. Here are some of the changes to test for (these apply only to apps with targetSdkVersion set to API 33 or higher):

Nearby device permission for Wi-Fi - Apps that manage a device's connections to nearby access points should use a new NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES runtime permission for Wi-Fi operations like scanning, without needing access to device location. Some Wi-Fi APIs require your app to have this new permission. More here.
Granular media permissions - If your app targets Android 13 and reads media files from common data storage, you must request one or more of the new granular permissions instead of the READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission. More here.
Permission changes for body sensors - Android 13 introduces "while in use" access for body sensors. If your app needs to access body sensor information from the background, it must declare a new BODY_SENSORS_BACKGROUND permission. More here.
Intent filters block non-matching intents - If your app sends an intent to an exported component of another app targeting Android 13 (API 33) or higher, it now needs to match an intent filter in the receiving app. More here.
Media controls derived from PlaybackState - Android 13 derives more media controls from PlaybackState actions, to show a richer set of controls that are consistent across device types. Make sure your app handles these changes. More here

Tablets and large-screens support

Android 13 builds on the tablet optimizations introduced in 12L, so as part of your testing, make sure your apps look their best on tablets and other large-screen devices. You can test with the large screens features by setting up an Android emulator in Android Studio, or you can use a large screen device from our Android 13 Beta partners. Here are some areas to watch for:

Taskbar interaction - Check how your app responds when viewed with the new taskbar on large screens. Make sure your app's UI isn't cut off or blocked by the taskbar. More here.
Multi-window mode - Multi-window mode is now enabled by default for all apps, regardless of app configuration, so make sure the app handles split-screen appropriately. You can test by dragging and dropping your app into split-screen mode and adjusting the window size. More here.
Improved compatibility experience - if your app isn’t optimized for tablets yet, such as using a fixed orientation or not being resizable, check how your app responds to compatibility mode adjustments such as letterboxing. More here.
Media projection - If your app uses media projection, check how your app responds while playing back, streaming, or casting media on large screens. Be sure to account for device posture changes on foldable devices as well. More here.
Camera preview - For camera apps, check how your camera preview UI responds on large screens when your app is constrained to a portion of the screen in multi-window or split-screen mode. Also check how your app responds when a foldable device's posture changes. More here.

You can read more about the tablet features in Android 13 and what to test here.

Get started with Android 13!

Today’s Beta release has everything you need to test your app and try the Android 13 features. Just enroll your Pixel device to get the update over-the-air. To get started, set up the Android 13 SDK.

You can also test your app with Android 13 Beta on devices from several of our partners. Visit android.com/beta to see the full list of partners, with links to their sites for details on their supported devices and Beta builds, starting with Beta 1. Each partner will handle their own enrollments and support, and provide the Beta updates to you directly. For even broader testing, you can try Android 13 Beta 3 on Android GSI images, and if you don’t have a device, you can test on the Android Emulator.

For complete details on Android 13, visit the Android 13 developer site.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Progress on initiatives to keeping Google Play safe

Posted by Krish Vitaldevara Director, Product Management, Play and Android Trust & Safety

We want to keep you updated on the privacy and security initiatives we shared earlier this year, so you can plan ahead and use new tools to safely build your business. In the past few months, we launched:

Google Play SDK Index to help you evaluate an SDK’s reliability and safety and make informed decisions about whether an SDK is right for your business and your users. See insights and usage data on over 100 of the most widely used commercial SDKs on Google Play.
The Data safety section on Google Play, helping users better understand your apps’ data safety practices. Developers have told us that this new feature helps them explain privacy practices with their users and build trust. If you haven't yet, complete your Data safety form by July 20th.
Enhancements to app integrity tools like Play App Signing to securely sign millions of apps on Google Play and help ensure that app updates can be trusted. Use Play App Signing to help protect your app signing key from loss or compromise with Google's secure key management service.
Play Integrity API to help protect your app, your IP, and your users from piracy and malicious activity. Use this API to help detect fraudulent and risky interactions, such as traffic from modified or pirated app versions and rooted or compromised devices.
And a new Target API Level policy to strengthen user security by protecting users from installing apps that may not have the expected privacy and security features.

What’s coming up

As part of our work with the industry to build more private advertising solutions, we’ve launched initial developer previews for Privacy Sandbox on Android. We have more developer previews coming soon and a beta later this year.
We continue to help developers update their apps before policy enforcement actions are taken. We’ve extended time to make changes, improved clarity of responses, and added new training materials. Recent tests of advanced Play Console warnings have also shown solid results. As we refine these features, we’ll expand them to more developers this year.

Thank you for your partnership in making Google Play a safe and trustworthy platform for everyone.

Source: Android Developers Blog

3 things to know about Android Privacy, Platform & Security from Google I/O’22

Posted by Dan Galpin, Developer Relations Engineer

Amidst the whirlwind of content at Google I/O, we shared huge announcements involving privacy, security, and the Android platform. Read on for the details, and don’t forget to watch the topic playlist on YouTube.

#1: Privacy Sandbox on Android

We recently released the first Privacy Sandbox on Android Developer Preview, so you can get an early look at the SDK Runtime and Topics API. This provides a path for new advertising solutions that improve user privacy without putting access to free content and services at risk.

You can conduct preliminary testing of these new technologies, evaluate how you might adopt them for your solutions, and share feedback with us. Learn more in the “Overview of the Privacy Sandbox in Android” session.

#2: Google Play SDK Index

The new Google Play SDK index is a public portal that lists over 100 of the most widely used commercial SDKs. It contains information like which app permissions the SDK requests, statistics on the apps that use them, and which version of the SDK is most popular, so you can evaluate if an SDK is right for your business and your users. Android Studio Electric Eel allows you to view dependency insights from Google Play SDK Index; if a specific version of a library has been marked as 'outdated' by its author, a corresponding Lint warning appears when viewing that dependency definition. Learn more on our blog post and watch the “What’s new in Google Play” and “What’s new in Android development tools” sessions.

#3: Android 13!

The second Beta of Android 13 is now available. You can enhance your app with Android 13 features like app-specific language support and themed app icons, while the "Basics for System Back" talk covers the new Android 13 opt-in API that lets you tell the system that you’re handling back ahead of time to make the back experience more predictable and fluid.

The "Developing Privacy User-centric Apps" session will help you get your apps ready for the latest features for privacy and security, like the new notification permission, the privacy-protecting photo picker, and improved permissions for pairing with nearby devices and accessing media files.

The "What's new in Android Media" talk will help you build with modern standards like HDR video and Bluetooth LE Audio, while the "What's New in Android Camera" talk provides a … snapshot … of what we’re doing in CameraX, such as support for video capture and WYSIWYG camera controls.

You can get started by enrolling your Pixel device here. The Android 13 Beta is now available to test on a range of devices from Asus, Lenovo, Nokia, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Sharp, TECNO, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE - visit developer.android.com/13 to learn more.

This is just a fraction of what we're doing to improve the Android platform, user privacy, and security. Head on over to the playlist to learn more.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Grow your games with Google Play’s Indie Games Accelerator & Festival

Posted by Leticia Lago, P&E Developer Marketing

Google Play Indie Games Festival and Accelerator

At Google Play, we are committed to helping developers of all sizes reach their full potential, and go further, faster. To continue supporting indies as they bring some of the most innovative titles to players worldwide, today we’re opening submissions to the 2022 edition of our two annual programs - the Indie Games Accelerator and Festival.

Through these programs, independent game developers and small studios can boost their game’s visibility, get training, and tap into a network of gaming experts:

If you are a small games studio looking for help to launch or grow a new title, enter the Accelerator to get exclusive training by mentors and industry experts;
Or, if you have already created and launched a high quality game that is ready for the spotlight, enter the Festival in Japan, South Korea or Europe for a chance to win promotions and reach new players.

Submissions for both Indie Games programs are open from June 1st to July 1st, 2022.

For more updates about Google Play’s programs, resources and tools for indie game developers, follow @GooglePlayBiz on Twitter & Google Play business community on LinkedIn.

Source: Google Developers Blog

Submissions now open: Indie games programs to help developers grow with Google Play

Posted by Leticia Lago, P&E Developer Marketing

At Google Play we’re committed to helping developers of all sizes reach their full potential, and go further, faster. Today we’re opening submissions for our two annual programs supporting the indie game community, as they bring some of the most innovative titles to players worldwide.

If you are an indie games developer, check out our Accelerator and Festival programs, where you have the chance to boost your game’s visibility, get training, and tap into our community of gaming experts.

These programs are designed to help you grow no matter what stage you are in:

If you are a small games studio looking for help to launch or grow a new title, enter the Accelerator to get exclusive training by mentors and industry experts;
Or, if you have already created and launched a high quality game that is ready for the spotlight, enter the Festival in selected European countries, Japan or South Korea. for a chance to win promotions and reach new players.

After being selected as a Festival finalist and participating in the Accelerator in 2021, Co-founder of Jimjum Studios, Nimrod Kimhi said "being in the Accelerator probably saved us two years worth of mistakes." Read below to learn more about the programs.

Submissions are open until July 1st.

Supercharge your growth with mentorship & live masterclasses

If you’re an indie developer who is early in your journey - either close to launching a new game or have recently launched a title - this high-impact program is designed for you.

With the help of our network of gaming experts, the Indie Games Accelerator provides education and mentorship to help you build, launch and grow successfully.

Selected game studios will be invited to take part in the 10-week acceleration program starting in September 2022. This is a highly-tailored program for small game developers from across 70+ eligible countries. It includes a series of online masterclasses, talks and gaming workshops, hosted by some of the best in the industry.

You’ll also get the chance to meet and connect with other passionate developers from around the world who are looking to take their games to the next level.

Apply to the Accelerator by July 1st.

Win promotions that put your indie game in the spotlight

If you have recently launched a new, high quality game on Google Play, enter your game to be showcased at the Indie Games Festival and win promotions.

Once again, we are hosting three international competitions for indie game developers from selected European countries, Japan or South Korea.

The Festival jury consists of both gaming experts and Googlers, who are charged with selecting creative indie games that are ready for the spotlight.

Top indie games will be featured during the online Festival finals, where you can get your game discovered by game industry experts and players worldwide. The winners will also get featured on Google Play, prizes and additional promotions such as campaigns worth 100,000 EUR.

Apply to the Festivals in Europe, Japan or South Korea by July 1st.

All submissions must be completed by 1 July @ 1 pm CET and meet all eligibility requirements.

For more updates about all of our programs, resources and tools for indie game developers, follow us on Twitter @GooglePlayBiz and Google Play business community on LinkedIn.

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Source: Android Developers Blog

3 things to know about Form Factors at Google I/O’22

Three different form factors- a phone, watch, and tablet

With close to half a billion cars, TVs, watches and laptops running on Android, it is more important than ever for apps to work seamlessly across every device. This year at I/O, we renewed our focus on form factors and announced major updates for Wear OS and Large Screens. To help you get to the bottom of what’s new, here are the three things you need to know about Form Factors at Google I/O:

#1: Building Wear OS and fitness apps is simpler than ever

At I/O we announced the Beta release of Compose for Wear OS, our modern declarative UI toolkit designed to help developers build exceptional user experiences for Wear OS. Compose for Wear OS shares the foundation and principles of Jetpack Compose, helping to simplify and accelerate UI development. Additionally, Compose for Wear OS offers the Material catalog with components that are optimized for the watch experience.

We’ve been developing Compose for Wear OS with open source community feedback and participation. Since the Developer Preview, we’ve added and improved a number of components such as navigation, scaling lazy lists, input and gesture support and many more. Compose for Wear OS is now feature complete for the 1.0 release coming soon and the API is stable - so you can begin building beautiful, production-ready apps.

Health Services Logo

Health Services—the power efficient and easy-to-use library for collecting real-time sensor data on smartwatches—will soon be available in beta and ready for production use. Health Services enables apps to take advantage of modern smartwatch architecture, thus helping conserve battery while still delivering high frequency data. Since the alpha release last year, we have been working hard to increase performance and improve the developer experience. We have also made some improvements to the API in response to your feedback.

If you have an existing health and fitness app for Wear OS you want to update, or have a completely new app in mind, we suggest you look at Health Service to provide the best experience for Wear 3 users and prepare your app for additional devices and sensors in the future. For example, this library will power all the Google- and Fitbit-branded health and fitness experiences on the recently announced Google Pixel Watch.

Health Conect Logo

And, last but not least, we just launched Health Connect. With Health Connect, users will be able to securely store health and fitness data on their phone and connect and share that data with some of their favorite health and fitness apps. Samsung Health, Google Fit and Fitbit are integrating with Health Connect, along with many popular health and fitness apps. Health Connect is a common set of APIs for storing & sharing health data on Android phones. Developers can read from & write data to an on-device data store and we’ve standardized the schema and API behavior, making it easy for you to use the data. We know how important the privacy of each user’s health data is, so we centralized permissions and privacy controls - making it clear and simple for your users to manage and control this data.

#2: Google is all-in on tablets

Google is going big on large screens with innovations in hardware, optimizations in the operating system and a major investment in our app ecosystem. In the first quarter of this year, we saw active large screen users approaching 270 million, making it a great time to optimize for tablets, foldables and Chrome OS.

Since last I/O we launched Android 12L, a feature drop that makes Android 12 even better on large screens. With Android 13, we are including all of these improvements and more. Android 12L and 13 have a huge number of optimizations for large screens, including the task bar, multi-tasking, keyboard and mouse support, and a compatibility mode for applications. We also have exciting updates to guidance, testing and tools. To take the guesswork out of optimizing and testing your app for large screens, we created a set of Large Screen Quality guidelines and a number of Material Design Canonical Layouts. Our guidance is implemented in our Jetpack libraries, which bake in many of the most common tasks for Large Screen development, such as drag and drop.

Hardware innovation is a cornerstone of Google’s investment in large screens - this year and beyond. At I/O, we announced the Google Pixel tablet, coming in 2023. Plus, our partners are creating some amazing devices with tablets, Chromebooks, and foldables coming from companies like Samsung, Lenovo, and OPPO.

With the incredible hardware and operating system innovations, more apps than ever are optimizing for large screens. Apps like Facebook, TikTok, HBO Max and Zoom look great on large screens. Here at Google, we recognize the opportunity with large screens. Apps like YouTube, Google Maps, Google Photos, Chrome, and many of our most popular apps are rolling out large screen optimizations, with more to come.

These apps - and more - are available on the Play Store, where we have made some of our most impactful updates to date. We are committed to helping users find the best large-screen optimized apps in the Play Store with new large screens focused editorial content and separate reviews and ratings for large-screen applications. Plus, we are updating Google Play to look awesome on a tablet, Chromebook or foldable device.

#3: We’re here to support you!

To make your apps even better on large screens and Wear OS, we’ve created in-depth content for making your app work better across different types of inputs, screen sizes and devices.

In Android Studio Dolphin Beta and Electric Eel Canary we’ve added new features for Wear OS and Large screens to help you be more productive when developing and testing for different form factors. Read more

Looking to get started? Here’s all the amazing I/O content to help you on your way: