Tag Archives: Platform_Update

What’s new with Android for Cars

Posted by Mickey Kataria, Director of Product Management

For over a decade, Google has been committed to automotive, with a vision of creating a safe and seamless connected experience in every car. Developers like all of you are a crucial part of helping people stay connected while on the go. We’re seeing strong momentum across our in-car experiences, Android Auto and Android Automotive OS, and today, we’re excited to share the latest updates and opportunities to reach users in the car.

Check out our I/O session: What's new with Android for Cars

Android Auto

Android Auto, which allows users to connect their phone to their car display, now has over 100 million compatible cars on the road and is supported by nearly every major car manufacturer. Porsche is our newest partner and they will begin shipping Android Auto on new cars, starting this summer with the Porsche 911.

We’ve been working closely with car manufacturers to build an even better Android Auto experience by enabling wireless projection in more vehicles, extending availability to more countries, and continuing to launch new features, like integration into the instrument cluster. To see some of the newest Android Auto technology in the BMW iX, check out the video below.

Android Auto projecting to the cluster display in a BMW iX.

Android Automotive OS

Our newest in-car experience, Android Automotive OS with Google apps and services built-in, also has strong momentum. With this experience, the entire infotainment system is powered by Android and users can access Google Assistant, Google Maps, and more apps from Google Play directly from the car screen without relying on a phone. Cars from Polestar and Volvo, like the Polestar 2 and the Volvo XC40 Recharge, are already available to customers. And by the end of 2021, this experience will be available to order in more than 10 car models from Volvo, General Motors and Renault. You can get a sneak peek of this customized experience in the new GMC HUMMER EV below.

The all-electric GMC HUMMER EV infotainment features Android Automotive OS with Google built-in. Preproduction model shown. Actual production models may vary. Initial availability Fall 2021.

Developing new apps for cars

To support this growing ecosystem, we recently made the Android for Cars App Library available as part of Jetpack. It allows developers of navigation, EV charging and parking apps to bring their apps to Android Auto compatible cars. Many of these developers have already published their Android Auto apps to the Play Store and we’re now extending this library to also support Android Automotive OS, making it easy for you to build once and generate apps that are compatible with both platforms. We’re already working with Early Access Partners — including Parkwhiz, Plugshare, Sygic, ChargePoint, Flitsmeister, SpotHero and others — to bring apps in these categories to cars powered by Android Automotive OS.

Android for cars

PlugShare, an app for finding EV chargers, has used the Android for Cars App Library and Google Assistant App Actions to build for Android Auto.

We plan to expand to more app categories in the future, so if you’re interested in joining our Early Access Program, please fill out this interest form. You can also get started with the Android for Cars App Library today, by visiting g.co/androidforcars. Lastly, you can always get help from the developer community at Stack Overflow using the android-automotive and android-auto tags. We can’t wait to see what you build next!

What’s new in Android TV (and Google TV!)

Posted by Ben Serridge, Director of Product Management - TV Platforms and Dan Aharon, Product Manager

Android TV

Today at Google I/O 2021, we announced a significant milestone for our team: we have over 80 million monthly active devices on Android TV OS, with more than 80% growth in the US alone. We would not be here without the hard work of the developer community, so a huge and heartfelt thank you to you all.

Android TV OS is the operating system that powers a number of devices around the world including the new Google TV experience launched last fall. Google TV has generated a lot of excitement from consumers, developers, and industry partners alike, offering a content forward TV experience that helps the user discover more of the movies and shows they love. Google TV is available on streaming devices like the Chromecast with Google TV, smart TVs from Sony (and soon TCL!), and as an app on Android devices. Check out this presentation on how to get your app ready for Google TV.

Our goal is to always enable you to build better and more engaging experiences on Android TV OS. One example of this is the widely utilized Watch Next API which increases app re-engagement by ~30% in certain cases1. Well over 100 major media partners are already using WatchNext API and you can learn more about how to add your app here.

We are also announcing several new tools and helpful features to make developing for Android TV OS easier and enable you to create engaging experiences for your users. Some are already available and some will be available soon:

  • Cast Connect with Stream Transfer and Stream Expansion: Cast Connect allows users to cast from their phone/ tablet or Chrome browser onto your app on Android TV. Stream Transfer and Stream Expansion allow users to transfer media to other devices and/or play audio on multiple devices.
  • Emulator updates: To help you make your app work better on Google TV without requiring new hardware, we are now making our first Google TV Emulator available, running on Android 11. There will also be an Android 11 image with the traditional Android TV experience. You can now also use a remote that more closely mimics TV remotes directly within the Emulator.
  • Firebase Test Lab: Firebase Test Lab runs millions of tests every week on behalf of developers. Following requests from developers, we are excited to share that Firebase Test Lab is adding Android TV support. Firebase Test Lab Virtual Devices run your app in the cloud on Android TV emulators and allow you to scale your test across hundreds or thousands of virtual devices. Physical Devices will be coming soon.
  • Android 12 Beta 1: We are making the Android 12 Beta 1 available for TV on ADT-3 today. With this release the developer community will be able to take advantage of many of the changes and improvements coming with Android 12. We encourage you to try it and provide us with feedback.

Thank you for your continued support of the Android TV OS platform. The future of TV is bright and we can’t wait to see what you build next!

1 Average gain in number of days active in the app in a 28-day period amongst app 28DAUs, based on 3 apps analyzed during the 11/2020 - 2/2021 period.

The top Google Play updates from I/O ‘21

Posted by Alex Musil, Director of Product, Google Play

This year, we announced many great new features, tools, and updates to help you make the most of Google Play. You can check out all the updates in our I/O session, or keep reading for a quick overview of the new capabilities that will help take your business even further, from driving more installs to growing your engagement and revenue.

15% service fee for the first $1M in earnings

1. Earlier this year, we announced an additional service fee tier to help boost developer success on Google Play. Starting July 1st, the service fee will be 15% instead of 30% for your first $1M (USD) of earnings each year. You’ll be able to enroll for the new rate in Play Console the week of June 7th, so we’re sharing details about the process now to give you time to get ready.

New tools for managing policy compliance

2. We’ve built a new, dedicated Policy and Programs section in Play Console to provide you with a centralized place to see any policy compliance concerns, guidance on how to fix policy issues, and information about upcoming policy changes.

More SDK guidance

3. The new Google Play SDK Console lets providers report issues with their SDK versions so we can give you better guidance and recommendations. We’ve started with several large SDK providers and will continue to add more.

4. Later this year, we’re launching a new, public website with important insights about popular SDKs to help you choose the right SDK for your app. Learn more about how we’re helping you build safer and more stable apps in the I/O session below.

Helping more users discover your apps and games

5. To ensure that your store listing assets can help users anticipate your in-app or in-game experience and drive meaningful downloads, we’re pre-announcing a policy change for app metadata...

6. and introducing new guidelines on store listing preview assets.

Distribution features for the future of publishing

7. One million apps are in production using the Android App Bundle, with 15% size savings on average vs a universal APK. The app bundle is the future of publishing on Google Play and, starting August 1, 2021, they’ll be required for all new apps.

8. Based on developer feedback, we'll soon be launching an optional code transparency feature to offer additional cryptographic assurance that your app’s code on device has not been modified from its original version.

Identify growth opportunities with our new competitive insights

9. To help you understand your engagement and monetization trends and optimize your product plans, we’ve taken the best of our ecosystem data and contextualized your performance against peersets. Learn how to make the most of them in the I/O session below.

10. You can now also customize and pin the precise metrics that matter to you in a personalized KPIs section at the top of your app dashboard.

More features for a flexible monetization strategy

11. Your global reach just got even larger: In 2020, we added 34 new local forms of payment across 30 markets around the world.

12. We lowered the minimum prices developers can set for paid apps, in-app purchases, and subscriptions in 20 new markets across Latin America, EMEA, and APAC.

13. This year, we’ll be launching multi-quantity purchases, which will allow your users to buy more than one item at a time from the cart.

14. We’ll also be launching multi-line subscriptions, which will allow you to sell multiple products as part of a single subscription.

15. And finally, we’ll be launching prepaid plans, which will let you offer users access to content for a fixed amount of time. (Don’t worry, users can easily extend at any time.)

16. Want to take advantage of these new features? Many will be available when you integrate Play Billing Library version 4.0, and more will be rolling out later this year. As a reminder, new apps are required to integrate version 3.0 by August 2, 2021 or by November 1, 2021 for updates to existing apps.

Program enhancements to engage and retain users

17. This year, Google Play Pass expanded to over 40 markets, with more than 800 games and apps. Developers have on average more than doubled their Play revenue across participating titles in these markets. Let us know if you’d like to join!

18. Google Play Points expanded to 22 countries and added deeper integration with Play Console making it even easier for developers to onboard. Play’s loyalty program helps developers increase engagement and reduce churn with their most high value users. Developers can learn more about joining the program here.

More educational content

19. Want to learn more about any of these features? We’ve built a comprehensive website with best practices and resources to help you learn more about our programs and tools.

20. Last but not least, we’ve also added tons of new free courses to Google Play Academy. Whether you're about to launch your startup or grow your existing business on Play, Google Play Academy has you covered.

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What’s new for Android developers at Google I/O

Posted by Karen Ng, Director, Product Management & Jacob Lehrbaum, Director of Developer Relations, Android & Play

As Android developers, we are all driven by building experiences that delight people around the world. And with people depending on your apps more than ever, expectations are higher and your jobs as developers aren’t getting easier. Today, at Google I/O, we covered a few ways that we’re trying to help out, whether it be through Android 12 - one of the biggest design changes ever, Jetpack, Jetpack Compose, Android Studio, and Kotlin to help you build beautiful high quality apps. We’re also helping when it comes to extending your apps wherever your users go, like through wearables and larger-screened devices. You can watch the full Developer Keynote, but here are a few highlights:

Android 12: one of the biggest design updates ever.

The first Beta of Android 12 just started rolling out, and it’s packed with lots of cool stuff. From new user safety features like permissions for bluetooth and approximate location, enhancements to performance like expedited jobs and start up animations, to delightful experiences with more interactive widgets and stretch overscrolling, this release is one of the biggest design updates to Android ever. You can read more about what’s in Android 12 Beta 1 here, so you can start preparing your apps for the consumer release coming out later this year. Download the Beta and try it with your apps today!

Android 12 visual

Jetpack Compose: get ready for 1.0 in July!

For the last few years, we’ve been hard at work modernizing the Android development experience, listening to your feedback to keep the openness–a hallmark of Android, but becoming more opinionated about the right way to do things. You can see this throughout, from Android Studio, a performant IDE that can keep up with you, to Kotlin, a programming language that enables you to do more with less code, to Jetpack libraries that solve the hardest problems on mobile with backward compatibility.

The next step in this offering is Jetpack Compose - our modern UI toolkit to easily build beautiful apps for all Android devices. We announced Compose here at Google I/O two years ago and since then have been building it in the open, listening to your feedback to make sure we got it right. With the Compose Beta earlier this year, developers around the world have created some truly beautiful, innovative experiences in half the time, and the response to the #AndroidDevChallenge blew our socks off!

With the forthcoming update of Material You (which you can read more about here), we’ll be adding new Material components as well as further support for building for large screens, making it fast and easy to build a gorgeous UI. We’re pressure testing the final bits in Compose and will release 1.0 Stable in July—so get ready!

Android Studio Arctic Fox: Design, Devices, & Developer Productivity!

Android Studio Arctic Fox (2020.3.1) Beta, the latest release of the official powerful Android IDE, is out today to help you build quality apps easier and faster. We have delivered and updated the suite of tools to empower three major themes: accelerate your UI design, extend your app to new devices, and boost your developer productivity. With this latest release you can create modern UIs with Compose tooling, see test results across multiple devices, and optimize debugging databases and background tasks with the App Inspector. We’re also making your apps more accessible with the Accessibility Scanner and more performant with Memory Profiler. And for faster build speeds, we have the Android Gradle plugin 7.0, new DSL, and variant APIs. You can learn more about the Android Studio updates here.

Android Studio Arctic Fox

Kotlin: the most used language by professional Android devs

Kotlin is now the most used primary language by professional Android developers according to our recent surveys; in fact, over 1.2M apps in the Play Store use Kotlin, including 80% of the top 1000 apps. And here at Google, we love it too: 70+ Google apps like Drive, Home, Maps and Play use Kotlin. And with a brand-new native solution to annotation processing for Kotlin built from the ground up, Kotlin Symbol Processing is available today, a powerful and yet simple API for parsing Kotlin code directly, showing speeds up to 2x faster with libraries like Room.

Android Jetpack: write features, not boilerplate

With Android Jetpack, we built a suite of libraries to help reduce boilerplate code so you can focus on the code you care about. Over 84% of the top 10,000 apps are now using a Jetpack library. And today, we’re unpacking some new releases for Jetpack, including Jetpack Macrobenchmark (Alpha) to capture large interactions that affect your app startup and jank before your app is released, as well as a new Kotlin Coroutines API for persisting data more efficiently via Jetpack DataStore (Beta). You can read about all the updates in Android Jetpack here.

Now is the time: a big step for Wear

The best thing about modern Android development is that these tools have been purpose built to help make it easy for you to build for the next era of Android, which is all about enabling devices connected to your phone–TVs, cars, watches, tablets–to work better together.

Starting today, we take a huge step forward with wearables. First, we introduced a unified platform built jointly with Samsung, combining the best of Wear and Tizen. Second, we shared a new consumer experience with revamped Google apps. And third, a world-class health and fitness service from Fitbit is coming to the platform. As an Android developer, it means you’ll have more reach, and you’ll be able to use all of your existing skills, tools, and APIs that make your mobile apps great, to build for a single wearables platform used by people all over the world.

Whether it’s new Jetpack APIs for Wear tailored for small screens and designed to optimize battery life, to the Jetpack Tiles API, so you can create a custom Tile for all the devices in the Wear ecosystem, there are a number of new features to help you build on Wear. And with a new set of APIs for Health and Fitness, created in collaboration with Samsung, data collection from sensors and metrics computation is streamlined, consistent, and accurate–like heart rate to calories to daily distance–from one trusted source. All this comes together in new tooling, with the release of Android Studio Arctic Fox Beta, like easier pairing to test apps, and even a virtual heart rate sensor in the emulator. And when your app is ready, users will have a much easier time discovering the world of Wear apps on Google Play, with some big updates to discoverability. You can read more about all of the Wear updates here.

Tapping the momentum of larger screens, like tablets, Chrome OS and foldables

When it comes to larger screens -- tablets, foldables, and Chrome OS laptops-- there is huge momentum. People are increasingly relying on large screen devices to stay connected with family and friends, go to school, or work remotely. In fact, there are over 250 million active large screen Android devices. Last year, Chrome OS grew +92% year over year–5 times the rate of the PC market, making Chrome OS the fastest growing and the second-most popular desktop OS. To help you take advantage of this momentum, we’re giving you APIs and tools to make optimizing that experience easier: like having your content resize automatically to more space by using SlidingpaneLayout 1.2.0 and a new vertical navigation rail component, Max widths on components to avoid stretched UIs, as well as updates to the platform, Chrome OS, and Jetpack windowmanager, so apps work better by default. You can learn more here.

Google Duo's optimized experience for foldable devices

Google Duo's optimized experience for foldable devices

This is just a taste of some of the new ways we’re making it easier for you to build high quality Android apps. Later today, we’ll be releasing more than 20 technical sessions on Android and Play, covering a wide range of topics such as background tasks, privacy, and Machine Learning on Android, or the top 12 tips to get you ready for Android 12. If building for cars, TVs, and wearables is your thing, we got that covered, too. You can find all these sessions - and more - on the I/O website. Beyond the sessions and news, there’s a number of fun ways to virtually connect with Googlers and other developers at this year’s Google I/O. You can check out the Android dome in I/O Adventure, where you can see new blog posts, videos, codelabs, and more. Maybe even test out your Jetpack Compose skills or take a virtual tour of the cars inside our dome!

What’s new in Android 12 Beta

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Android 12 logo

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

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

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

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

A new UI for Android

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

Android 12 UI

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

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

widgets in Android 12

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

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

Performance

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

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

Sampled rate , omn big core

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

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

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

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

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

Private by design

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

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

Android 12 device location

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

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

App compatibility

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

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

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

timeline

Get started with Android 12!

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

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

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

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

Android 12 Developer Preview 3

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Android 12 logo

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

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

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

Better user experience tools

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

App compatibility

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

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

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

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

App compatibility toggles in Developer Options.

Get started with Android 12

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

For complete information, visit the Android 12 developer site.