Posted by Adarsh Fernando, Product Manager, Android
The Android Studio team has been abuzz with the stable release of Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1) 🐝 and Android Gradle plugin (AGP) 7.1.0; the latest versions of Android official IDE and build system. We’ve improved functionality across a broad area of the typical developer workflow: Build and Deploy, Profiling and Inspection, and Design.
Some notable additions include a unified test execution between Android Studio and your continuous integration (CI) server ✅, convenient pairing flows to support ADB over Wi-Fi 📲, Improved Profiler tools to help you identify and analyze jank in your app 🕵️, and new ways to preview animations 🎥 and UI interactions without deploying your app to a device.
As always, this release wouldn’t be possible without the early feedback from our Preview users. So read on or watch below for further highlights and new features you can find in this stable version. If you’re ready to jump in and see for yourself, head over to the official website to download Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1).
Below is a full list of new features in Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1), organized by the three major themes.
Device Manager
Pairing a device with ADB over Wifi
Using different runners lead to inconsistent results
Android Studio now runs instrumentation tests via Gradle
Detailed frame lifecycle information in the CPU Profiler
<profileable>
<profileable android:shell="true"/>
Inspect Jobs, Alarms, and Wakelocks in the Background Task Inspector
*.li
Interact with the Compose Preview to validate behavior
Preview your animated vector drawables
To recap, Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1) includes these new enhancements & features:
Posted by Arjun Dayal, Group Product Manager, Google Play Games
In December, we announced that Google Play Games will be coming to PCs. As part of our broader goal to make our products and services work better together, this product strives to meet players where they are and give them access to their games on as many devices as possible. We're excited to announce that we’ve opened sign-ups for Google Play Games as a beta in Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
Users participating in the beta can play a catalog of Google Play games on their Windows PC via a standalone application built by Google. We’re excited to announce that some of the most popular mobile games in the world will be available at launch, including Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Summoners War, State of Survival: The Joker Collaboration, and Three Kingdoms Tactics, which delight hundreds of millions of players globally each month.
This product brings the best of Google Play to more laptops and desktops, enabling immersive and seamless gameplay sessions between a phone, tablet, Chromebook, and Windows PC. Players can easily browse, download, and play their favorite mobile games on their PCs, while taking advantage of larger screens with mouse and keyboard inputs. No more losing your progress or achievements when switching between devices, it just works with your Google Play Games profile! Play Points can also be earned for Google Play Games activity on PCs.
We’re thrilled to expand our platform for players to enjoy their favorite Android games even more. To sign up for future announcements, or to access the beta in Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, please go to g.co/googleplaygames. If you’re an Android developer looking to learn more about Google Play Games, please express interest on our developer site. We’ll have more to share on future beta releases and regional availability soon.
Posted by Dan Galpin, Developer Relations Engineer
In October of 2021 we released the final unit of Android Basics in Kotlin, our free, self-paced programming course that makes Android development accessible to everyone. It teaches people with no programming experience how to build Android apps. Along the way, students learn the fundamentals of programming and the basics of the Kotlin programming language.
In response to feedback from educators and learners, we've continued to iterate on our course material, adding projects that allow you to apply learnings along with new topics that can prepare students for more advanced material.
With these updates, Android Basics in Kotlin now covers the key material covered in Android Kotlin Fundamentals, so we will be sunsetting the latter course. More advanced learners are encouraged to work through the Basics material, skipping sections that they are familiar with and moving straight to quizzes. Focusing on basics means that intermediate and advanced learners that might be missing a key concept will have what they need to succeed with this material. This also allows our team to focus on making sure our courseware continues to represent our most recent guidance. In addition to courseware, we're continuing to provide codelabs, code samples, documentation, and video content to serve learners at all levels.
Our team is hard at work on the next course that will teach people how to program Android applications using Jetpack Compose. We're looking forward to teaching Android’s modern toolkit for building native UI because of all the ways that it simplifies and accelerates Android UI development.
Taking the current course will teach you the fundamentals of app development, serving as a great starting point should you want to explore the existing Jetpack Compose Learning Pathway, or jump into the upcoming Android Basics with Compose course. You'll have a foundation that you can build on as you continue to explore the world of Android development. Both versions of Android Basics are planned to coexist, giving the option of learning Android with either UI toolkit.
Whether you’ve never built an app before but want to learn how, or just want to brush up on some of our latest best practices, check out the Android Basics in Kotlin course.
Posted by Alicja Heisig, Developer Relations Program Manager
Welcome to #IamaGDE - a series of spotlights presenting Google Developer Experts (GDEs) from across the globe. Discover their stories, passions, and highlights of their community work.
Gaston Saillen started coding for fun, making apps for his friends. About seven years ago, he began working full-time as an Android developer for startups. He built a bunch of apps—and then someone gave him an idea for an app that has had a broad social impact in his local community. Now, he is a senior Android developer at Distillery.
After seven years of building apps for startups, Gaston visited a local food delivery truck to pick up dinner, and the server asked him, “Why don’t you do a food delivery app for the town, since you are an Android developer? We don’t have any food delivery apps here, but in the big city, there are tons of them.”
The food truck proprietor added that he was new in town and needed a tool to boost his sales. Gaston was up for the challenge and created a straightforward delivery app for local Cordoba restaurants he named Uh-Lala! Restaurants configure the app themselves, and there’s no app fee. “My plan was to deliver this service to this community and start making some progress on the technology that they use for delivery,” says Gaston. “And after that, a lot of other food delivery services started using the app.”
The base app is built similarly to food delivery apps for bigger companies. Gaston built it for Cordoba restaurants first, after several months of development, and it’s still the only food delivery app in town. When he released the app, it immediately got traction, with people placing orders. His friends joined, and the app expanded. “I’ve made a lot of apps as an Android engineer, but this is the first time I’ve made one that had such an impact on my community.”
He had to figure out how to deliver real-time notifications that food was ready for delivery. “That was a little tough at first, but then I got to know more about all the backend functions and everything, and that opened up a lot of new features.”
He also had to educate two groups of users: Restaurant owners need to know how to input their data into the app, and customers had to change their habit of using their phones for calls instead of apps.
Gaston says seeing people using the app is rewarding because he feels like he’s helping his community. “All of a sudden, nearby towns started using Uh-LaLa!, and I didn't expect it to grow that big, and it helped those communities.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many restaurants struggled to maintain their sales numbers. A local pub owner ran a promotion through Instagram to use the Uh-Lala! App for ten percent off, and their sales returned to pre-COVID levels. “That is a success story. They were really happy about the app.”
Gaston has been a GDE for seven years. When he was working on his last startup, he found himself regularly answering questions about Android development and Firebase on StackOverflow and creating developer content in the form of blog posts and YouTube videos. When he learned about the GDE program, it seemed like a perfect way to continue to contribute his Android development knowledge to an even broader developer community. Once he was selected, he continued writing blog posts and making videos—and now, they reach a broader audience.
“I created a course on Udemy that I keep updated, and I’m still writing the blog posts,” he says. “We also started the GDG here in Cordoba, and we try to have a new talk every month.”
Gaston enjoys the GDE community and sharing his ideas about Firebase and Android with other developers. He and several fellow Firebase developers started a WhatsApp group to chat about Firebase. “I enjoy being a Google Developer Expert because I can meet members of the community that do the same things that I do. It’s a really nice way to keep improving my skills and meet other people who also contribute and make videos and blogs about what I love: Android.”
The Android platform provides developers with state-of-the art tools to build apps for user. Firebase allows developers to accelerate and scale app development without managing infrastructure; release apps and monitor their performance and stability; and boost engagement with analytics, A/B testing, and messaging campaigns.
Gaston looks forward to developing Uh-La-La further and building more apps, like a coworking space reservation app that would show users the hours and locations of nearby coworking spaces and allow them to reserve a space at a certain time. He is also busy as an Android developer with Distillery.
“Keep moving forward. Any adversity that you will be having in your career will be part of your learning, so the more that you find problems and solve them, the more that you will learn and progress in your career.”
Learn more about the Experts Program → developers.google.com/community/experts
Watch more on YouTube → https://goo.gle/GDE
Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn
Posted by Murat Yener, Android Developer Advocate
That’s a wrap! We’ve just finished a new MAD skills series on Gradle and Android Gradle plugin build APIs. In this series we shifted gears and took a look at how you can extend your build by using Gradle and brand new Android Gradle plugin APIs.
We covered how Gradle works, how you can configure the Android Gradle plugin, and learned which APIs to use to help customize your builds and keep your builds fast and efficient. If you missed this series or some of the episodes, here is a quick recap of what to expect.
Gradle is a general purpose build tool which can build specific project types by using plugins. Plugins introduce a way to configure the build and decide which tasks are needed to build that project. Gradle configures and executes these tasks in different phases. Understanding how the build phases work and how to configure the Android Gradle plugin can help you customize your build according to your project’s needs and keep build times efficient.
You can check out the following video or if you prefer, read the article.
Extending your build by writing your own plugin gives you a way to customize your build even further! Starting with version 7.0, Android Gradle Plugin now offers stable extension points for manipulating variant configuration and the produced build artifacts. In this episode we started with writing a custom task and used the new Variant API to initialize and modify properties of Variants.
You can find the same content in article form.
As we saw in previous episodes, keeping your config phase fast and resolving values lazily can help keep your builds efficient. Providers and Properties let you pass inputs and receive outputs from Gradle tasks lazily. In this episode we also take a look at the new Artifacts API to access and modify the app manifest.
Check out the article or the following video.
In the last episode in the series, we feature Alex Saveau, who maintains the Gradle Play Publisher and Version Orchestrator plugins. Alex shares a tip on using modern AGP and Gradle APIs to manipulate Android build artifacts.
To learn more, check out the following video.
Finally, we wrapped up this series with a live Q&A session where we answered your questions. If you missed the Q&A, make sure to check out the following recording.
If you are interested to learn more, make sure to check out the resources and the Gradle recipes repo linked below! See you in the next MAD Skills series.
Recipes repo: https://github.com/android/gradle-recipes
Extend the Android Gradle plugin: https://developer.android.com/studio/build/extend-agp
AGP Roadmap: https://goo.gle/3EuNYXz
Posted by Marcel Pintó Biescas, Developer Relations Engineer, @marxallski
Android 12 revamps a key feature for many Android users, App Widgets, making them more useful, beautiful, and discoverable (84% use at least 1 widget). Today, we’re making it even easier to build them by releasing the first alpha of Jetpack Glance, a new framework built on top of the Jetpack Compose runtime designed to make it faster and easier to build app widgets for the home screen and other surfaces.
We’d love you to give it a try and share your feedback!
Glance offers similar modern, declarative Kotlin APIs that you are used to with Jetpack Compose, helping you build beautiful, responsive app widgets with way less code.
Glance “Hello World” widget sample
class GreetingsWidget(private val name: String): GlanceAppWidget() { @Composable override fun Content() { Text(text = "Hello $name") } } class GreetingsWidgetReceiver : GlanceAppWidgetReceiver() { override val glanceAppWidget = GreetingsWidget("Glance") }
Glance provides a base-set of Composables to help build “glanceable” experiences. Starting today with app widget components but with more coming. Using the Jetpack Compose runtime, Glance can translate Composables into actual RemoteViews, and display them in an app widget.
Diagram: Glance structure
This means that Glance requires Compose to be enabled and depends on Runtime, Graphics, and Unit UI Compose layers, but it’s not directly interoperable with other existing Jetpack Compose UI elements. However, state or any other logic within your app can be shared to create a glanceable UI.
This initial release introduces the main APIs to enable you to build app widgets in addition to providing interoperability with existing RemoteViews.
Here’s an overview of what the library offers, at a glance:
GlanceAppWidget
GlanceAppWidgetReceiver
Box
Row
Column
Text
Button
LazyColumn
Image
Spacer
GlanceModifier
Action
actionStartActivity
actionRunCallback
actionStartService
actionStartBroadcastReceiver
ActionParameters
SizeMode.Single
SizeMode.Exact
SizeMode.Responsive
GlanceAppWidget state
GlanceStateDefinition
LocalContext
LocalState
LocalGlanceId
LocalSize
RemoteViews
AndroidRemoteViews
We are working on bringing even more functionality with default theming, further Android Studio support, and more. Stay tuned for new releases.
Note: while the minSDK is 21, we are currently only supporting compatibility till SDK v23.
Check out the sample on GitHub for a quick start. Glance works with the latest stable Android Studio, although since Glance relies on Compose Runtime, follow the steps on the Jetpack Compose docs to set it up first.
In addition, for a more advanced showcase, checkout the demos in the AndroidX repository.
ResponsiveAppWidget.kt demo
The Alpha version is your opportunity to influence the APIs, so please share your feedback and let us know your experience!
Happy Composing with Glance!
Posted by Manuel Vicente Vivo, Developer Relations Engineer, @manuelvicnt
As Android apps grow in size, it's important to design the code with an architecture in place to allow the app to scale, improve quality and robustness, and make it easier to test.
An app architecture defines the boundaries between parts of the app and the responsibilities each part should have. This favors the separation of concerns principle that enables the aforementioned benefits.
In response to community demand for up-to-date guidance on app architecture, we're launching a revamped guide to app architecture. This includes best practices and recommended architecture for building robust, high-quality apps. It also provides a page for each layer of the recommended architecture: UI, domain, and data layers. Within them, you'll find deep dives into more complex topics, such as how to handle UI events.
Each Android app should have at least two layers:
You can add an additional layer called the domain layer to simplify and reuse the interactions between the UI and data layers.
General diagram of a typical app architecture. The UI layer gets the application data from the optional domain layer, or the data layer, that exposes application data.
We have created a learning pathway to help you consume this content in order and in a trackable way. Don't miss the chance to learn all of this and get a badge as recognition!
If you’re a beginner, you should begin by understanding the benefits of having an app architecture and then follow these recommendations as a first approach to the topic. Intermediate and advanced developers can follow these recommendations and customize them to their needs. In fact, our research suggests that most professional developers are already using these best practices.
You might be wondering if you should update your existing architecture to follow this recommendation, and the answer is no… or wait… it's up to you. If your current architecture works for your team, you might want to stick with it. But you might also find patterns in our guides you can benefit from and incorporate into your app.
This is the first batch of documents we're releasing, with more to come in 2022. Help us make the guidance better! If you have any feedback on the current recommendations or if you want to see other architecture-related topics in them, let us know in our docs issue tracker.
