Posted by Fergus Hurley, Product Manager, Google Play
Millions of users rate and review your apps every day on Google Play. From feature requests to technical issues, ratings and reviews offer a wealth of information about what people like and dislike. Since 2013, you’ve been able to reply to reviews on Google Play, giving you a direct communication channel with your most engaged users. You've told us you value having this channel because it helps you iterate on user feedback faster on Android than other platforms. In the last few months, we’ve made a number of improvements in the Google Play Developer Console to help you better analyze and manage ratings and reviews so that you can improve your app experience and boost its rating.
Improvements to ratings and reviews
We recently revamped ratings and reviews with features you can now find on dedicated pages in the Developer Console:
Learn from other developers on how to make the most of ratings and reviews
Photo Editor by Aviary is a photo editing app with a strong focus on simplicity and intuitive use. Ratings and reviews and other Android features allow Aviary to iterate on builds two to three times faster compared to other platforms while being in a regular dialogue with their users.
Glu Mobile is a mobile gaming company known for Racing Rivals, Cooking Dash 2016 and its upcoming Taylor Swift game. Ratings and reviews features help Glu engage their audience, gather feedback, and manage user satisfaction. “Google’s review highlights allow us to see a snapshot of game features users like or dislike at a glance. We monitor review trends, watch out for notifications, and respond to reviews for our games,” says Niccolo de Masi, Glu Mobile CEO. Here are some tips Glu is using to master ratings and reviews in the Developer Console:
We hope these tools help you better engage with your audience and improve your app. Visit the Developer Console Help Center to find out more about seeing and managing ratings and reviews. For more tools and best practices to help you grow a successful business, download The Secrets to App Success on Google Play.
Posted by Roy Glasberg Global Lead, Launchpad Program & Accelerator
Last month, 24 promising startups from India, Indonesia, and Brazil came to Silicon Valley to participate in Google’s Launchpad Accelerator, a new program that provides late-stage startups (mobile apps) with mentoring and resources to successfully scale in their local economies.
During the intensive two-week Accelerator kickoff in our Mountain View headquarters, Google engineers from 11 product areas, as well as experts from other companies, were on hand to provide startups with mentorship on how to scale and monetize their apps, and ultimately, build successful businesses. Now back in their home countries, the teams will continue developing their products with the support of up to $50,000 in equity-free funding, six more months of ongoing mentorship, and a breadth of developer tools from the Launchpad Accelerator program.
So far, many startup participants have already seen an immediate impact. Two weeks after attending the kickoff event, Brazilian mobile game developer UpBeat Games was featured on Google Play and saw a 1,000% increase in app installations in Asia, as well as a 200% overall increase in active users, by leveraging analytics to better understand their users.
According to UpBeat Games founder Vinicius Heimbeck, “By working one-on-one with the mentors, we learned that we needed to be a data-driven company. We now have the right analytics tools to measure the results of our efforts and to learn from them to optimize the user experience. This all directly impacted our huge success once we were featured on Google Play.”
eFishery, an Indonesian startup that produces smart automated fish feeders, turned its focus on scaling since attending Launchpad Accelerator. “The mentors gave us great insight about how to build a scalable product and how to engage billions of users,” said co-founder and CEO Gibran Chuzaefah Amsi El Farizy. “We received both technical and practical advice on our business, from building back-end technology to embracing failure with the right mindset.”
Apply now for Launchpad Accelerator We are also excited to announce the second class for Launchpad Accelerator which will begin in June 2016.
If you are a startup from India, Indonesia, Brazil, or Mexico (a new addition!) and are interested in participating in the next wave, we encourage you to apply here by March 31. We expect to continue adding more countries to the program in the future, so be on the lookout!
// Gradle Plugin 2.0+ android { defaultConfig { vectorDrawables.useSupportLibrary = true } }
// Gradle Plugin 1.5 android { defaultConfig { generatedDensities = [] } // This is handled for you by the 2.0+ Gradle Plugin aaptOptions { additionalParameters "--no-version-vectors" } }
<ImageView android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" app:srcCompat="@drawable/ic_add" />
// The View with the BottomSheetBehavior View bottomSheet = coordinatorLayout.findViewById(R.id.bottom_sheet); BottomSheetBehavior behavior = BottomSheetBehavior.from(bottomSheet); behavior.setBottomSheetCallback(new BottomSheetCallback() { @Override public void onStateChanged(@NonNull View bottomSheet, int newState) { // React to state change } @Override public void onSlide(@NonNull View bottomSheet, float slideOffset) { // React to dragging events } });
Posted by Laurence Moroney, Developer Advocate
This is part 4 of a series on Google Sign-In that began with a blog post on the user experience improvements that launched with Google Play services 8.3. We then discussed the API updates that make the programming model much easier. Most recently, we went into how you can use Google Sign-In to authenticate a user with your backend server.
In this post, we’ll discuss how you can have your users sign in via your app to authorize your service for access to Google APIs, such as Google Drive, on their behalf.
When using Google Sign-In, it is easy to extend your integration with Google by requesting additional scopes for API access after sign-in, like storing the user’s pictures of food in Google Drive. Typically, you should request this access incrementally (not at initial sign-in) -- i.e. in the context of a user’s actions (for example, after an app user’s order has been delivered and they’d like to save a copy of their food photos), following best practices in user experience to make it most likely that the user will grant access, and aligning with the runtime permissions model in Android Marshmallow 6.0.
When you do this kind of integration, you probably want to access data from your server, so that you can continue to have access when the user is offline, or to store user-generated data in your own database. This flow would look like Figure 1. This also has the advantage of working across all platforms.
Figure 1. Accessing Google Services with Credentials.
To do this, follow these steps:
Step 1: As with the scenario in server authentication covered in the previous post, this sample provides canonical code for your Android app. In particular see the ServerAuthCodeActivity.
GoogleSignInOptions gso = new GoogleSignInOptions.Builder(GoogleSignInOptions.DEFAULT_SIGN_IN) .requestScopes(new Scope(Scopes.DRIVE_APPFOLDER)) // The serverClientId is an OAuth 2.0 web client ID // Details at: https://developers.google.com/identity/sign-in/android/?utm_campaign=android_discussion_server_021116&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blogstart step 4 .requestServerAuthCode(serverClientId) .requestEmail() .build();
This requires you to get a web client ID for your server. Details on how to obtain this are available here (see Step 4).
In this case, the scope DRIVE_APPFOLDER is requested, meaning that the user will be asked to give the app permission to access their Google Drive. In addition to this, a server auth code will be requested.
If the sign-in is successful, the auth code can be extracted from the account object like this:
if (result.isSuccess()) { GoogleSignInAccount acct = result.getSignInAccount(); String authCode = acct.getServerAuthCode(); }
(Taken from onActivityResult in the sample here)
This auth code should then be sent to your server using HTTPS POST, and, after it is exchanged, will give your server access to the user’s Google Drive. [Important: you should send the code in an authenticated call to your backend to ensure that it is a legitimate request from the active user].
Step 2: On your server, you will then exchange the auth code for tokens using the GoogleAuthorizationCodeTokenRequest class:
// Set path to the Web application client_secret_*.json file you downloaded from the // Google Developers Console: https://console.developers.google.com/project/_/apiui/credential // You can also find your Web application client ID and client secret from the // console and specify them directly when you create the GoogleAuthorizationCodeTokenRequest // object. String CLIENT_SECRET_FILE = "/path/to/client_secret.json"; // Be careful not to share this! String REDIRECT_URI = "/path/to/web_app_redirect" // Can be empty if you don’t use web redirects // Exchange auth code for access token GoogleClientSecrets clientSecrets = GoogleClientSecrets.load( JacksonFactory.getDefaultInstance(), new FileReader(CLIENT_SECRET_FILE)); GoogleTokenResponse tokenResponse = new GoogleAuthorizationCodeTokenRequest( new NetHttpTransport(), JacksonFactory.getDefaultInstance(), "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v4/token", clientSecrets.getDetails().getClientId(), clientSecrets.getDetails().getClientSecret(), authCode, REDIRECT_URI) .execute(); String accessToken = tokenResponse.getAccessToken(); String refreshToken = tokenResponse.getRefreshToken(); Long expiresInSeconds = tokenResponse.getExpiresInSeconds(); // You can also get an ID token from the exchange result if basic profile scopes are requested // e.g. starting GoogleSignInOptions.Builder from GoogleSignInOptions.DEFAULT_SIGN_IN like the // sample code as used here: http://goo.gl/0Unpq8 // // GoogleIdToken googleIdToken = tokenResponse.parseIdToken();
Then, create a GoogleCredential object using the tokens from GoogleTokenResponse:
GoogleCredential credential = new GoogleCredential.Builder() .setTransport(new NetHttpTransport()) .setJsonFactory(JacksonFactory.getDefaultInstance()) .setClientSecrets(clientSecrets) .build(); credential.setAccessToken(accessToken); credential.setExpiresInSeconds(expiresInSeconds); credential.setRefreshToken(refreshToken);
If a refresh token is available, you can persist the credentials using StoredCredential for later use if you need ongoing access to the API on behalf of the user.
Step 3: The credential can then be used to access Google services. Now, in our food delivery scenario, you might want to store or retrieve photos or receipts of finished deliveries in Google Drive. For example, it would look something like this:
Drive drive = new Drive.Builder(new NetHttpTransport(), JacksonFactory.getDefaultInstance(), credential) .setApplicationName("Auth Code Exchange Demo") .build(); File file = drive.files().get("appfolder").execute();
This demonstrates the use of Google Sign-In credentials where your server can make Google API calls on behalf of your users. To learn more about this, and all Google Sign In technologies, visit the Google Identity Platform website.
Posted by Lily Sheringham, The Google Play Apps & Games team
We recently released the second edition of The Secrets to App Success on Google Play with more best practices for finding success growing an app or game business on Google Play. Today we’re sharing our first companion guide for developers, The Family Playbook, which includes information on developing high-quality apps and games for kids and families, along with advice from other developers.
The guide includes advice to help you optimize your user interface design for children, build interactive features that both educate and entertain, develop a business model, understand legal considerations, and plan age-appropriate marketing.
If you create family apps, opt-in to the Designed for Families developer program to designate your apps and games as family-friendly. Apps that meet the program requirements will be featured through Google Play’s family-friendly search and browse experiences and help parents discover great, age-appropriate content and make more informed choices.
Once you’ve checked out the guide, we’d love to hear your feedback so we can continue to improve our developer resources, please let us know what you think.
Android Developer Story: BabyFirst increases installs by 50% with Google Play
BabyFirst was founded to create good educational content for babies, toddlers and their parents. Their apps now have over 30 million downloads, with 40% more downloads on Google Play than other platforms.
Watch this Android Developer Story to learn how opting-in to Designed for Families on Google Play, implementing Store Listing Experiments, and localizing the store listing into 10 languages helped them increase installs by 50% across their portfolio of apps.
Find out more about the Designed for Families program and download our new Family Playbook to help you find success on Google Play.
Posted by Jamal Eason, Product Manager, Android
Android Studio 2.0 is latest release of the official Android IDE focused on build performance and emulator speed to improve the app development experience. With brand new features like Instant Run which enables you to quickly edit and view code changes, or the new & faster Android emulator, Android Studio 2.0 is the upgrade you do not want to miss. In preparation for the final release, you can download Android Studio 2.0 Beta in the Beta release channel. Overall, the Android Studio 2.0 release has a host of new features which include:
Check out the latest installment of Android Studio Tool Time video below to watch the highlights of the features.
We first previewed Instant Run in November; this latest beta release introduces a new capability called Cold Swap
Instant Run in Android Studio 2.0 allows you to quickly make changes to your app code while your app is running on an Android device or Android Emulator. Instead of waiting for your entire app to rebuild and redeploy after each code change, Android Studio 2.0 will try to incrementally build and push only the incremental code or resource change. Depending on the code changes you make, you can see the results of your change in under a second. By simply updating your app to use the latest Gradle plugin ( 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:2.0.0-beta2’ ), you can take advantage of this time saving features with no other modifications to your code. If your project is setup correctly with Instant Run, you will see a lightning bolt next to your Run button on the toolbar:
com.android.tools.build:gradle:2.0.0-beta2
Behind the scenes, Android Studio 2.0 instruments your code during the first compilation and deployment of your app to your device in order to determine where to swap out code and resources. The Instant Run features updates your app on a best-effort basis and automatically uses one of the following swap methods to update your app:
We made major changes to Instant Run since the first preview of Android Studio 2.0, and now the feature works with more code and resources cases. We will continue to add more code change cases to Instant Run in future releases of Android Studio. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to send us a feature request and learn more about Instant Run here.
App Indexing
Supporting app indexing is now even easier with Android Studio 2.0. App Indexing puts your app in front of users who use Google Search. It works by indexing the URL patterns you provide in your app manifest and using API calls from your app to make content within your app available to both existing and new users. Specifically, when you support URLs for your app content, your users can go directly to those links from Google Search results on their device.
Android Emulator
*Updated for Beta* The new and faster Android emulator also includes fixes and small enhancements for this beta release. Notably, we updated the rotation controls on the emulator toolbar and added multi-touch support to help test apps that use pinch & zoom gestures. To use the multi-touch feature, hold down the Alt key on your keyboard and right-click your mouse to center the point of reference or click & drag the left mouse button to zoom.
What's Next
Android Studio 2.0 is a big release, and now is good time to check out the beta release to incorporate the new features into your workflow. The beta release is near stable release quality, and should be relatively bug free. But as with any beta release, bugs may still exist, so, if you do find an issue, let us know so we can work to fix it. If you’re already using Android Studio, you can check for updates on the Beta channel from the navigation menu (Help → Check for Update [Windows/Linux] , Android Studio → Check for Updates [OS X]). When you update to beta, you will get access to the new version of Android Studio and Android Emulator.
Connect with us, the Android Studio development team, on Google+.
Posted by Eitan Marder-Eppstein, Developer Engineering Lead, Project Tango
GPS helps us find our way outside whether it is turn by turn navigation to the nearest grocery or just getting us oriented in a new city. But once we get indoors, it is not quite as easy - GPS doesn't work, with accuracy dropping and navigation becoming all but impossible. This is one of the reasons why we started Project Tango, which has centimeter-scale accuracy of a device’s location, allowing better navigation and experiences in indoor spaces.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been collecting amazing ideas from around the world for great apps for Lenovo’s Project Tango-powered phone. (Have an idea? If you can dream it, you can submit it!) As part of this program we're hosting workshops, focused on specific Tango features. And we just wrapped up a session that we hosted with Westfield Labs devoted to indoor location. Here are some of the highlights:
As you can see, everyone from retail brands to robot startups joined in on the fun—using Project Tango's motion tracking, depth perception, and area learning capabilities to build some amazing location-based apps. Some of our favorites included:
The next stop in our series is a utilities workshop, where we'll be going deep on getting things done with Project Tango—like taking 3D measurements, or mapping your home or building. In the meantime, keep submitting your ideas to the App Incubator (the deadline is February 15!), and we'll see you soon!
getMacAddress()
WifiInfo object and the BluetoothAdapter.getDefaultAdapter().getAddress()
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