Android Developers Blog: Firebase

Google Play services and Firebase migrating to AndroidX

03 June 2019

Posted by Doug Stevenson, Developer AdvocateLater this year, the Google Play services and Firebase SDKs will migrate from the Android Support libraries to androidx-packaged library artifacts. We are targeting this change for June/July of 2019. This will not only make our SDKs better, but make it easier for you to use the latest Jetpack features in your app. If your app depends on any com.google.android.gms or com.google.firebase libraries, you should prepare for this migration. To quickly test your build with androidx-packaged library artifacts, add the following two lines to your gradle.properties file: android.useAndroidX=true android.enableJetifier=trueIf your build still works, then you're done! You will be ready to use the new Google Play services and Firebase SDKs when they arrive. If you experience any new build issues or want more information on this migration, visit the official Jetpack migration guide. We will communicate when the androidx migration is complete in the near future, stay tuned!

Announcing new SDK versioning in Google Play services and Firebase

03 May 2018

Posted by Doug Stevenson, Developer Advocate Starting today, the Android SDKs for Google Play services and Firebase will be using a new build and versioning scheme. This may require some changes to the way you build your Android app, so be sure to read here thoroughly to get all the details. Here's a quick summary of what's new in these SDKs:

All dependencies now use semantic versioning.

Each dependency may be updated individually, removing the need to upgrade them all simultaneously in your app.

Each dependency has a faster cycle for bug fixes and new features.

Beginning with version 15 of all Play services and Firebase libraries, version numbers adhere to the semantic versioning scheme. As you know, semver is an industry standard for versioning software components, so you can expect that version number changes for each library indicate the amount of change in the library. Each Maven dependency matching com.google.android.gms:play-services-* and com.google.firebase:firebase-* is no longer required to have the same version number in order to work correctly at build time and at run time. You will be able to upgrade each dependency independently from each other. As such, a common pattern for specifying the shared version number for Play and Firebase dependencies in Gradle builds will no longer work as expected. The pattern (now anti-pattern) looks like this: buildscript { ext { play_version = '15.0.0' } } dependencies { // DON'T DO THIS!! // The following use of the above buildscript property is no longer valid. implementation "com.google.android.gms:play-services-auth:${play_version}" implementation "com.google.firebase:firebase-auth:${play_version}" implementation "com.google.firebase:firebase-firestore:${play_version}" } The above Gradle configuration defines a buildscript property called play_version with the version of the Play and Firebase SDKs, and uses that to declare dependencies. This pattern has been helpful to keep all the dependency versions together, as previously required. However, this pattern no longer applies starting with version 15 for each library. Each dependency that you use may now be at different versions. You can expect that individual library updates may not be released at the same time - they may be updated independently. In order to support this change in versioning, the Play services Gradle plugin has been updated. If you're using this plugin, it appears like this at the bottom of build.gradle in your app module: apply plugin: 'com.google.gms.google-services' Here is what has changed in this plugin:

It checks for compatible versions of Play and Firebase libraries. This is similar to enabling the failOnVersionConflict() ResolutionStrategy.

Licensing information is embedded in each individual build artifact. If you use the oss-licenses plugin to manage license requirements, you should update it to the latest.

The first version of this plugin that works with the new versioning system is 3.3.0. When working with the new versions of Play and Firebase libraries, it should be added to your buildscript classpath dependencies as follows: classpath 'com.google.gms:google-services:3.3.0' If you're not using this plugin, but you still want strict version checking of your dependencies, you can apply this new Gradle plugin instead: apply plugin: 'com.google.android.gms.strict-version-matcher-plugin' In order to use this plugin, you will also need to add the following to your buildscript classpath, obtained from Google's Maven Repository: classpath 'com.google.android.gms:strict-version-matcher-plugin:1.0.0' If you're not using Android Studio 3.1 to develop your app, you will need to upgrade in order to get the correct version checking behavior within the IDE. Get the newest version of Android Studio here. With these changes in place, you are now able to adopt new versions of the various SDKs more freely, without a strict requirement to update everything at once. It also enables the development teams for each SDK to ship fixes and enhancements more quickly. Going forward, you can track the releases for Play services SDKs and Firebase SDKs with the provided links.

Google I/O 2017: Empowering developers to build the best experiences across platforms

17 May 2017

By Jason Titus, Vice President, Developer Product Group
It's great to be in our backyard again for Google I/O to connect with developers around the world. The 7,200 attendees at Shoreline Amphitheatre, millions of viewers on the livestream, and thousand of developers at local I/O Extended events across 80+ countries heard about our efforts to make the lives of developers easier -- allowing them to focus on the problems they're trying to solve by minimizing the pain points of building a product.
Earlier this morning, our CEO Sundar Pichai talked about our various billion-user platforms. Whether it's Android or Chrome or the mobile Web, our success would not have been possible without the developer community. And during our Developer Keynote, we covered our heavy investments in tools and services for developers who build on our platforms every day.
We have a lot to cover over the next three days. Let's take a closer look at the major developer news at I/O so far:

Platforms that connect developers to billions of users around the world

Android O Developer Preview 2 — Get a look at the next release of Android O focused on fluid experiences that make Android even more useful, and our efforts to optimize battery life, startup time, graphic rendering time, and stability. Early adopters can opt in to the Android O Beta Program at android.com/beta and run Android O now.
Project Treble — Last week, we also introduced a new Android framework designed to help reduce the time and effort it takes device makers to upgrade a phone to a new version of Android, starting with Android O.
Android Go — We're optimizing Android to run smoothly on entry-level devices, starting with the O release. We're also designing Google apps to use less memory, storage space, and mobile data, including apps such as YouTube Go, Chrome, and Gboard.
Kotlin — Android is officially supporting the Kotlin programming language, in addition to the Java language and C++. Kotlin is a brilliantly designed, mature, production-ready language that we believe will make Android development faster and more fun.
Android Studio 3.0 Canary — Our new preview includes three major features to accelerate development flow: a new suite of app performance profiling tools to quickly diagnose performance issues, support for the Kotlin programming language, and increased Gradle build speeds for large sized app projects.
Mobile Web — AMP and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are re-defining modern mobile web development. AMP gets content in front of users fast and PWAs deliver app-focused experiences that are reliable, fast and engaging. We're seeing success stories from all around the world - travel company Wego has rolled out a successful AMP based PWA and Forbes has seen user engagement double since launching a PWA. If you're wondering how good your current web experience is, you can use Lighthouse - an automated tool for measuring web-page quality. Be sure to tune in this afternoon for the Mobile Web: State of the Union talk to hear more about building rich mobile web experiences.

Infrastructure and services to take mobile apps and the Web to the next level

Firebase — At last year's I/O, we expanded Firebase to a full mobile development platform with products to help you build your app and grow your business. Over a million developers now use Firebase, and we're doubling down on our efforts to simplify more every-day developer challenges. We're giving more insights to understand app performance through Firebase Performance Monitoring, introducing integration between Hosting and Cloud Functions, adding support for Phone Number Authentication, and continuing to improve Analytics in a number of ways. We've also started open sourcing our SDKs.
Mobile web developer certifications — At I/O'16 we launched the Associate Android Developer Certification. This year, we're adding two new certifications for web developers: the Mobile Sites Certification and the Mobile Web Specialist Certification.

Powerful tools to acquire and engage new users; grow successful businesses

Google Play Console — We announced several powerful, new features and reports in the Play Console to help developers improve their app's performance, manage releases with confidence, reach a global audience, and grow their business. The Play Console also has a new name, to reflect its broadened business uses, and a fresh look to make it easier to get things done.
Android Instant Apps — We opened Android Instant Apps, a new way to run Android apps without requiring installation, to all developers. Now anyone can build and publish an instant app. There are also more than 50 new experiences available for users to try out from a variety of brands, such as Jet, New York Times, Vimeo and Zillow.
Payments, Monetization & Ads — We introduced a Google Payment API that enables developers to give their customers the ability to pay in apps and online with credit or debit cards saved to their Google Account. New AdMob integration with Google Analytics for Firebase helps them monetize efficiently and updates to Universal Apps Campaigns will help them grow their user base.

New interfaces to push the limits of what's possible

Actions on Google for the Google Assistant — We brought Actions on Google to phones, introduced new features and functionality, improved our SDK and more. We also launched the Actions Console, a new developer console that helps developers work as a team, and collect data on app usage, performance and user discovery patterns. This new console is integrated with the Firebase and Google Cloud consoles.
VR and AR at Google — We'll have more to share on the latest Daydream platform features and developer tools during our "VR and AR at Google" session tomorrow (May 18) at 9:30 AM PT in the Amphitheatre and on the livestream.

It's important to us that developers are successful. In addition to building products that help solve developer challenges, we're on the ground in over 130 countries, growing and expanding the developer community through programs such as Women Techmakers & Google Developer Groups (GDGs). We're also investing in training programs like Google Developers Certification and courses through Udacity and other partners to help developers deepen their technical capability. We're also excited to announce two large multi-product developer events, Google Developer Days, which are planned for Europe (September 2017 in Krakow, Poland) and India (December 2017 in Bangalore, India). If you are interested to find out more, sign up for updates on g.co/gdd2017.
During Google I/O, attendees and viewers have an opportunity to dive deep into a number of these areas with 14 content tracks and 140+ breakout sessions -- covering Android to Assistant to VR -- and all livestreamed. We've also launched over 70 codelabs to get developers up and running with our latest APIs today.
Whether it's Android, Chrome, Play, VR/AR, the Cloud, and the Mobile Web — we're constantly investing in the platforms that connect developers to billions of users around the world. Thank you to the continued support and feedback from the developer community.

Focusing our Google Play games services efforts

05 April 2017

Posted By James Smith, Product Manager, Google Play

In order to help developers make great games and build their businesses, we offer Google Play Games Services (GPGS). GPGS provides powerful tools to build, analyze and retain your audience and optimize your game. After listening to developer feedback and examining usage, we have decided to remove some of the features so we can focus on making our offering more useful.

In December, we announced the end of support for the creation of new iOS accounts given the low usage of GPGS on iOS. Additionally, our latest Native SDK release (2.3) will no longer support integration with iOS and going forward we will not be supporting or updating the iOS SDK.

We've also examined the features that GPGS offers. While developers use engagement and reporting tools extensively, there is lower usage for Gifts, Requests, and Quests. We therefore plan to stop supporting Gifts, Requests, and Quests. In order to help developers that do use these features plan for their removal, we will leave them open for 12 months, deactivating them by 31st March 2018. We'll be continuing support for other features such as Sign-in, Achievements, Leaderboards and Multiplayer.

Play games services remains an important part of the tools we provide developers, and we're working hard on future GPGS updates. We continue to be strongly committed to providing high quality services for Games, including new tools such as official Firebase support for Unity and C++ developers, and integration with Firebase Analytics. These changes allow us to focus our efforts on the services developers value most to build high quality, engaging games.

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Test on Android 7.1 Developer Preview in Firebase Test Lab

03 November 2016

By Ahmed Mounir Gad, Product Manager, Firebase Test LabTo deliver the best user experience right out of the gate, Firebase Test Lab for Android allows you to test your apps and ensure their compatibility with multiple device configurations, across OS versions, screen orientations, and locales. With a single click, you can run your tests on hundreds of device configurations in Google Cloud and receive your results quickly. Today, we’re excited to announce the availability of the Android 7.1 Developer Preview on Firebase Test Lab virtual devices. In addition to testing the Android 7.1 Developer Preview on your physical Android Device with the Android Beta program, or on your local Android Emulator, you can use the Firebase Test Lab to scale your app testing to hundreds of Android virtual devices.You can also use Firebase Test Lab to perform your own testing. If you don’t have any test scripts, Robo test is ideal for doing your basic compatibility testing on the new platform. It crawls your app in an attempt to find crashes. You can also use the Espresso Test Recorder in Android Studio to record your own instrumentation tests without writing any code.From now until the end of December (12/31/2016), Firebase Test Lab will be offered at no charge on the Firebase Blaze plan for all virtual devices, to help you ensure the compatibility of your app with the Android 7.1 Developer Preview release, as well as with other Android releases.Prepare your app for API level 25, then go to the Firebase Test Lab console to run your first test. Happy testing!

Robo tests uncovering a crash on Android 7.1 Developer Preview for the Flood-It! app.

Google Play services and Firebase migrating to AndroidX

Announcing new SDK versioning in Google Play services and Firebase

Google I/O 2017: Empowering developers to build the best experiences across platforms

Focusing our Google Play games services efforts

Test on Android 7.1 Developer Preview in Firebase Test Lab

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