In these unprecedented times, Google Play's mission to support you, ensure your businesses continue to operate well, and help users get the content they need is more important than ever. With a surge in need for information, communications tools, entertainment, and more, we are striving to ensure our operations run smoothly, and we need your support.
Below, we’ve pulled together some important information to help you maintain business continuity, as well as best practices to help you stay nimble in the changing landscape.
Like many of you, we've had to manage work disruptions as a result of changing business conditions. This has led to a temporary slowing down of the app review process, which now may take 7 days or longer. As the situation evolves, we will continue to make sure that the most important updates reach users quickly, which may result in fluctuating review times. Certain critical apps may receive prioritized review and may not experience an extended delay in review time. Please check the Google Play Console for the most up-to-date information and guidance.
At the same time, in order to help ensure we are providing users with accurate and timely information relating to COVID-19, we also are prioritizing the review of apps published, commissioned, or authorized by official government entities and public health organizations.
If you want to control when your app goes live, we recommend timed publishing. Just submit your app for review, and once it’s approved, click “Go live” in the Play Console to instantly publish your app. Note: If you already have a release submitted to the production track that is under review, you will not see the “timed publishing” option.
At Google Play we take our responsibility to provide accurate and relevant information for our users very seriously. For that reason, we are currently only approving apps that reference COVID-19 or related terms in their store listing if the app is published, commissioned, or authorized by an official government entity or public health organization, and the app does not contain any monetization mechanisms such as ads, in-app products, or in-app donations. This includes references in places such as the app title, description, release notes, or screenshots.
With the recent increase in traffic, some apps are seeing a spike in inappropriate one-star reviews from users. If you are receiving reviews that are not related to your app experience, you can flag the review in the Play Console. We’ve expanded our ability to assess and remove inappropriate reviews so we can handle your request as quickly as possible.
While subscriptions are a large part of many app business models, two groups are currently seeing the largest impact: 1) those whose core businesses have been adversely affected by COVID-19 (such as live event ticketing), and 2) those who provide a public service with their content or services.
For developers whose business value proposition has been affected, features like deferred billing and subscription pauses can help retain users until after the crisis has passed. For developers who want to offer their content or services like medical, online learning, and wellbeing apps at reduced or no cost, features like price changes and refunds through Google Play Billing are available to help.
Learn more best practices in our Medium post.
Google is also committed to helping our community at large. To help small businesses reconnect with their customers, Google is granting $340 million in ad credits to be used across our Google Ads platforms — learn more here.
Here’s what else we’re doing:
As the situation progresses, we will continue to gather more resources to help you. We’re also taking steps to limit changes and barriers because we know you have enough on your plate right now. Please stay tuned for more information, and thank you for being a part of the Google Play community. If you have any other suggestions about how we can support you during this time, please let us know by tweeting at us at @GooglePlayDev with #AskGooglePlay.
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Posted by Leticia Lago, Head of Developer Marketing, EMEA
At the start of this year we opened submissions for 2020’s Google Play Indie Games Festival - an international competition celebrating incredible indie games from Europe, Japan and South Korea.
We’ve received hundreds of fantastic submissions that showcase the technical abilities and groundbreaking creativity of independent studios. Many thanks to everyone who submitted their game. After some hard choices and late nights, we’re happy to announce our 20 finalists in each region.
Please check out the games below (in alphabetical order); each one is a true work of art. They will be receiving promotions and prizes to help them grow their business. They’ll also be competing in the Finals for the top prizes.
While this is a happy announcement, we must also inform you that we will be unable to hold the Finals as planned on April 25 in Poland, Japan and South Korea due to the COVID-19 situation. We will be postponing the events until further notice, as the health and safety of finalists, jury members, players and others involved is our top priority. Please stay tuned for further announcements.
60 Parsecs! by Robot Gentleman
Aisle Trial by Jake Matthews-Belcher
Alien Escape by Korion Games
Alt-Frequencies by Accidental Queens
Bad North by Rawfury
Bounce that Bird! by Affinity Project
Cessabit: a Stress Relief Game by Tepes Ovidiu
Color Spots by UX Apps
Cookies Must Die by Rebel Twins
Demons Never Lie by Maika Hernandez
Doors: Awakening by Big Loop
Faraway: Galactic Escape by Pine Studio
inbento by Afterburn
My Diggy Dog 2 by King Bird Games
The White Door by Rusty Lake
Tiny Tomb: Dungeon Explorer by Tinycorp
Traffix by Infinity Games
Tricky Castle by Team Tricky
Unhatched by Filip Loster
Void Tyrant by Quite Fresh
Amayadori by CHARON・Yanase
CUBE GARDEN by Fukudanuki
GIGAFALL by Shiki Game Studio
GummyShooter by simatten
Home Fighter by hap Inc.
Matsuro Palette by SleepingMuseum
METBOY! by REBUILD GAMES
Mocha - Dagsaw Puzzle - by Kotoriyama, Inc.
MonsterTrader by Mitsuhiro Okada
Overturn by Katsu Matsuda
Shiritori - The Word Chain Game by Baton
Snowman Story by Odencat
SOUND JOURNEY SCHOOL WANDERER by SOUND JOURNEY
TAP! DIG! MY MUSEUM! by oridio Inc.
Teiji Taisha Online by toru sugitani
The Final Taxi by Zxima.LLC
Uncrowned by NESTOPI Inc.
Wasurenaide, otona ni natte mo by GAGEX Co.,Ltd.
World for Two by Seventh rank
Zelle by Odencat Fuming
Castle Defense Online by BlackHammer
CAT THE DJ by CATSBY STUDIO
DiceEmpire by Banjiha Games
Domino City by Bad Beans
DUST by I-eye studio
Electroad by Night Owl Studio
Extreme football by 9M Interactive
From Earth by Kentauros Entertainment
Great Sword - Stickman Action RPG by Olivecrow
Heroes Restaurant by Team Tapas
Little Boy by 39Studio
Magic Survival by LEME
Mayday Memory by StoryTaco.inc
Petrider by Ddookdak studio
Project Mars by Moontm
QV by Izzle
Sand Shark : The Boy and The Sea by GABANGMAN STUDIO
Staroid : Brick breaker shooter by Spring Games
Sword Master Story by CodeCAT
Undestroyed by Keymaker games
The competition was open to indie developers from the following European countries: Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland).
As part of the Android 11 developer preview we’ve released Android 11 system images, which are capable of executing ARM binaries with significantly improved performance. Previously, developers who were dependent on ARM libraries and could not build an x86 variant of their app either had to use system images with full ARM emulation, which are much slower than x86 system images when run on x86-based computers, or resort to physical devices. The new Android 11 system images are capable of translating ARM instructions to x86 without impacting the entire system. This allows the execution of ARM binaries for testing without the performance overhead of full ARM emulation.
The new Android 11 (Google APIs) x86 system image supports ARM ABIs, while the older Android Oreo system image does not
The significance of this may require a bit of context, especially if you build apps exclusively with Kotlin or the Java programming language. Unlike Kotlin or the Java programming language, both of which execute on the Android Runtime (ART), any C++ in your Android app compiles directly into machine instructions. This means that it needs to be compiled differently based on the architecture of the target device. Mobile phones tend to have ARM processors; consequently, many C++ dependencies you might add to your app, like a camera barcode scanner library, are only compatible with ARM processors. This is a problem if you develop on a computer with an x86-based processor, as it would prevent you from running your app.
Previously, if you wanted to get around this limitation and execute an app built for ARM on your x86 machine, you would have had to use an emulator system image with full ARM emulation. Due to the overhead of translating an entire system’s worth of ARM instructions to x86, emulator system images with full ARM emulation tend to run much slower than x86-based system images when run on x86 host machines. Additionally, emulator system images with full ARM emulation cannot take advantage of the hardware acceleration and CPU virtualization technologies provided by x86 processors.
The new ARM-compatible Android 11 system images allow the entire system to run x86 natively and take advantage of virtualization technologies as usual. When an app’s process requires an ARM binary, the binary is translated to x86 within that process exclusively. This allows the rest of the process to continue executing in x86, including the Android Runtime (ART), and other performance-critical libraries like libGLES and libvulkan. In addition to this, the translator avoids expensive memory access instrumentation and the associated performance hit by avoiding the execution of low-level hardware-specific libraries. These new emulator system images can be used both locally and on your own continuous integration infrastructure. This is possible thanks to collaboration with ARM Limited.
If you have previously chosen physical devices over the emulator due to the lack of performant ARM support, try out the Android 11 system images, which are now available alongside the Android 11 Developer Preview. These system images can be downloaded in Android Studio via either the SDK Manager or the Android Virtual Device Manager.
Using the Android Virtual Device Manager to create an AVD that runs Android 11
Once you get your app running on the emulator, consider adapting it for Chrome OS. Chrome OS also supports the execution of Android apps built for ARM on x86 laptops. Building for Chrome OS provides access to a substantial ecosystem of larger screen devices, allowing your application to reach even more users globally.
This technology should enable more developers to test with the Android Emulator. That said, we still recommend that developers publish both x86 and ARM ABI variants of their apps to achieve the best physical device performance and reach as many users as possible. Going forward, we plan to roll this technology out across a wider variety of API levels and ensure that it supports testing all use cases that a physical device would. Given that this is a new technology, please let us know of any problems via our Issue Tracker.
Note that the ARM to x86 translation technology enables the execution of intellectual property owned by Arm Limited. It will only be available on Google APIs and Play Store system images, and can only be used for application development and debug purposes on x86 desktop, laptop, customer on-premises servers, and customer-procured cloud-based environments. The technology should not be used in the provision of commercial hosted services.
Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Posted by Lily Sheringham, Global Marketing, Platforms & Ecosystems
UPDATE: We have updated the launch date of some of the episodes due to the current circumstances with COVID-19, please check below for up-to-date episodes.
This is a cross-post from The Google Keyword blog.
Today we’re launching the Apps, Games, & Insights podcast series, bringing together insights, stories, and learnings from industry experts, on some of today's hottest topics surrounding mobile, apps and games businesses, and the wider industry.
Listen to the podcast here!
The series has eight episodes which aim to challenge, provoke thought, and enlighten listeners - from designers and developers, through to product managers and marketers, and those interested in the apps and games industry.
The podcast is hosted by Googlers Tamzin Taylor, who heads up Apps & Games Business Development for Google Play in Western Europe, and Dirk Primbs, who leads the Ecosystem Developer Relations team in EMEA. Together, they have many years of experience working with partners to assist with Android development, mobile, app, game, and business growth. Every week they will be joined by different guests for each of the episodes.
Kicking off the series are Judy Chen and Sarah Fuchs from Crowdstar, the developers of Covet Fashion and Design Home. They join us for episode 1 to discuss how to build a long-term games business by taking a holistic approach to the game, its players, and the people who create the game.
Ever wonder if it's worth selling your app or game business, and if so how to approach it? It's not all about pocketing the cash and walking away. For episode 2, game mergers and acquisitions expert Chris Petrovic from Zynga will talk about how acquisition can free developers to focus on what they love: creating great apps and games.
Whether you are a startup in search of funding or an established business looking to accelerate your investment, venture capital can often be a good source of funds. In episode 3, venture capital expert Matteo Vallone from Cherry Ventures offers insights into the investment process and how to maximize your appeal to investors.
For episode 4, we have what is possibly one of the biggest topics in mobile and throughout the tech industry: privacy. Bruce Gustafson, CEO of Developers Alliance brings us up to speed on trust and safety, platform value, respecting the user, and ultimately building privacy friendly apps and games.
Successful game developers put players front and center of everything they do. When over 270 million people have played your games, you must be doing something right. Ben Clarke, Senior Global Marketing Director at Jagex, joins us for episode 5 to discuss some of the innovative approaches to player engagement and retention taken in their RuneScape games.
Figuring out how to make your app or game accessible to all can often be a challenge, sometimes both from an organizational and technical perspective. However, many developers have made accessibility a core part of their app development process and company culture. For episode 6, we’re joined by Ceri Lindsay and Rosalind Whittam from the BBC to discover how they address accessibility.
Today, Android is not just about smartphones, Android apps and games can run on a range of devices with larger screens, such as Chromebooks. At the same time, mature mobile game franchises are looking for opportunities beyond mobile. In episode 7, we’ll be joined by Maximiliano Rodriguez of Gameloft to talk about the challenge of taking games to big screens and new platforms.
The popularity of subscriptions continues to grow, with developers who used subscriptions earning 4X more in 2018, than in 2016. Holly Ackerman and David Berlin, from the sports streaming platform DAZN, join us for episode 8 to provide some fascinating insights into how they have grown their subscription business in this industry.
We hope you’ll join us over the next eight weeks to dive deeper and hear what our thought leader guests have to say on each topic.
To listen to our first podcast and find out more about what’s coming, check out our new Apps, Games, & Insights podcast homepage.
Listen to our first episode here, or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, Google Podcasts, Deezer, iHeartRadio, and also on LibSyn. Keep an eye out on @GooglePlayDev and @AndroidDev on Twitter where we will be announcing the launch of the new episodes each week.
Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Developer Marketing
The indie developer community released several fantastic titles on Google Play during 2019, showing the technical skill and innovative design that makes them an essential part of the gaming landscape.
To continue helping indie developers thrive, today we’re announcing the 2020 edition of our annual Google Play Indie Games Festival. This year we will host three competitions for developers from several European countries*, Japan, and South Korea.
Prizes are designed to help you grow your business, including:
The contests are open to developers from selected countries, with no more than 50 employees. The submitted game must be new, released at least in open beta between May 7, 2019 and March 2, 2020. See other requirements in the terms and conditions for each of the contests.
Simply fill out the relevant form by clicking here. Submissions are open until March 2, 2020, at 3pm CET.
The Top 20 entries in each region will be announced in March and invited to showcase at the Festival events where the field will be narrowed to 10 by the event audience, industry experts and the Google team. The Top 10 will present their games on stage and the 3 winners will be selected.
Even if you’re not submitting a game to the competitions, we’d love to see you at one of the Festival events on the 25th of April 2020.
Learn more and sign up on g.co/play/indiefestival
* The European competition is open to developers from the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland).
The last 12 months have seen Google Play continue to grow, with over 116 billion downloads of the apps and games that you created.
We’ve been working hard to build the latest technology and tools for modern Android development and distribution, improving Google Play and the Play Console to offer you new and better ways for your app to be discovered, promoted, and monetized.
A key focus has been addressing the challenge of keeping users safe and maintaining trust in Google Play.
We are focused on building great tools and services and your feedback is crucial in helping us do so. You have told us that you love Android’s openness, but we have also heard that you would like us to marry it with an opinion about the right way to do things. We call this approach modern Android development: opinionated and powerful, for fast, easy development, taking away everything that slows you down so you can focus on building incredible experiences. You can see modern Android development come to life in a number of investments we made this year:
Android 10, released earlier this year, is built around three important themes. First, Android 10 is shaping the leading edge of mobile innovation with advanced machine-learning and support for emerging devices like foldables and 5G enabled phones. Next, Android 10 has a central focus on privacy and security, with almost 50 features that give users greater protection, transparency, and control. Finally, Android 10 expands users' digital wellbeing controls so individuals and families can find a better balance with technology.
We introduced Android App Bundles last year as a mechanism to simplify and streamline app distribution, overcome the constraints of APK publishing, and introduce advanced distribution features such as dynamic delivery. There are now over 300K app bundle apps and games in production, covering nearly 30% of all active installs. If this doesn’t include your app or game, check out 16 reasons to publish your apps and games with the Android App Bundle.
This year we’ve made it much easier to test and implement app bundles and dynamic delivery. Internal app sharing makes it easy to share test builds with others. You can easily grant anyone on your team the ability to upload a test build to Play and get a download link to share with your testers. With internal app sharing, you can be sure that each device is receiving exactly what Play would deliver in the wild. You don’t need to use version codes or the prod signing key, and can even upload debuggable artifacts.You can also get download links for old versions of your app from the Play Console, whether they’re app bundles or APKs.
In 2019, you helped us make Google Play even safer, building user trust in your apps and Google Play as a whole. Thanks to your hard work, we have:
To help you protect your apps, we’ve improved our ability to detect impersonators, repackaging, bad content, and other forms of abuse. Additionally, we’re investing in resources like policy-focused Play Academy courses to help you better understand and navigate our policy changes.
Because the threats are always changing, it’ll take all of us working together to keep users safe and our platform secure. Thank you for continuing to work with us on this.
During 2019 we continued to look for new ways to help you market and monetize your apps and games:
With such scale comes responsibility. We’re committed to ensuring our users’ safety for the future, to making development easier and distribution faster, and to offering you more effective ways for your app to be discovered and monetized.
On this note, we hope we can all continue working together to make Android and Google Play better for billions of people around the world, in 2020, and the years to come. From everyone on our team, we wish you all a happy holiday season and a prosperous new year.
Posted by Marcus Leal, Product Manager, Google Play Ads
How do people find your app? It’s the million-dollar question for any developer, and the answer can help you make the right choices about your marketing strategy and budget. Accurate install referral data is crucial for understanding which traffic sources send users to download your app from the Google Play Store, as well as identifying fraudulent attempts to claim install attributions.
That’s why in 2017, we launched the Play Install Referrer API, which provides a reliable and robust mechanism for apps to retrieve referral information directly from the Play Store. It was a big step forward from the old install_referrer intent broadcast, so many developers made the switch right away, including App Attribution Program partners like Adjust, AppsFlyer, and Kochava. Now, because it’s been replaced by the new API, we’ve decided to deprecate the install_referrer intent broadcast mechanism on March 1, 2020. After this date, new versions of the Play Store app will no longer broadcast the install_referrer intent after app installs.
We are asking developers who still rely on the install_referrer to use the Play Install Referrer API instead. Among other advantages, the Install Referrer API offers better performance, uses a secure communication channel between your app and the Play Store, and offers a more robust solution against spoof and attribution fraud.
If you still use the Broadcast API and the install_referrer intent to track your referrals, be sure to make the switch by March 1, 2020. Migration is easy, and the cost of adoption is low. Learn how to use the Play Install Referrer API to track your app installs today.
Today we’re kicking off Playtime, our annual event series where we host developers from all over the world to discuss features and best practices to help you grow your apps and games businesses. Last month’s Android Dev Summit focused on modern Android development. Here on the Google Play team, we’re focusing on modern app and game distribution — our set of powerful and customizable distribution features and tools that work together to power your success on Google Play.
The Android App Bundle is foundational to modern app and game distribution, replacing the monolithic APK. Since it launched 18 months ago, over 270K apps and games have made the switch, representing over 25% of active installs. Those that switched have seen an average size savings of 20% compared to a universal APK and more efficient releases as a result.
A recent internal analysis revealed that users with storage-constrained devices are much more likely to uninstall apps, so optimizing how much space your app needs is important. Our new metrics on the app size report in the Play Console can show you how many of your active users have little free storage on their devices and if they’re uninstalling more than other users.
Testing app bundles is now much easier with internal app sharing. Make anyone in your company an uploader without giving them access to the Play Console and they’ll be able to share test builds of your app as easily as they used to share APKs. With internal app sharing, you can be sure that each device is receiving exactly what Play would deliver in the wild. You don’t need to use version codes or the prod signing key, you can upload debuggable artifacts, and you’ll soon be able to get install links for old versions of your app, too.
The app bundle also lets you modularize your app with dynamic feature modules. Modularization speeds up build times and engineering velocity, since different teams can design, build, test, and debug features in parallel rather than working on the same complex code for a monolithic app. Based on your feedback, we’ve made it easier to develop modular apps with tools such as the new Dynamic Feature Navigator library and FakeSplitInstallManager, which lets you test on-demand delivery while offline instead of waiting for the Play Store.
In-app updates let you prompt users to update to the latest version of your app, without them having to leave your app. More than 10% of the top apps and games are already using in-app updates with an average acceptance rate of 24%. Based on your feedback, we’re also giving you more control over how and when you show update prompts:
For some games with rich content, the 150MB app bundle size limit is not enough. Using expansion files or content delivery networks can get around this but could introduce complexity when you’re building and releasing your game, and can result in a poor user experience. That’s why we’re extending the app bundle format to support asset delivery with a new delivery construct called asset packs which can go up to multiple gigabytes.
Asset packs are packaged in the app bundle alongside your binary, so you can publish a single artifact to Play that contains everything your game needs, giving you full control of your asset delivery. Play’s asset delivery will also enable texture compression targeting, so that your users only get the assets suitable for their device with no wasted space or bandwidth. And you can rely on Play to keep your assets up to date, just as it does with your game binary. We’re currently testing this with some early partners and hope to make it more widely available soon.
Look out for the sessions from this year’s Playtime, which will be added to the Android Developers YouTube channel. We look forward to sharing more tools and services for your apps and games, made possible by the app bundle and our new dynamic framework. And as always, please give us your feedback and let us know what you think.
Since Google Fit was released in 2015, apps with an abundance of features for health and fitness tracking have integrated with the Google Fit APIs. Over the years, the number of users using Google Fit as a central repository for their fitness and wellness data has grown significantly.
With Android 10, we're making further updates to give users even more control over this personal data. One key change concerns how Android apps can monitor a user’s physical activity and retrieve data from Android sensor APIs and the Google Fit platform.
In Android 10: Activity recognition permission
Android 10 introduces a new runtime permission for activity recognition for apps that make use of the user's step and calorie count or classify the user's physical activity, such as walking, biking, or moving in a vehicle through one of the following APIs:
If your app relies only on raw data from other built-in sensors on the device, such as the accelerometer and gyroscope, you don't need to declare this new permission in your app.
Activity Recognition Permission Enforcement
Google Fit physical activity APIs
This new permission affects a subset of data types available in the Google Fit APIs on Android. If your app accesses these types from Google Fit today, then you need to update your app inline with the new permissions.
The activity recognition runtime permission is required for accessing the following APIs / data types:
With Android 10 now launched and SDK 29 becoming your primary development target, now is the time to make sure your apps are compatible with the new runtime permission.
Android fuels mobile apps on devices that range far beyond your typical small-screen smartphone, from new Chromebooks like the lightweight, high-performance Google Pixelbook Go to multi-display devices and foldable phones like the Samsung Galaxy Fold. Not to mention the more than 175M Android tablets that have the Google Play store installed.1
These large-screen devices set the stage for more engaging and visually immersive experiences, whether by creating a larger canvas for creativity or by giving users faster, more flexible ways to work. As we’ve continued to prioritize large-screen devices with OEM partners like Samsung, Asus, and Lenovo, we’ve been able to expand our reach to a huge new audience of users.
During the week of Black Friday in 2018, 1 in 3 notebooks sold in the U.S. were Chromebooks.2 Chromebook unit sales also increased 22% YoY, while the rest of the notebook category decreased -6.1%.3 And we’re not just reaching more users — we’re reaching more engaged users. In fact, in just the last year, the total amount of time spent in Android apps on Chrome OS has grown 4X.4
By making adjustments for larger screens, you can provide richer experiences across all these devices and tap into a wider audience of app users. Development teams around the world — including Adobe Lightroom, Evernote, and Gameloft, among many others — have already seen some incredible results:
With the goal of allowing users to play any video file, anywhere, on any device or screen size, the developers at VideoLAN project decided to adapt VLC — an open source, cross-platform multimedia player — for all screens. The team started by adding keyboard and mouse support before designing multiple versions of the layout to allow users to easily scale and resize the app.
Users can now enjoy the same immersive experience across a range of different devices and form factors, and VideoLAN has already received overwhelmingly positive feedback from users around the world.
War Robots — a 12-player real-time battle game developed by Pixonic — was originally designed for early-generation phones. The team enabled windowed gameplay so users could play in one window while watching their favorite streamers or upgrading their robots in another, created new tutorials and controls that appear whenever players switch between desktop and tablet mode, and added support for keyboard and mouse input.
More than 100,000 players have already played War Robots on Chrome OS since Pixonic rolled out the latest optimizations, which made War Robots’ battles even more thrilling and engaging on larger screens, and Pixonic has seen 25% longer user sessions on Chromebooks as a result.
1) Laptop and tablet mode Test your core app functions to make sure everything works smoothly without crashing as users switch between different modes.
2) Window management and layout Support multi-window mode and free-form window resizing, and be sure to design optimized layouts for both landscape and portrait orientations. Set up your app to correctly handle configuration changes to avoid crashes when people rotate their devices.
3) Keyboard and mouse input Make sure your app is fully functional without touch input, and add support for keyboards, mice, and game controllers (if applicable).
4) Hardware support If you’re using NDK, be sure to support x86 (32 and 64bit) ABIs to ensure the highest possible performance.
From the start, our goal has been to make the Chromebook a simple, secure, and speedy environment for everyone. The launch of Linux (Beta) on Chrome OS allowed Android developers to build and test apps with a Chromebook. And earlier this year at I/O, we announced that Android Studio 3.5 now fully supports Chrome OS with a simple one-click installation.
Since then, we’ve been working on a few improvements that make Chromebooks an even better place for safe and seamless Android app development. Let’s start with the biggest one:
Deploying an app directly to Chrome OS to enable full Android development In the past, you could only test your apps by deploying them to Android phones. With Chrome OS’s upcoming M80 release, you’ll be able to deploy Android apps directly to your Chromebook. That way, you can develop and test your app on the same machine, all without a connected device or needing to put your laptop in developer mode. Developers can start testing this feature in developer channel in November.
GPU acceleration for a snappier, jank-free UI (now in beta channel) We’ve enabled GPU support to reduce latency and deliver a snappier UI. That goes for developer apps such as Android Studio, Unity Editor, or Visual Studio Code. And for developers who also work on web apps, GPU acceleration means faster testing with Chrome Canary or Firefox.
Container backup and restore to easily move between devices Previously, Linux files and apps were tied entirely to the device — if you lost your device, you lost all the work inside of it. Now, Chrome OS’s container-based architecture allows you to pack up your entire workspace and export it to external storage or Drive. The backup file can be restored at any point, either on the same machine — which is helpful when jumping back to a previous state — or to move to another Chromebook.
You can now find import and export buttons in your Linux settings.
Picture-in-picture (PiP) support
If you’ve built PIP support into your Android apps, you’ll see that function work seamlessly in Chrome OS in 2020. But you can start testing this feature now by enabling PiP in Android settings → Developer options.
With millions of users on Chromebooks, tablets, foldables, and now multi-display devices, designing app experiences with larger screens in mind is crucial. Seize this opportunity to engage more users by optimizing your existing apps to work great across all screens. And the latest Linux features on Chrome OS give you the power to use a single machine to build and run Android apps. Don’t hesitate to take action to ensure your apps work seamlessly on larger screens with Linux on Chrome OS.
1. The number of tablets only accounts for devices that have the Google Play Store installed (e.g., excluding tablets in China); the actual number of tablets capable of running Android applications is much larger.
2. The NPD Group, Inc., Retail Tracking Service, U.S., Notebook Computers, Chrome OS, based on units, Nov. 18, 2018–Nov. 24, 2018 vs. Nov. 19, 2017–Nov. 25, 2017.
3. The NPD Group, Inc., U.S. Retail Tracking Service, Notebook Computers, based on units, Sept. 2018–Aug. 2019. Sales are adjusted for 5 weeks in Jan. 2018 vs. 4 weeks in Jan. 2019.
4. Google Internal Data, March 2018–March 2019.
Android 10, our newest release, brings helpful tools for both developers and consumers like suggested actions in Smart Reply to help you multitask faster, Dark theme for battery saving, Focus mode that keeps you from digital distractions, and more. And with almost 50 changes related to privacy and security, Android 10 gives you greater protection, transparency, and control over your data than ever before. It is important to both users and developers that these new releases find their way to mobile devices as fast as possible. In this post, we’ll share an update on the progress we’ve made with Project Treble, an initiative to help manufacturers update devices to new versions of Android more quickly.
Wait and See
When we launched Project Treble with Android 8.0 Oreo, we asked ourselves if our investment would pay off. There were two factors to consider in measuring the effectiveness of the program:
The Partner Beta Program
One of the earliest indications that Project Treble was having a positive effect was our ability to run the Beta program for Android 9 Pie on many more devices from more manufacturers. In addition to Google Pixels, we had 7 device models from 7 OEMs supporting Android 9 Pie Beta.
With Android 10, this year, we increased the number of devices to 18 (again, in addition to Pixels), representing 12 OEMs. This represents a significant increase over the previous year and shows that Project Treble is having an impact.
Distribution Chart
Beta releases are great, but how did we fare on actual upgrades? To answer this question, we considered two points in time. The first point is right before we released Android 9. The second point is right before we released Android 10. By each of these points in time, the previous release had had a year to reach devices.
In late July, 2018, just before Android 9 Pie was launched in AOSP, Android 8.0 (Oreo) accounted for 8.9% of the ecosystem. By comparison, in late August 2019, just before we launched Android 10, Android 9 (Pie) accounted for 22.6% of the ecosystem. This makes it the largest fraction of the ecosystem, and shows that Project Treble has had a positive effect on updatability.
The adoption of Android Pie has been much higher than that of Android Oreo and Oreo MR1 when measured relative to the launch date.
Continuous Improvements in Updatability
The progress shown above results from work we did in Android 8.0 Oreo. We have made serious improvements with Android 9 Pie as well. The most significant one was our behind-the-scenes collaboration with silicon manufacturers. This work had the effect of reducing the average time to upgrade by more than 3 months, and we expect to see upgrades from Android 9 to Android 10 noticeably sooner this year.
There is also the sheer amount of hardening work on the architecture. We completed the seal between the vendor and system components of Android, which ensures that new versions of the top part of the OS run on older versions provided by our partners. We formalized the interface to the Android Linux kernel, expanded the Treble test suite (VTS), and did so much more. As a result, upgrades from Android 9 to Android 10 are going much more smoothly, as evidenced by direct feedback from our OEM and silicon partners.
We are beginning to see the effects already. This year, we saw two OEMs issue software updates to Android 10 on the day we announced it: Xiaomi and Essential. On the same day, OnePlus started a public beta program, and just a few days later, they started updating devices. HMD Global’s Nokia 8.1 just started receiving the update this week. In addition to these partners, many manufacturers such as ASUS, LG, Motorola, OPPO, Realme, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Transsion, and Vivo have committed to updating some of their devices to Android 10 by the end of the year. Plus, new devices are already hitting shelves with Android 10, such as the OnePlus 7T. We are very excited that Samsung announced an open beta for Android 10 on their devices and started the rollout on October 12th, compared to November 15th last year.
The ROM developer community benefits from improved updatability as well. Mere days after the Android 10 launch, external developers ported it to 15 devices that launched on Android 8 and 9. This work was made much easier thanks to Project Treble, and we are very excited about the potential for open-source development on the OS. We made this even easier by publishing Google-signed Generic System Images (GSIs) and GMS binaries on android.com, as well as posting detailed instructions for developers to try them on their own.
DSU and Project Mainline
In Android 10, we delivered Dynamic System Updates (DSU). For every device launching on Android 10 that supports DSU, developers are able to install Google-signed Generic System Images and boot into them without having to touch the factory ROMs on their devices. We showcased this work at Google I/O, switching painlessly between GSIs and Factory ROMs on Pixel devices.
We also implemented Project Mainline, which allows Google to update directly, via the Play Store, components of the OS that are critical to security and app compatibility. Project Mainline is to the core of the Android OS what Project Treble is to its foundation. It is a dramatic improvement in the velocity of updates of the OS components that fall under its umbrella.
Project Mainline also builds on the work we've done on a less obvious part of Android, called Google Mobile Services (GMS), which has been receiving updates in this way for years. GMS is the part of your Android device that makes it work seamlessly with all of Google's services. Yet another piece, called Webview, is at the core of your browser and every application that interacts with the web. This security- and correctness-critical component also gets updated via Play Store.
Looking Forward
The Android ecosystem is truly vast. There are hundreds of phone manufacturers, dozens of SoC (mobile CPU) models, and thousands of very different devices. Creating an updatability architecture that covers all of them is a complex task. Android is committed to updatability in all forms, whether it’s real-time updates to first- and third-party apps, developer libraries such as Jetpack, or regular security updates for Android devices.
It has been exciting to see the impact of our efforts on updatability. We have a lot more work to do, and we are tirelessly investing on improving updates. I am proud of the progress we all—Android, Google at large, and our many partners—have made so far. I am very optimistic about the future and look forward to sharing our work for the next release of Android.
Posted by Dan Lavelle, Head of Learning Operations, Google Play
One year ago, we introduced the Academy for App Success , an e-learning platform to help apps and games businesses who want to grow on Android and Google Play. In that time we've seen tens of thousands of people register for free learning, complete over 50,000 courses, and provide an average course rating of 4.66 out of 5 stars. Thank you to everyone who has spent time learning about best practices, Play Console features, policies and other aspects that are critical to growing your business - we hope to see more of you in the future.
Since the debut of Play Academy, we've been working hard to expand our offering to cover the topics you want to learn about. In this time, we have:
We've also been listening to your feedback and have updated Play Academy with content to cover key areas that might interest you:
Google Play policy
Subscription model for games
Track installs, uninstalls, and upgrades
Our goal at Play Academy is to provide you with a free learning resource to optimize your use of Play Console features, learn best practices to apply to your app or game business, and stay on the right side of Google Play policy.
Over the coming year, we will continue to create and update content in these key areas, in addition to investing in new learning formats to complement our interactive e-learning content.
At Google Play, we're looking forward to another great year of learning with you.
It's easy to get started with Play Academy - simply head to g.co/playacademy, sign up for your free account, and choose from over 75 e-learning courses and assessments. While you're there, leave a rating and review on any courses you complete.
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