Welcome to Now in Android, your ongoing guide to what’s new and notable in the world of Android development.
Now in Android is also offered as a video and podcast.
Continuing our I/O coverage, we released a short video and blog detailing the top three things to know from Android Platform and Quality at Google I/O 2023:
- Android 14, including new privacy, security, and system UI-related features.
- Enhanced support for premium devices, including Ultra HDR images, more premium camera extensions, new production-ready models in ML Kit, and the public beta of the acceleration service for custom ML models.
- App quality, including a new quality framework, quality hub, and design hub.
Check out the blog, video, and the Android Platform and Quality playlist from Google I/O to learn more.
We released Android 14 Beta 3, taking Android 14 to Platform Stability, which means that the developer APIs and all app-facing behaviors are now final for you to review and integrate into your apps, and you can confidently develop and release any compatibility updates. Please start your final compatibility testing now and prepare to publish any updates so you can get valuable feedback during the remainder of the beta releases, particularly if you develop an SDK, library, tool, or game engine. You’ll also notice some new features such as customizable lock screen clocks and shortcuts!
The monetization.subscriptions APIs we introduced last year, separates your subscription products — what you sell — from how you sell them, allowing you your back-end to configure multiple base plans and offers for each subscription — which should reduce the complexity and overhead of managing your product configuration.
Starting on January 1, 2024, all new apps must use the monetization.subscriptions APIs for managing your subscriptions catalog. Existing apps will have until May 1, 2024 to migrate to the new monetization.subscriptions APIs, at which point support for using the InAppProducts API for managing your subscriptions catalog will end completely. All apps can continue using the InAppProducts API to manage one-time products. The Play Billing Library and Subscription Purchase APIs will not be impacted.
We launched the Google Developer Expert spotlight series highlighting Android GDEs, covering how they became GDEs and what it means to them to be part of the community. In our first short episode we’re excited to reintroduce Madona, a Senior Android Developer from the USA. She shares her journey to becoming a GDE, from her first steps as a developer through to the impact of being a GDE on her career. Over the coming weeks we’ll be sharing more short videos from Android Google Developer Experts as they share their best advice, tips, and experiences as a GDE.
We had a bunch of fun new Alphas show up in Android Jetpack! First of all Fragment 1.7 Alpha 1 provides support for Predictive in-app back when using Animator, allowing you to use the back gesture to see the previous fragment with your custom Animator. Health Connect 1.1 Alpha 1 added support for the Android 14 framework version of Health Connect, along with a metadata recording method. The first alpha of Tracing 1.3 removes crossinline from trace so it can be used in a @Composable. And the first Alpha of the Webkit 1.8 library added support for passing and receiving ArrayBuffers beginning with WebView version 116. Finally, WorkManager 2.9 Alpha 1 adds observability via Flows, precise scheduling of periodic workers via setNextScheduleTimeOverride and more.
You can see all the AndroidX release notes here.
Over on Medium, Garan covered Wear OS home workouts with Health Services, taking a look at how to look at how to incorporate Wear OS support in home workout apps, leveraging the sensors on the Wear OS device, including taking advantage of BatchingMode added in Health Service beta 3 to override the default batching behavior to better match the needs of your app.
Jolanda explained how to create a photo grid with multiselect behavior using Jetpack Compose, including implementing a basic grid, adding the selection state to the grid elements, incorporating gesture handling so elements can be selected / deselected with a drag, and more.
As part of the #WeArePlay series, we met Tessa and Saasha, the founders of Olio, an app that enables people to give away any items that could have a second life. It’s now used in 62 countries, and Olio also partners with supermarkets and restaurants with the help of Food Waste Heroes — volunteers who collect and redistribute surplus food — saving an estimated 1 million meals per week.
On June 15th, Google Pay is doing a live session covering how to collect payments on Android with Google Pay and Stripe. Make sure to catch it to get your questions answered.
Google Play had videos covering Safe SDKs, including 5 key takeaways for SDK authors such as keeping up to date with Google Play policies, and supporting the latest API security and data minimization features. In the more in-depth video, Artem and Brian cover common policy issues that Android developers using your SDK may experience when publishing on Google Play, and best practices to help your developers be compliant with policies and regulations.
Finally, Theresa covered the new required data deletion controls in the Data safety section. You must complete the new data deletion questions within your app’s Data Safety form before December 7th.
That’s it for this week with Top 3 Platform and Quality at I/O, Android 14 Beta 3 and Platform Stability, changes to subscription catalog management, Android GDE’s, updated Fragments (for predictive back), Health Connect, Tracing, and WebKit, home workouts with Health Services, photo grids with Jetpack Compose, Safe SDKs, and more!
Check back soon for the next update from the Android developer universe! 💫
