We released the Compose January ’24 Bill of Materials update, which includes version 1.6 of the Compose libraries. This release largely focuses on performance improvements. We are seeing an ~20% improvement in scroll performance and ~12% improvement to startup time in our benchmarks. Furthermore, this release adds support for the experimental “strong skipping mode,” which improves performance by relaxing some of the rules about which changes can skip recomposition.
The January release also introduces new features like nonlinear font scaling, drag and drop, support for lookahead scope in Lazy lists, and more.
For further information, check out Ben’s article.
At Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked in San Jose, Hiroshi, SVP of the Google Platforms and Ecosystems team, shared how Google AI is creating new possibilities on Android. The new Samsung Galaxy S24 series will use Gemini, Google’s best-in-class foundational models, to power the next generation of AI capabilities, including the Gemini Nano on-device model.
We implemented a new tool that prompts users to update to the latest version of an app. Play recovery tools allow developers to prompt users running specific versions of their app to update whenever they restart the app.
Check out this story of two indie game developers that teamed up to create their own game studio. They entered the Quickplay Game Jam, brought their game concept to life and launched it on Google Play.
We had several new releases launched in Jetpack libraries:
Along with the January stable release of Compose, we released the first alpha version of Compose 1.7, that includes even further performance improvements from migrating Ripple to a new API. If you have customized ripple in your app, check out the new migration documentation. Also, this release includes the experimental BasicTextField2, the next generation of Compose text field APIs! It also has powerful new APIs many developers have requested, like the OutputTransformation API.
In Fragment Version 1.7.0-alpha09, we created a new fragment-compose artifact. This is especially helpful for apps that are in the process of moving from a Fragment based architecture to a fully Compose based architecture. For example, in fragment-compose, you can directly assign the content Composable method to onCreateView() method without setting ComposeView or ViewCompositionStrategy.
Collection 1.4.0 adds new high-efficiency collections for storing primitives without boxing. If you are a heavy user of list, set and map, (I believe most of you are) check this out.
We also updated Test Core Version 1.6.0-alpha05 along with other 9 testing libraries. Since this release, we bumped the minimum API requirement to 19 (Android KitKat 4.4).
You can see all the AndroidX release notes here.
That’s it for this week with Jetpack Compose update, other Jetpack library releases, Gemini on Samsung Galaxy, Play recovery tools, and more!
Check back soon for your next update from the Android developer universe, and happy lunar new year! 💫
