Android Developers Blog

We just wrapped up another series of MAD Skills videos and articles - this time on Kotlin and Jetpack. We covered different ways in which we made Android code more expressive and concise, safer, and easy to run asynchronous code with Kotlin. Check out the episodes below to level up your Kotlin and Jetpack knowledge! Each episode covers a specific set of APIs, talking both about how to use the APIs but also showing how APIs work under the hood. All the episodes have accompanying blog posts and most of them link to either a sample or a codelab to make it easier to follow and dig deeper into the content. We also had a live Q&A featuring Jetpack and Kotlin engineers. Episode 1 - Using KTX libraries In this episode we looked at how you can make your Android and Jetpack coding easy, pleasant and Kotlin-idiomatic with Jetpack KTX extensions . Currently, more than 20 libraries have a KTX version. This episode covers some of the most important ones: core-ktx that provides...

Posted by Christopher Katsaros; Your #MADscore tabulator We’ve been talking to you a lot recently about modern Android development (MAD), through the MAD Skills series . Now it’s time to see: what’s your MAD score? From how many Jetpack libraries you’re using to what percent of your app is coded in Kotlin, today we’re launching a MAD scorecard that shows just how modern an Android developer you are. Your MAD scorecard uses Android Studio to tell you interesting things like how much size savings your app is seeing through the Android App Bundle. It spotlights each of the key MAD technologies, including specific Jetpack libraries and Kotlin features you could be using. You’ll even get a special MAD character based on your MADest skill (who knows, you just might be a MAD scientist…). Here’s how to get your scorecard You can get a personalized look into your MAD score through a new Android Studio plugin, here’s how to get and share your scorecard: Step 1 - Install the plugin: Throug...

Posted by Nick Rout It’s a wrap_content! The third topic in the MAD Skills series of videos and articles on Modern Android Development is complete. This time around we covered Material Design Components (a.k.a MDC). This library provides the Material Components as Android widgets and makes it easy to implement design patterns seen on material.io, such as Material Theming, Dark Theme, and Motion. Check out the episodes and links below to see what we covered. We designed these videos to closely follow our recent series of MDC articles as well as existing sample apps and codelabs, so you’ve got a variety of ways to engage with the content. We also had a Q&A episode featuring engineers from the MDC team! Episode 1: Why use MDC? The first episode by Nick Butcher is an overview video of this entire MAD Skills series, including why we recommend MDC, then deep-dives on Material Theming, Dark Theme and Motion. It also covers MDC interop with Jetpack Compose and updates to Android S...

Posted by Chet Haase It’s a Wrap! We’ve just finished the first series in the MAD Skills series of videos and articles on Modern Android Development. This time, the topic was Navigation component, the API and tool that helps you create and edit navigation paths through your application. The great thing about videos and articles is that, unlike performance art, they tend to stick around for later enjoyment. So if you haven’t had a chance to see these yet, check out the links below to see what we covered. Except for the Q&A episode at the end, each episode has essentially identical content in the video and article version, so use whichever format you prefer for content consumption. Episode 1: Overview The first episode provides a quick, high-level overview of Navigation Component, including how to create a new application with navigation capability (using Android Studio’s handy application templates), details on the containment hierarchy of a navigation-enabled UI, and a...