Android Developers Blog

Posted by Kat Kuan , Developer Advocate, Android We strive to make Android development content accessible to all, so that anyone can become an Android developer. Over the years, millions of students at all different levels have consumed our learning content and worked through courses and codelabs to advance their skills. We continue to update and release new content as the ever-changing industry continues to evolve. As demand for skilled Android developers increases in the job marketplace, there is an even greater need for educators to train the next generation of Android developers. That is why we created these resources to help support and empower educators. New Android Development with Kotlin instructor-led curriculum Today we’re announcing the launch of our new instructor-led curriculum for Android Development with Kotlin . This is for classroom learning (virtual or in-person) with an instructor delivering lectures on important Android concepts, and students receiving hands-on pra...

Posted by Luli Perkins , Developer Relations Program Manager We kicked off the #AndroidDevJourney to give members of our community the opportunity to share their stories through our social platforms. Each Saturday from January through June we’ll feature a new developer on our Twitter account . We have received an overwhelming number of inspirational stories and hope you enjoy reading through the ones we’ve selected below. For a chance to be featured in our February spotlight series, tweet us your story using #AndroidDevJourney. Niharika Arora Tell me about your journey in becoming an Android Developer and how you got started. My journey started in the field of Android when I was in my 4th year of undergrad studies. I got an internship in a startup named GreenAppleSolutions. There I got a chance to work on an Android project from scratch and luckily my first project went live on the Play Store. During this whole internship, I found Android so interesting because everything you code,...

Posted by Eric Bahna, Product Manager In December, we opened the Google Play Store for publishing new Android Auto apps to closed testing . Today, you can reach more drivers by publishing navigation, parking, and charging apps to open testing tracks in the Google Play Store. With open testing, there’s no limit to the number of users who can download your app and you don’t need to manage lists of email addresses. This is an important milestone that gets us closer to making these apps available to all users in production. Get started with the Android for Cars App Library and choose an open testing track in the Play Console. TomTom AmiGO, one of our early access partners To give you a peek at what’s ahead, we’re working on adding the library to Android Jetpack ! This will give you more consistency with other Jetpack APIs and visibility into new features. When the Jetpack library is ready, migrating your app from the existing library will be straightforward - change the namespace and twe...

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 Iliyan Malchev (Project Treble Architect), Amith Dsouza (Technical Account Manager) , and Veerendra Bhora (Strategic Partnerships Manager) Extending Android updates on Qualcomm’s Mobile Platforms In the past few years, the latest Android OS has been adopted earlier by OEMs and deployed in larger numbers to our users. The growth in adoption has been driven by OEMs delivering faster OS updates, taking advantage of the architecture introduced by Project Treble. At the time Android 11 launched there were 667M active users on Android 10, 82% of whom got their Android 10 build via an over the air (OTA) update. Despite the events throughout 2020, there is a continued momentum among our partners to either launch their devices on Android 11 or offer Android 11 OTAs on their devices earlier. Our efforts till now have been focussed on making OS updates easier and faster to deploy. The other side of this coin is supporting updates for a longer period of time, and today we’d like to provi...

Posted by Eric Bahna, Product Manager In October, we published the Android for Cars App Library to beta so you could start bringing your navigation, parking, and charging apps to Android Auto. Thanks for sending your feedback with our issue tracker , so we know where to improve and clarify things. Now we’re ready to take the next step in delivering great in-car experiences. Today, you can publish your apps to closed testing tracks in the Google Play Store. This is a great way to get feedback on how well your app meets the app quality guidelines , plus get your in-car experience in front of your first Android Auto users. Three of our early access partners: T map, PlugShare,and 2GIS We’re preparing the Play Store for open testing tracks soon. You can get your app ready today by publishing to closed testing. We’re eager to see what you’ve built!

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...