Now in Android #78. Android 14 Developer Preview 2, Put on OS… | by Daniel Galpin | Android Builders | Mar, 2023 | Tech Ex

Welcome to Now in Android, your ongoing information to what’s new and what’s new on this planet of Android growth.

Android 14 Developer Preview 2 is now obtainable, with extra enhancements to privateness, safety, efficiency, personalization, and extra, together with:

• Entry to chose photographs permits Android 14 customers to grant partial entry to their media library if an app requests the Android 13 READ_MEDIA_IMAGES or READ_MEDIA_VIDEO permissions.
• Regional preferences enable customers to customise temperature models, first day of the week, and numbering methods, and there are new APIs to entry these preferences.
• Most notifications containing FLAG_ONGOING_EVENT shall be consumer dismissible on unlocked cellular units, so there shall be fewer non-dismissible notifications.
• Seconds after an software enters the cached state, background work just isn’t allowed and the method will cease getting CPU time. (That is an order of magnitude quicker than what occurs in Android 13.)

Right here is the approximate timeline for the discharge milestones:

Obtain the most recent Android Studio preview together with the Android 14 SDK and emulator photographs to get began. On choose Pixel units, you can too show a system picture. Discover new options and APIs and study conduct modifications that would have an effect on your app. Please take a look at to see how nicely your app works on Android 14. Please go to the suggestions web page to report a problem or submit a function request.

We’re asserting upcoming coverage modifications to enhance each the standard of the Put on OS app and the app’s presentation on Google Play. Moreover, WearOS apps should goal API degree 30 (Android 11) to stay discoverable to units working Android 11 or larger. The brand new necessities will go into impact on Google Play on August 31, 2023. Till then, present insurance policies will apply; the overall obligatory Put on OS app evaluation course of stays unchanged.

Examples of those modifications embrace:

• utilizing a black background for all purposes and tiles.
• displaying the time of the day clearly on the high of the app’s residence display and any ongoing exercise display.
• Driving ongoing actions accurately on the watch face, latest apps and in tiles.

With cautious consideration of app design, optimum useful conduct, and Google Play experiences, we goal to enhance app high quality and the visibility of high quality apps throughout the Put on OS ecosystem.

The Full Fundamental Android with Compose Course is now obtainable. Whether or not you are a newbie with no programming expertise or a developer seeking to be taught Jetpack Compose whereas brushing up in your Android and Kotlin growth expertise, now’s a good time to begin studying.

This course covers the best way to construct Android apps utilizing Jetpack Compose, the beneficial fashionable Android toolset that simplifies and accelerates Android UI growth, exploring the basics of the Kotlin programming language, Android app structure, and the generally used Jetpack libraries alongside the best way. It even has a Views-Compose interop unit so you possibly can apply your Compose expertise while you’re engaged on an present app constructed with the legacy View-based UI toolkit.

In Bringing one of the best of Chrome to Android builders and customers, we coated how Chrome now offers you extra management over tab top with partial customized tabs. You possibly can customise the tab in pixels for a partial overlay, permitting customers to concurrently work together along with your native app and the net.

In Android 13 and java.nio appropriate API desugar, we introduced the discharge of a brand new model of API desugar primarily based on the Android 13 and Java 11 language APIs, permitting you to make use of the APIs of java.nio it doesn’t matter what model of Android is on the consumer’s system. . Along with supporting java.nio, the elimination of API sugar from java.time and java.util.stream has been up to date to assist APIs added as much as Android 13.

Lastly, in Enabling Subsequent-Gen ID for higher compatibility with Play Sport Providers for all Google accounts, we cowl how Play Sport Providers (PGS) is introducing Subsequent-Technology Gamer ID for brand spanking new gamers, one participant key for builders and higher compatibility with Play Video games Providers for everybody. accounts, together with these beneath supervision.

We proceed our MAD Abilities collection specializing in Jetpack Compose mods and skins with a brand new episode on superior pores and skin ideas. On this episode, Simona covers the best way to deal with extra advanced structure necessities, leveraging the facility of the structure section and constraints to create customized layouts in Compose.

If in case you have any questions thus far on this collection about Jetpack Compose skins and mods, we’ll have a stay Q&A on March 9. Depart a touch upon weblog posts, on YouTube, or utilizing #MADCompose on Twitter to ask your questions.

It has been fairly quiet on this planet of AndroidX releases since our earlier episode:

• Automobile App 1.4 alpha 1 provides top-level actions to the GridTemplate and ListTemplate that show as a floating motion button, in addition to a number of different issues, like extras to hyperlink a media merchandise’s caption or description to different media objects.
• 1.2 alpha 1 concurrent now has correct nullability annotations.
• Core-splashscreen 1.1 alpha 1 fixes a null pointer exception when SplashScreenView#getIconView returns null.

Roberto covers the best way to reap the benefits of multi-windows and exercise embedding to assist your customers multitask and reap the benefits of elevated display actual property by launching actions from different apps alongside your individual, utilizing exercise embedding to make them an exercise from one other app seems to be a part of your app and the best way to enable different apps to embed considered one of your actions.

Tomáš illustrates the best way to entry Composables from inside UiAutomator, making the most of Modifier.testTag() in Jetpack Compose.

Characteristic Engineering within the Google Play Retailer takes a take a look at what it takes to architect the Google Play service infrastructure from a function engineering perspective. It covers how they outline success, the challenges in function engineering infrastructure, and the guiding rules that assist them succeed.

In Safely Retailer and Retrieve Information with Block Retailer, Luke covers a brand new key-value pair function in Block Retailer that lets you save as much as 64 occasions extra information, together with the flexibility to pair binary packages with a key. Block Retailer saves and restores session information to assist create seamless login experiences for present customers of your app. (and helps end-to-end encryption)

Thomas coated TensorFlow Lite with Google Play Providers, Android’s official machine studying inference engine that has been secure launch since final September. It could actually assist cut back your app dimension by as much as 5MB whereas ensuring your app is updated with the most recent secure model of TensorFlow Lite, and Thomas particulars the best way to use it in his app, together with the GPU delegate.

In Intro to Drawing in Compose, Rebecca covers the best way to do customized drawing in Jetpack Compose, together with DrawScope, draw modifiers, understanding the coordinate system, DrawScope transformations like scale, translation, rotation, and insertion, and the best way to use all of this to attract a drawing. crammed, smoothed and animated path.

On Episode 195 of the Android Builders Backstage podcast, Chet and Romain speak with Jeff and Anton from the Mainline group about modular system parts and the brand new SDK extension framework that provides you entry to them.

That is all for this week with Android 14 Developer Preview 2, new Put on OS app high quality necessities, full Android Fundamentals launch with Compose, partial Chrome customized tabs, up to date API sugar elimination, superior design ideas in Compose, an introduction to drawing in Compose, entry to composable components from inside UiAutomator, embedding a number of home windows and actions, TensorFlow Lite on Google Play Providers, and extra.

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