Android Development in 2023: A Year of Evolution
From Compose to Gemini
Goodbye, 2023, and hello to the fresh start of 2024!
Android has introduced tons of features and achieved many milestones. Let’s talk about some of the key features and milestones of 2023 that simplify Android Development and make Android Developers' lives easier.
Jetpack Compose 1.5.7
Remember the early days of Compose? We have to struggle with performance, limited libraries and dependencies, and many other things! From Jetpack Compose 1.0 in 2021 to Jetpack Compose stable release 1.5.7 in December 2023, Android has come so far!
The latest release brings several enhancements, including a strong skipping mode, improved rendering and memory management, precise animation control, enhanced accessibility services, and much more!
Studio Bot
Meet your Coding Buddy! Introduced in May 2023, this AI-powered assistant within Android Studio can make your coding life easier by answering technical questions, generating code snippets, and finding relevant resources!
It’s directly integrated into the Android Studio and is specifically designed to answer questions related to Android Development. This is sure to become a go-to feature for Android developers! 😉🧑💻
Android 14 (“Upside Down Cake”)
With the stable release of Android 14 in October 2023, users will have new features and better security. This update empowers you to build apps that are more delightful, performant, and accessible than ever before. It includes:
Privacy Powerhouse: Your users control their data! They can choose what apps see, like photos or location, and say “no thanks” to annoying background snooping.
Performance & UI Refinement: Apps run like greased lightning thanks to smarter battery tricks and smoother animations. Plus, those fancy foldable phones and big screens get apps that fit just right.
Accessibility Champions: Everyone gets to enjoy your app! Bigger fonts, sharper text, and voice helpers that work even better make it easier for everyone to use.
And there’s more! Android 14 is packed with a multitude of additional features and enhancements, from improved performance and battery management to better support for large screens and foldable devices. Android 14 has truly set a new standards in the Android Development📱
Android Studio Hedgehog
In November 2023, a stable version of Android Studio Hedgehog is released. This version offers performance improvements, new features like the Power Profiler and App Links Assistant, and improved integration with various tools and technologies.
These are the key features of Android Studio Hedgehog:
Power Profiler: Visually track your app’s power consumption and pinpoint areas for optimization. Battery-friendly apps are happy users!
Android vitals in App Quality Insights: Analyse crash reports directly from Google Play Console, saving you time and effort. Fix those bugs before they even happen!
Upgrade Assistant: Seamlessly upgrade your project to the latest SDK version with a step-by-step guide.
New UI: A cleaner and more modern interface keeps you focused on your code. There are updates for compact mode, vertical and horizontal splitting, and project tabs for Mac OS.
Live Edit updated manual mode shortcut: Tweak your layout on the fly, see the changes instantly, and save time iterating on your design.
Compose Multipreview templates: Easily create reusable templates for your Compose layouts, boosting your development efficiency.
Compose state information in a debugger: Understand what’s going on inside your Compose app with detailed state information right in the debugger.
Hardware input forwarding: Test your app with real-world input devices like joysticks and gamepads, right from your computer.
And it doesn’t stop there! Android Studio Hedgehog has more features like device mirroring, embedded Layout Inspector updates, and improved Gradle management.
However, if you’re looking for the absolute bleeding edge, the latest canary release channel offers Android Studio Iguana (2023.2.1 Beta 1) with even more new features and improvements, including Studio Bot, Live Edit for Compose Preview, and Material You 3 integration. But remember, canary channels are less stable and might have bugs, so only use them for testing purposes.
Jetpack Glance
Jetpack Glance was introduced in September 2023 with its release 1.0.0-alpha05. It is a powerful tool for Android developers, built on top of Jetpack Compose, that lets you create and design app widgets using Kotlin APIs. Think of app widgets as miniature versions of your app that live on the home screen, providing users with quick access to information and functionality without needing to open the full app.
Glance simplifies app widget development by offering Declarative API, a Rich set of composables, Efficient updates, theming, interoperability, and Wear OS support.
Telecom Jetpack Library
Released in Alpha in November 2023, the Telecom Jetpack Library aims to revolutionize how developers build voice and video calling applications for Android. This library, part of the ever-expanding Jetpack suite, promises to simplify development, improve user experience, and enhance VoIP (Voice over IP) calling across the Android ecosystem.
You can check out more about Telecom Library here.
Jetpack Media3 Library
When it comes to media playback and editing on Android in 2023, there’s one name that stands out: Jetpack Media3. With the stable Release in March 2023, Jetpack Media3 become quite popular and aims to simplify and unify media handling within Android apps.
Check out more about Media3 here.
Credential Manager
When working with multiple applications with sign-in, it can be difficult to remember all the passwords. To help you make the process faster, Android introduced Credential Manager in November 2023. It will bring support for passkeys, a new passwordless authentication, together with traditional sign-in methods, such as passwords and federated identity, in a unified interface.
Check out more about Credential Manager here.
Kotlin DSL
From April 2023, Android has switched the default language for build scripts from Groovy to Kotlin which means that Everything will be in Kotlin including Jetpack Compose, and now build scripts! So cool, right? 😎
If you are creating new projects or modules starting from Android Studio Giraffe, you now get the Kotlin DSL by default.
If you want to learn more about Kotlin DSL, check it out here.
Gemini
Released in December 2023, Gemini is such a game-changer in Android Development. For Android developers, Gemini opens up exciting possibilities to create innovative and intelligent apps that interact with users in new ways.
Check out more about this here.
And the list has not ended yet! Kotlin 1.9.20, Room 3.0, ML Kit updates, cross-platform Development Tools, Security Enhancements, Window Manager API improvements, Jetpack DataStore, and more are part of the continued advancements.
As we step into 2024, these features and milestones set the stage for even more exciting things. Here’s to Android development getting even better and more awesome! 🚀
Happy New Year, Android Devs! Get ready for more exciting developments in the next year🎉
I hope this article was helpful. Thank you for reading!
Don’t forget to clap only if you think, I deserve it👏
If you have any queries related to Android, I’m always happy to help you. You can reach me on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Happy Learning🚀 Happy Coding📱
