Illustration by Virginia Poltrack

Now in Android #62

Google I/O 2022, Jetpack, Android Studio, Animations in Compose, UI events, and more!

Welcome to Now in Android, your ongoing guide to what’s new and notable in the world of Android development.

Episode 62 Video and Podcast

Now in Android is also offered as a video and podcast.

Google I/O recaps ⏱

If you didn’t have time to consume the content of Google I/O ’22 perfectly summarized in the previous Now in Android episode, here are 3 things to know about…

Modern Android Development!

1. Jetpack Compose is in version 1.2 Beta already.
2. Use Baseline profiles to improve the performance of your app.
3. Give Live Edit a try, an Android Studio tool to edit composables and view the changes in real time.

Modern Android Development at Google I/O '22

Form factors!

1. Building Wear OS and fitness apps is simpler than ever. Compose for Wear OS is already in Beta, and new libraries and APIs such as Health Services and Health Connect were launched.
2. Google is all-in on tablets. Android 12L and 13 have a huge number of optimizations for large screens, including the task bar, multi-tasking, keyboard and mouse support, and a compatibility mode for applications.
3. We’re here to support you! We made significant updates to guidance, testing, and tools to make you more productive when developing and testing for different form factors.

3 things to know about Form Factors at Google I/O'22

Android Privacy, Platform & Security!

1. We recently released the first Privacy Sandbox on Android Developer Preview, so you can get an early look at the SDK Runtime and Topics API. This provides a path for new advertising solutions that improve user privacy without putting access to free content and services at risk.
2. The new Google Play SDK index is a public portal that lists over 100 of the most widely used commercial SDKs. It contains information like which app permissions the SDK requests, statistics on the apps that use them, and which version of the SDK is most popular, so you can evaluate if an SDK is right for your business and your users.
3. The second Beta of Android 13 is now available. You can enhance your app with Android 13 features like app-specific language support, themed app icons, and much more.

3 things to know about Android Privacy, Platform & Security from Google I/O'22

Submissions open for the Indie games programs 👾

If you are an indie games developer, check out our Accelerator and Festival programs, where you have the chance to boost your game’s visibility, get training, and tap into our community of gaming experts.

These programs are designed to help you grow no matter what stage you are in:

• If you are a small games studio looking for help to launch or grow a new title, enter the Accelerator to get exclusive training by mentors and industry experts;
• Or, if you have already created and launched a high quality game that is ready for the spotlight, enter the Festival in selected European countries, Japan or South Korea. for a chance to win promotions and reach new players.

Submissions now open: Indie games programs to help developers grow with Google Play

AndroidX releases 🚀

Let’s take a look at what’s been up with AndroidX releases since the last episode of Now in Android.

Version 1.8 of Core and Core-ktx are now stable! They improve Kotlin usability with better annotation support and APIs such as NotificationCompat, MenuProvider, and FileProvider, and also add new interfaces to allow components to receive picture-in-picture and multi-window mode change events in ComponentActivity.

If you want to work with UWB (ultra-wideband) supported devices, a new UWB library has been released in alpha which provides a set of APIs for developers to interact with UWB-enabled devices.

Articles 📚

Takeshi wrote about spotting your UI jank using the CPU profiler in Android Studio. The article goes through a step by step walkthrough about how to use the new jank detection UI in Android Studio Chipmunk including how to record a trace, and how to inspect janky frames.

Spot your UI jank using CPU profiler in Android Studio

Rebecca Franks wrote about custom Canvas animations in Jetpack Compose. Using the Animatable states and some side-effects, you’ll be able to achieve custom animations as you were able to do with ValueAnimator in the View system.

Custom Canvas Animations in Jetpack Compose ✨

If you’re interested in Material You dynamic color, Rebecca Gutteridge talks about how the Chrome team implemented it and the things they kept in mind such as accessibility, custom colors, incognito, and more. It also comes with a really helpful list of recommendations from the designers and developers of the team.

Implementing Dynamic Color: Lessons from the Chrome team

I wrote about ViewModel events! We’re very opinionated about what to do with ViewModel events in our UI events Architecture guidance, and this blog post explains why the alternatives to our recommendation might bring higher engineering costs to developers and a worse user experience.

ViewModel: One-off event antipatterns

If you’re interested in Compose and Google Maps, Chris Arriola wrote about the lessons learned while building Maps Compose. You’ll see how they took advantage of Kotlin features, how to aim for binary compatibility, subcomposition, and more!

Diving Into Compose — Lessons Learned While Building Maps Compose

Now then… 👋

That’s it for this time, with recaps of Google I/O 2022, programs for indie games, more AndroidX releases, and articles about UI jank, animations in Compose, dynamic color, UI events, and Maps Compose! Come back here soon for the next update from the Android developer universe.