Now in Android #89
Android 14 Beta 5, Compose for Wear OS, WebGPU and more!
Welcome to Now in Android, your ongoing guide to what’s new and notable in the world of Android development.
Most of the content of this post is available in the form of a video or podcast, so feel free to watch or listen rather than read on. (Or do all three to help you remember! There won’t be a quiz.)
Android 14 Beta 5 is out 🤖
With the official release of Android 14 only weeks away, we’re bringing you Beta 5, the last scheduled update in our Android 14 beta program. This is your last chance to make sure your apps, libraries, tools, and game engines are ready and to provide feedback before non-beta users start getting Android 14. Beta 5 is available for Pixel Tablet and Pixel Fold, in addition to the rest of the supported Pixel family and on the Android emulator.
Check out the blog for more information about Beta 5 and what you need to do to prepare yourself for the first public release.
Compose for Wear OS and Tiles 1.2 libraries are now stable 🪨
We’re excited to announce that version 1.2 of Compose for Wear OS and Wear Tiles libraries have reached the stable milestone. This makes it easier than ever to use these modern APIs to build beautiful and engaging apps for Wear OS.
Compose for Wear OS and Wear Tiles complement one another, both sets of APIs offer material components and layouts that ensure your app experience on Wear OS is coherent and follows our best practices.
Check out this blog to learn about what’s new and how you can make your Wear OS apps shine!
All about WebGPU 🎙
In the latest episode of the Android Developers Backstage podcast, Chet and Romain chat with Ken Russel and Corentin Wallez on the WebGPU team about the state, history, and future of high performance graphics on the web.
Listen and subscribe to the podcast on libsyn or YouTube for more information.
Articles 📚
Jon writes about what’s new in Privacy Sandbox Developer Preview 9, the latest step towards our goal of bringing real-world testing of our private advertising solutions to users’ devices.
In preparation for Android 14, Yacine writes about how to work with Android 14’s new APIs for accessing user’s photos in Choosing the right storage experience.
If Compose for Wear OS wasn’t enough for you, Ben covers everything new in the August release of Jetpack Compose with the aptly named blog post What’s new in the Jetpack Compose August ’23 release.
To say the use of emojis in communication has become increasingly popular is a bit of an understatement. Thankfully Lin is here to help you bring emojis to your apps with Introducing Jetpack Emoji Picker: A New Way to Add Emojis to Your Android App.
With the variety of device sizes and shapes in Android, it can be hard to build an app that looks great everywhere. Francesco has your back in Jetpack WindowManager 1.1 is stable, covering all the great new features to help you make an awesome portable Android application.
Videos 🎥
Learn something new fast with the shorts What’s WebGPU and 5 mistakes to avoid when optimizing for large screens.
Yara helps you make a more accessible app in Fixing touch target size in PLR.
Now then… 👋
That’s it for this week with Android 14 Beta 5, Compose for Wear OS, WebGPU and more!
Check back soon for the next update from the Android developer universe! 💫
