Now in Android #90
Android brand, ART updates, Dagger KSP, Jetpack Compose, documentation updates, 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.)
A new modern look for the Android brand 💅
Android is updating its visual identity that better represents our Android community, and reflects Android’s core ethos of being open, iterative and inclusive.
The Android robot became a prominent fixture of our logo, and now we’re giving Bugdroid an entirely new 3D look. We wanted the bugdroid to appear as dynamic as Android itself.
You’ll start seeing the new aspects of the brand identity, like the updated logo and 3D bugdroid, appear on Android devices and in more places starting this year.
Latest ARTwork on hundreds of millions of devices 🎨
Thanks to ART Google Play system updates, hundreds of millions of devices receive the latest performance improvements, security fixes, & OpenJDK APIs! Learn how we modularized Android to allow ART, the engine powering Android, to update independently.
In the coming months, we’ll be releasing ART 14 to all compatible devices. ART 14 includes OpenJDK 17 support along with new compiler and runtime optimizations that improve performance while reducing code size.
Library releases 🚀
The latest release of Dagger and Hilt — v2.48 — includes the alpha release of their KSP processors. Instructions for using them can be found in the Dagger KSP guide. This release contributes to getting rid of KAPT in your Gradle builds and making them faster. There are some breaking changes you should be aware of, check out the 2.48 release notes for more information.
Articles and documentation updates 📚
Ben Trengrove gave an update on Jetpack Compose Accompanist libraries. Some libraries will be deprecated with no replacement, including Pager Indicators and WebView. Drawable Painter and Permissions are considered feature complete. And Adaptive, Test Harness and Navigation Material continue to be experimental.
We updated the modularization guidance to include more common patterns such as test modules and dependency inversion. With dependency inversion, your modules depend on abstraction modules instead of concrete implementations. Read the guide to learn more about these topics.
Whether your source code is written in Java, Kotlin, or both, there are several places you must choose a JDK or Java language version for your build. The new Java versions in Android builds guide help you identify which JDK is which, how to choose the right one in different scenarios, and which Java language features you can use in your project.
If you want to get started with animations in Compose, we created a new guide with a list of common animation use cases and the right API to use in each scenario. Also, we improved the previous animations in Compose diagram with an easier API decision tree. Doesn’t it look nice?
Sample projects 🧑💻
The Now in Android open source app is now using screenshot tests to verify the visual appearance of certain Compose screens and components. Screenshot tests can automatically verify combinations of attributes that make sense such as different app states, screen sizes, locales, or themes.
To see that in action, this PR adds some screenshot tests to the design system module in the project, and this other one sets up screenshot testing in the app.
Now then… 👋
That’s it for this time with a new Android brand, ART updates, the Dagger and Hilt KSP processors alpha release, Accompanist libraries updates, improvements to the modularization and Compose animations guidance, and screenshot testing in the Now in Android app.
Come back here soon for the next update from the Android developer universe! 💫
