Google I/O 22: Android Keynote
Google I/O 2022 just got over, and they have announced many software and hardware this year, including a sneak peek at future enhancements. They’ve also stated concerns regarding the user’s security and privacy and introduced a couple of upcoming devices for forming an ecosystem.
Google is updating 20+ of its first-party apps, including Google Maps, YouTube Music, Play Store, Google Photos, and Google TV, to look and work better on Android tablets. Finally, Google is improving Google Play discovery to make it easier for users to discover apps optimized for tablets. Also, Google has shared more details about a new Beta version of Android 13 (Codename: Tiramisu).
Here are the key highlights of some features:
- Notification Runtime Permission
- Photo Picker
- Predictable Back
- Per-App Language selection
- Quick QR Scanner
- Privacy Sandbox
- Multi-Device Experience
Notification Runtime permission
Android 13 introduced notification runtime permission, requiring the app to ask users to grant notification permission explicitly. So in android 13, if an app wants to show a notification, it’d need the user’s consent.
In the previous versions of Android, any app could display its notification without the user’s consent. But yes, there was an option for the user to disable all notifications or a single notification channel. So from Android 13, every app that wants to show notifications will require notification runtime permission. This change is also required from the developer side to ask runtime permission for the notification.
Here you can read comprehensive information regarding Notification runtime permission https://developer.android.com/about/versions/13/changes/notification-permission
Photo Picker
To improve the user’s privacy and user experience, Android has launched a system-wide photo picker. It is a standard and optimized way for users to share local media and cloud media with other applications securely. Photo picker offers several features to developers & end-users, such as:
- No runtime permission required
- One can implement this new photo picker in just a few lines of code
- Built-in standard UI to create a better user experience
- Support for image and video
Right now, it’s available only for Android 13, but in future releases, Google is planning to roll out the updates for more devices up to Android 11.
Check out more details about Photo Picker -https://developer.android.com/about/versions/13/features/photopicker
Predictive Back Gesture
Home, Recent, and Back have been key actions for navigation in the Android system. It started with hardware buttons, gradually converted to soft buttons, and then gestures came. Gesture provides a good UX as well as more screen area. So well, Android is already providing seamless animation for home and recent, but not for the system back. The Predictive gesture makes the system back more intuitive.
Predictive back gesture allows users to sneak peek into your destination before actually finishing swipe to back gesture. So the user will know what action will be triggered with a swipe gesture from the edge of the screen. This feature is introduced because users often face unpredictable behavior while using gestures in the application.
So, if the user swipes from the edge of the screen, the system will show the app’s preview dismissed by revealing the launcher behind.
Per-app Language
Sometimes multilingual users need a different language for different apps. But the Android system allows users to select a single language for the entire device. However, some applications give external support to change language inside the app setting. So, Android 13 has introduced a Per-app language feature to enable apps to provide a better experience for these users. With this new feature, users can choose different languages application-wise.
This feature is available on the app setting screen, where you can choose either default, system-chosen language, or manually change the language supported by the app.
Quick QR Code Scanner
From payment to placing an order, QR codes are used everywhere. Many people are using third-party applications to scan QR codes and often inbuilt camera apps to scan. But to make it easier, Google has introduced quick tiles for QR Scanner in Android 13. The user just needs to swipe the quick setting panel and tap on the QR Code scanner UI to use the built-in QR scanner. Once QR gets scanned, it will suggest the respective App or Browser to open content mentioned in QR code content.
Update in Development Tools
Google has released a new version of Android Studio IDE, named Chipmunk, which is now in the stable channel and available for all developers. Android Studio Dolphin is now in a Beta version and gives a glimpse of Android Studio Electric Eel.
Live Edit for Jetpack Compose
As with the Android Studio Dolphin (Beta), the Electric Eel (Canary) brings Live Edit to the compose preview, which helps view code changes in real-time in the preview section, Emulator, or physical device. Live Edit as an experimental feature is now available in the Electric Eel Canary channel. Turn it on manually by navigating to File > Settings > Editor > Live Edit (Android Studio > Preferences > Editor > Live Edit on a Mac). Live Edit currently doesn’t support changes such as method signature updates, adding new methods, or class hierarchy changes.
App Quality Insights from Firebase Crashlytics
Android Studio Electric Eel (Canary) also brings the App Quality Insights tool window in the IDE, where we can see and act on app crash data from Firebase Crashlytics. This will show the stack trace for the top crashes. Click on the stack trace to jump to the relevant lines in your code. It will highlight the code when they have related Crashlytics event data. This integration will help to navigate from crashes to code. Details Tab includes Summary, Device manufacturer, and Android version.
Device Mirroring
For a very long time, the mirroring option was not there in IDE itself. Still, tools were available like Scrcpy, Vysor, and AirDroid for mirroring physical devices. However, now we can mirror our physical devices in the Running Devices window in Android Studio (Electric Eel). By mirroring the device’s display mirror directly to the Android Studio, We can execute some common actions such as rotating the screen, changing the volume, or locking/unlocking the device right from the IDE itself. This is still an opt-in feature in the new Android Studio.
To turn it on, navigate to File > Settings > Experimental > Enable mirroring of physical android device and enable Device Mirroring.
To get started, make sure you’ve connected your physical device either with USB or by Wifi pairing that can be mirrored in the Running Devices window, which you can open by navigating View > Tool Windows > Running Devices.
Logcat V2
Android Studio Dolphin (Beta) introduced a new version of Logcat, where logs are formatted to make it easier to scan helpful information, such as tags and messages, and identify different types of logs like warnings and errors.
In this newer version of Logcat, you can simply split the Logcat windows and set the running device connections, view option, and query.
Jetpack Compose
A new UI framework for Android was built to use the advantages of Kotlin for declarative UI creation. Although it’s been a year since it went stable, Jetpack Compose has seen significant adoption from the Android community, with more than 100 of the top 1000 Play Store apps using the framework, including Twitter.
The biggest announcement for Compose is that Jetpack Compose for Wear OS has now reached the Beta testing phase; you can start building your production-ready apps.
Additionally, Google IO 2022 marks the launch of Jetpack Compose 1.2 Beta. It has features like Downloadable fonts, excluding font padding from the text.
Another textual improvement is to make more of your app’s text compatible with Android’s built-in magnifier tool. Earlier compose 1.1 brought the magnifier to selection within text fields, and now compose 1.2 beta supports magnifier in both text fields and SelectionContainer.
Besides these, Compose 1.2 Beta has introduced new layout features and improvements, such as LazyVerticalGrid and LazyHorizontalGrid, which are now in the stable release. Also, they have added a new experimental API, LazyLayout, for building custom lazy layouts. Inset library in Accompanist is now included in the Compose Foundation library.
Last but not least… New Hardware
Google I/O is a major event that could be used for big hardware announcements, and Google has finally leaned into that.
The company has added some new devices to the Pixel lineup — Pixel 6a, Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel Watch, Pixel Tablet, and Pixel Buds Pro. Also delivered a sneak peek at its AR Glass in development.
