Android Developers Blog

Glad we are making it more secure. On a side note I love that we now have https://googleblog.blogspot.com/index.html http://blog.google and https://android-developers.googleblog.com/ and https://googleblog.blogspot.com/ (which redirects to blog.google without index.html because it appears to be the new site) which is slightly weird.

These features have existed on Android devices for years. What Apple does best is marketing. https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android/live-capt… https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2024/09/talkback-uses-gemini…

> Android refuses to implement DHCPv6. You should read [0]. It's... pretty amazing. [0] <https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/09/simplifying-advanced…

Considering there was a whole hubbub starting from late Aug 2025 RE: Certification of ALL Android apps/.apks: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-android-se… Followed by a partial walk-back from Google in mid Nov 2025: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-developer-ve… I would say there is a substantial amount of users willing to install off-play Store .APKs. Substantial enough they're also willing to take a 'jump' and accept the risks/errors displayed

It's not part of the stable release yet, but the beta version that was released today has an option to enable this: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/06/developer-preview-en… I tried it and it works great - Dex-like experience with mouse and keyboard, on a stock Pixel phone.

Amen! The Android Developers blog (https://android-developers.googleblog.com, available as RSS at https://android-developers.googleblog.com/atom.xml) comes to mind - It includes updates on new compliance requirements to keep an app listed on Google Play, which I care about, mixed with a whole lot of crap I don't care about, like Google's latest shiny thing like Jetpack Compose, fluff pieces and marketing speak. How did you solve this problem?

> I think I wish that both the Android Play Store and the iOS App Store required apps to launch the user's browser for all 3rd party websites. Meanwhile Google built the Custom Tabs feature[1] to push Android devs into the exact opposite direction: Even when the app just wants to open an unrelated page (e.g. from a user-provided link), its now encouraged to open the page in a "custom tab" instead of the default browser - with the explicit goal of keeping the user from leaving the app because precious precious engagement etc... Naturally, there is no systemwide setting for users to turn it off, you have to find the setting for each app separately (or rather hope it has a setting at all). [1] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2023/02/bringing-best-of-chr…

This could be largely prevented if push messages added end-to-end encryption by default, something that shouldn’t be particularly hard to use if it was built into the dev tooling. Instead, developer recommendations like this one [0] suggest that you should put content into your push messages and optionally use a separate library to encrypt them. Clearly developers aren’t doing this, hence the opportunity for surveillance. [0] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/09/notifying-your-users…

This would be great, but as it is, platform authenticators are effectively always a combination of trusted and untrusted hardware/software, since the TEE or Secure Element usually does not have user input/output capabilities and is relying to the application processor OS's integrity to some extent. Notable exception: Google's Protected Confirmation [1] – the signature format of that is not natively WebAuthN/FIDO compatible, though. [1] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/10/android-protected-co…

Android 10 also introduced similar mitigations: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2019/05/queue-hardening-enha… Though it's worth noting that the cost of Stagefright was surprisingly low - it took a long time for a good ASLR bypass to come out for it and by that time most devices were updated or replaced. Additionally, the sheer variance between Android devices means developing worm-level exploits becomes extremely difficult compared to something where everyone's running the exact same binary like Windows, so it likely only saw targeted use.

Depends on how one pats their back and the actual reality. Yes, Android runs on Linux, yet that is 100% meaningless for app developers targeting Android. Web developers don't care about what OS the browser is running on. Native Android developers have a Java Framework and Kotlin libraries to work with, which are completely unrelated to Linux. However they also have the NDK, one would say. Yes, indeed. So what are the public APIs? https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis And recent versions will kill apps that try to be clever and access private APIs, https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/android-changes-for-… https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/07/seccomp-filter-in-an… As for automotive, while Automotive Grade Linux is getting some love, it is still not an option for real time requirements.

Worth adding that android 11 has some features that may prove appealing re: app quality & security: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/android11-final-rele…

> The way they show and demonstrate gestures, along with the UI at the bottom, strongly suggests that they intend to eliminate the semi-"hard" buttons in favor of gestures. Yes, that's the case. When you're using gesture navigation the only visible UI left is the horizontal bar at them bottom. Apps adjusted for gesture navigation will also draw behind that line. Gesture navigation is still an option which might not be enabled by default on all devices, but I strongly suggest trying it out. I used it quite some time with the latest release candidates of Android 10 and once you're used to it, you don't want to go back. Especially the back swipe is really nice. How the final implementation came to be is covered by an excellent blog post from Google: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2019/08/gesture-navigation-b…

I've always wondered about this as well. Seems like the iOS blogs / podcasts are more well known or are somehow surfaced more prominently. Same w iOS conferences - there just seems to be more of them. For example there was a Kotlin conference in Amsterdam a few weeks ago and I had no clue about it. I occasionally check the Android developer blog and yt channel - https://www.youtube.com/androiddevelopers https://android-developers.googleblog.com/. Have not checked out Fragmented but will do so.

There was a recent blog post following KotlinConf 2018, saying 27% of top 1000 google play apps use Kotlin. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/10/kotlin-momentum-for-…

> Optimizing for something as abstruse as "engagement" seems like a great way to completely ignore everything that actually makes social networks compelling. Or anything else, for that matter. The most shocking part of Android Pie release[0] was the repetition of the "drive engagement" mantra (in the post as well as surrounding articles). Fundamentally, phones are tools; how good is any tool to me when it's purposely designed to make me use it more? A tool should make me more efficient, hence, for the same task, make me use it less! Everything about this is spiralling to artificially inflate dubious metrics such as eyeball time or number of interactions. [0]: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/08/introducing-android-…

Nexus 5 came with KitKat, which was the Android release dedicated to ... reining in bloat and restoring decent performance. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2013/10/android-44-kitkat-an… 5 years later, it would be great to do that again.

Except if you release a new/updated app, it MUST target a recent (less than a year) targetSdkVersion. "2019 onwards: Each year the targetSdkVersion requirement will advance. Within one year following each Android dessert release, new apps and app updates will need to target the corresponding API level or higher." https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/12/improving-app-securi…

> Google would love to release Android versions independently of drivers, the way Windows works. Which they'll be able to do with Project Treble: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes-treble-mo…

> In Google's announcement in Nov 2025, they articulated a pretty clear attack vector. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-de... This reeks of "think of the children^Wscammed". I mean, following this principle the only solution is to completely remove any form of sideloading and have just one single Google approved store because security. > A related approach might be mandatory developer registration for certain extremely sensitive permissions, like intercepting notifications/SMSes...? O It doesn't work like that. What they mean with "mandatory developer registration" is what Google already does if you want to start as a developer in Play Store. Pay 25$ one-time fee with a credit card and upload your passport copy to some (3rd-party?) ID verification service. [1] In contrast with F-Droid where you just need a GitLab user to open a merge request in the fdroid-data repository and submit your app, which they scan for malware and compile from source in their build server. [1] but I guess there are plenty of ways to fool Google anyway even with that, if you are a real scammer.

Official announcement: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-android-se… More info: https://developer.android.com/developer-verification https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/1647111… Personally...we all know the Play Store is chock full of malicious garbage, so the verification requirements there don't do jack to protect users. The way I see it, this is nothing but a power grab, a way for Google to kill apps like Revanced for good. They'll just find some bullshit reason to suspend your developer account if you do something they don't like. Every time I hear mentions of "safety" from the folks at Google, I'm reminded that there's a hidden Internet permission on Android that can neuter 95% of malicious apps. But it's hidden, apparently because keeping users from using it to block ads on apps is of greater concern to Google than keeping people safe. > we will be confirming who the developer is, not reviewing the content of their app or where it came from This is such an odd statement. I mean, surely they have to be willing to review the contents of apps at some point (if only to suspend the accounts of developers who are actually producing malware), or else this whole affair does nothing but introduce friction. TFA had me believing that bypassing the restriction might've been possible by disabling Play Protect, but that doesn't seem to be the case since there aren't any mentions of it in the official info we've…

Having a library in the OS and actual interoperability are vastly different things. Not only do most consumer chat apps completely disregard HDR, but even worse, sending HDR images via almost any such channel has a high chance of the colours being mangled or -- at best -- silently converted to 8-bit SDR. "Ultra HDR is amazing, but can be only viewed as such only on a Pixel phone. If I'm sending a pic to say FB Messenger it doesn't upload as Ultra HDR." https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/17n0fkh/ultra_hdr/ Also, unlike Apple iPhone users, people with Android phones tend to get stuck on older major versions and can't upgrade. Easily half of all Android phones out in the wild can't correctly tone map or display either wide-gamut or HDR still images. You mentioned Android 4 and 8, but full support for wide-gamut (Display P3 and Rec.2020) was only supported starting with Android 14: https://source.android.com/docs/core/camera/wide-gamut Android 8.1 was the first version to introduce any display colour management at all, which was in late 2017: https://source.android.com/docs/core/display/color-mgmt As recently as May 2019, there were Android developers blog articles with titled "Wide Color Photos Are Coming to Android": https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2019/05/wide-color-photos-ar… Similarly, mixed SDR and HDR content (i.e.: not just a full screen Netflix-style app) was supported only since Android 13:…

> This entire comment is wildly misinformed. As far as I can tell, you don't dispute a single statement in my comment. > Are you forgetting Apple charges like $1200 for a phone these days? This is a strawman. iPhone starts at $429 in the US, and there is no law saying companies can only monetize with up-front hardware costs. Such a law would be unprecedented in software. > Are you suggesting that in order to cover the extensive research and development costs of music playback (sorry did you really say this?) I didn't say that. I said mobile music playback. Streaming the world's music catalog to a mobile phone reliably with all-day battery life would be unthinkable 17 years ago, and the primary innovator making it happen was Apple, not Spotify. Core Media APIs are simply the tip of the iceberg, yet are widely recognized as best in class by a lot. Android took over a decade to catch up to iOS audio latency in 2013: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2021/03/an-update-on-android… Remember when Spotify released their take on music playing hardware with Car Thing? They literally couldn't sell their first run of inventory and ended up taking a 8+ figure write down. That project probably cost Spotify more than they've paid Apple in fees in the last decade, yet the Spotify in-car experience is great because of CarPlay, an Apple technology! > they need to take a 30% cut of every song played on the device? I made no claims about how much Apple…

Yup! This issue, which is commonly described as the "wrong-side-of-the-street" or "wrong-city-block" error, is one of the biggest ones, and is where a lot of the innovation I mentioned is happening today. This occurs because in "urban canyons", meaning streets with tall high-rises or sky scrapers, there is little or no line of sight to GNSS satellites (GNSS being the generic term for all satellite positioning systems, not just the American GPS). Consequently, what your phone picks up are signals reflected off of buildings, which exaggerates the distance between you and the satellites, and causes the positioning solution to be pushed away- onto the other side of the street or another city block. One way Google/Android is tackling this is by using Google's trove of 3D building data, the same that is rendered in Google Earth when you use it in 3D. Your phone uses the building data to correct for reflections. Read on here (and note the authour!): https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/12/improving-urban-gps-… And, the device can use various filters and smoothers to minimize sudden jumps, and normally does, but there are edge-cases (for example, an app may be requesting pure "unfiltered" GNSS location returned directly from the GNSS chipset, hence the jumps). But rest assured, we are working on this issue. Anyway, thanks for the feedback. We're always doing our best to improve location accuracy and reliability for billions of users in all…

I am surprised at all of the app developer shaming in this thread. Is it really likely that every developer working on a popular BigCorp app is an idiot who imports 10MB libraries every time he/she faces the slightest challenge? It's much more likely that app developers are optimizing for many things, including app size, but reducing app size has a bad cost/benefit ratio. Here are some decisions that may bloat your app: * Want your network calls to be fast and reliable? Better use that cool new HTTP library rather than writing your own. * Want to keep everything secure? Rule #1 of hacker news is never roll your own crypto so better import the best lib out there. * Want to delight your users and their fancy QHD screens? Time to include some high res images and animations. Oh and you can't use vectors, they kill performance. * Want to access new markets? Time to translate your strings into 80 common languages. Oh and some of these may require custom fonts to look right in your app. * Want your Android game to have blazing fast graphics? Import that native library, and don't forget multiple architectures. The biggest app I ever worked on was Google Santa Tracker. It was about 60MB. We spent a lot of time optimizing the app size in this year's version. We managed to drop 10MB while adding a few new games to the app. I'm proud of it, but if I didn't have the freedom to pursue app size I certainly would have taken the extra bloat to ship the new…

Google is bringing Java 8 support, and from what I understood from one of their engineers, they are working on supporting invokeDynamic as well, so we might get the whole package: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/03/future-of-java-8-lan… Scala 2.12 has moved to Java 8 indeed, however this means modern features that are used for encoding Scala: invokeDynamic and default interface methods. These should make Scala compiled code faster and more stable in regards to backwards compatibility. Both Java 6 and 7 have need EOLed. We cannot stand still because of Android's shitty support. Google has effectively fractured the ecosystem, pulling off what Microsoft couldn't do with J#, and they got away with it. I actually think that they preferred to announce Kotlin as being a first class citizen as a marketing trick in order to offset the lack of support for Java 8. Even so, Scala does in fact have great Android support: 1. Scala 2.11 will remain supported for some time, language-level features have already been backported from 2.12 and Typelevel.org also has a commitment to support it even further 2. We have great integration with the tool chain, see https://github.com/scala-android/sbt-android 3. For a pretty cool open source project made with Scala, that uses functional programming libraries like Cats and Monix, see: http://www.9cards.io So if you think about it, given all the other tooling available, compared with other languages Scala…

I knew I'd seen that city gif with the lines before: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/12/improving-urban-gps-… > From the 2026 article: "But you also need really good AI to do it right" So a feature from 2020 (albeit a cool one) is now brand new and AI powered? Did Google have good AI in 2020 and replace it with Gemini?

Source: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/06/android-developer-ve…

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/06/Android-17.html > With deep integration between hardware, software and AI, we’re transforming Android from an operating system to an intelligence system. I didn't see any comments on the "ai" features. Are they coming along to GOS or AOSP or staying out and how does that affect Graphene in particular?

But some of the garbage collector changes are also rolling out to older Android versions through a Play System Update. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/06/Android-17.html?m=1 I'm not sure though if GrapheneOS gets mainline modules at all (most likely not).