Among these announcements was the launch of the Watch Face Format. This offers developers a new way to build watch faces for Wear OS smartwatches with a declarative XML format to design the appearance and behavior of watch faces.

According to Google, this means there is no need for the executable code involved in building a watch face, and there is also no code embedded in the watch face APK.  With this release, users can create analogue and digital watch faces, watch faces with complications, customizable watch faces, and more. 

Updates have also been made to Jetpack Compose, including the ability to bring Compose everywhere that the developer is building UI, whether that be on a phone, tablet, foldable device, watch, or TV. These changes are available in the May 2023 release and the most recent alpha versions of the Compose libraries.

Furthermore, the performance of Compose has been improved. The company stated that since October, modifiers have started to migrate to an improved system, and with this, text has seen a 22% performance gain that can be seen in the latest alpha release.

The alpha version of the UI framework for creating functional apps for Android TV Compose for TV has also been released. With this, apps can be built with less code, easier maintenance, and a modern Material 3 look. 

Next, Android Studio Hedgehog was launched in order to offer developers an AI powered conversational experience geared at heightened productivity. This offers improved tools when developing for multiple form factors, and helps to improve the quality of applications with new insights, debugging, and testing solutions.

Android for Cars also received updates intended to expand the reach developers have with users in the car.

Among these updates is the global rollout of Waze on the Google Play Store for all cars with Google built-in. Additional templates were also created for Android for Cars App Library in order to accelerate development time across several app categories, such as navigation.

This update also brings tools to port media apps across Android for Cars; new app categories for driving experiences; and video, gaming, and browsing in cars. 

Additionally, Google Play has been updated so that on top of the ability to tailor by country and pre-registration status, users can now customize listings for inactive users, so they have the chance to try out an app or game again.

Google also announced that custom store listing groups for Google Ads App campaign ad groups are set to be launched in the near future. This will allow for custom listings to be served to users coming from specific ads on AdMob and YouTube.

Next, Google Workspace adds Duet AI, combining all of Workspace’s generative AI features and allowing users to collaborate with AI so they can enhance their productivity. Duet AI is also coming to Google Cloud, enabling users to solve common work challenges with the AI collaborator.

There have also been several updates to Vertex AI, including three new foundation models that can be accessed through API, tuned through an AI in Generative AI Studio, or deployed to a data science notebook. 

Lastly, Google Cloud has launched the next-generation A3 GPU supercomputer. With this, Google Cloud offers users a complete range of GPU for the training and inference of machine learning models. 

For more information on these releases, visit the website. 

The post Google announces updates to Android, Google Cloud, Workspaces, Google Play, and more at Google I/O appeared first on SD Times.

With the alpha01 version, users are enabled to use the Polygon API to create regular and star polygons with the necessary number of vertices, use optional CornerRounding parameters to set the rounding radius and smoothing parameters for the corners, and use the new Morph(Polygon, Polygon) APIto calculate a “morph” shape whose progress can be set from 0 to 1 to animate between staring and ending shapes. 

The newly released alpha02 version of Graphics Shapes Version 1.0 brings with it several API Changes, including the merging of the Polygon superclass with its subclass, RoundedPolygon. With this, all polygons are now [optionally] rounded polygons.

Additionally, the Star function now takes an innerRadius value rather than an innerRadiusRatio parameter. The company stated that this change is geared at making things simpler and more consistent.

Along with this, the numOuterVertices parameter was also renamed to numVerticesPerRadius in order to make it clear that the same number is applied to both the inner and the outer radii.

Lastly, CornerRounding.radius had previously been documented to be relative to the size of the polygon, but now the documentation has been updated to show that it is an absolute, not a relative value, and the annotation limiting it to a maximum value of 1.0 was fixed. 

The alpha02 release also made it so that in order to add a dependency on Graphics, the user needs to add the Google Maven repository to their projects.

To learn more about Graphics Shapes Version 1.0, visit the website. 

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In this release, developers can expect updates to the system UI, additional graphics capabilities, and privacy and security features. 

The UI has been updated with a more prominent back arrow when using gestures to navigate and the ability to add custom actions to system sharesheets.

One of the graphics updates is that you can now query the path API to discover what is inside of paths. The API was also updated so that you can interpolate between paths with matching structures.

This release also adds the accessibilityDataSensitive attribute, which allows apps to limit visibility of specified views to accessibility services. According to the team, this attribute can be used to protect user data and prevent critical actions from being unintentionally executed, such as transfering money or checking out in a shopping app. 

Even though this is just the first beta of many, the Android team recommends developers begin testing their apps for compatibility with Android 14. 

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According to the team, once a user opts in, auto-archive can help them free up a chunk of an app’s storage space, without removing the app presence or users’ data.

Auto-archive works by partly removing infrequently used apps from the device in order to save space while still keeping the app icon and the user’s personal data preserved. 

As long as the app is still available on Google Play, the user then has the option to redownload the app to pick up right where they left off. 

To install auto-archive, the user must complete a few steps:

• Try to install a new app when the device has no storage left
• Look for the pop-up window asking if the user wants to enable the auto-archive feature
• Opt-in and unused apps will be auto-archives to make room for a new app request

This feature is only available for developers using the App Bundle to publish their applications. The team stated that if an app supports archiving, users will be less likely to see it surfaced among uninstall suggestions.

To learn more, read the blog post.  

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Developers will soon be required to include an option in their apps for users to initiate the process of deleting their account and associated data both within the app and online on applications that allow the creation of user accounts. This option will have to be linked to Data safety forms in apps. 

“While Play’s Data safety section already lets developers highlight their data deletion options, we know that users want an easier and more consistent way to request them,” said Bethel Otuteye, the senior director of product management at Android App Safety in a blog post. “By creating a more intuitive experience with this policy, we hope to better educate our shared users on the data controls available to them and create greater trust in your apps and in Google Play more broadly.”

With this new option, users who do not want to delete their entire account will have the option to delete specific data, such as activity history, images, or videos. 

Developers who need to keep certain data for legitimate reasons, such as security, fraud prevention, or regulatory compliance, are required to disclose those practices clearly.

Google is asking developers to submit answers to new deletion questions in their app’s Data Safety form by December 7th. Google Play users will begin to see reflected changes in theirapp’s store listing by early next year. 

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First, there is now support for vertical and horizontal paging. This enables users to flip through content with a page flip animation, as if they were actually reading a physical book or magazine. Previously in order to get this functionality, Android developers would go through the Accompanist library, which is now being replaced by the built-in paging support. 

There are also new Flow Layouts, which can be used to layout items in dynamically sized containers. This allows items to flow into the next row or column when they run out of space.

Another improvement in this release is that the “Text” and “TextField” are much more customizable.  “Text” has new features for drawing outlined text, improving text transition and legibility during animations, options for line breaking behavior, hyphenation support, and more. 

The Android team is also continuing its refactor of Modifier, and several foundational modifiers were moved to the Modifier.Node architecture, such as “graphicsLayer,” lower level focus modifiers, padding, and offset. 

There were also improvements to several existing features and bug fixes, which you can read more about in the release notes here.

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This preview includes a number of updates related to privacy and security. For example, Photo Picker, which provides an interface that shows a users’ media library, is recommended for all apps, but for apps that cannot use it for some reason, there is a new dialog that will enable users to choose between three different permission levels: allowing access to all media, allowing access to selected media, and blocking access. 

Credential Manager is now available as a platform API in Android 14 to make the sign-in process easier. The API supports passkeys as well as passwords. Key updates in this developer preview include UI improvements for the account selector and API changes. 

Other security updates in Android 14 include safer implicit intents and giving foreground apps more control of the ability for other apps to start background activities. 

There are also a few updates intended to help with performance. This preview includes a new optimization to the memory management system, which will prevent most background work from happening once an app goes into a cached state. 

Another update is that ongoing notification can now be dismissed by the user when their screen is unlocked. Certain notifications, like system and device policy notification, will still be unable to be dismissed, however. 

Android 14 also features improvements to the App Store experience for developers. It includes new PackageInstaller APIs, including:

• requestUserPreapproval(), which allows the download of APKs to be delayed until installation has been approved
• setRequestUpdateOwnership(), which allows an installer to indicate it is responsible for future app updates
• setDontKillApp(), which can install optional features while the app is running. 

There are also new APIs and intents in regards to regional preferences, which enable users to personalize things like temperature units, numbering systems, and the first day of the week. “A European living in the United States might prefer temperature units to be in Celsius rather than Fahrenheit and for apps to treat Monday as the beginning of the week instead of the US default of Sunday,” David Burke, VP of engineering for Android, wrote in a blog post. 

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One of the areas for improvement is opening up spaces for developers to support each other. It has opened up the Google Play Developer Community to enable developers to share best practices and expanded the Google Play Developer Helpline pilot program. 

This year the company also plans to introduce a new feature to help developers plan their app declarations ahead of time, which will be useful when it comes time to update apps.  

Google will continue its efforts to facilitate privacy-preserving advertising, building on its existing work with Privacy Sandbox. It will start rolling out a beta for Privacy Sandbox on Android to enable users and developers to evaluate the new solution. 

There are a number of ways it plans to give users more control over their data. First, it will work to improve the data safety section in Google Play by adding new features and policies to clarify and provide control over data deletion practices. 

The first developer preview for Android 14, which was released last month, includes some new privacy, security, and transparency improvements that developers can start experimenting with. 

According to Google, another area that has been highly requested as one to focus on is helping businesses and users stay protected. It has continually improved the Play Integrity API and has introduced automated integrity protection. The company claims that developers who use this product have been able to reduce unauthorized access to their apps by 50%. 

Google will continue to add features to the Play Integrity API over the course of the year. 

Another area that Google will address is in relation to SDKs. Recently it has introduced new ways for SDK providers to communicate with app developers. They can message developers through the Play Console or Android Studio to communicate about critical issues. Google plans to launch updates soon about the sensitive permissions that can be used by SDKs and instances in which specific SDK versions could violate Google Play policies. 

The company has also been having discussions on how to incorporate web3 components responsibly. 

“With any new technology, we must balance innovation with our responsibility to protect users, which is why we’ve begun conversations with developer partners to assess how potential policy changes could responsibly support these opportunities,” Bethel Otuteye, senior director of Android App Safety, wrote in a blog post. “As always, engaging with developers is an essential part of how we evolve our platform and maintain a safe, transparent, and trusted experience for our shared users.” 

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With this preview, developers gain access to several new features, such as more ways to build applications and take advantage of the full Android ecosystem. This brings alterations to API behaviors so users can have a more consistent app experience across devices. 

The preview also includes updated guidance intended to assist developers in implementing multitasking capabilities and designing for large screens as they build their mobile apps for other devices.

With this, developers now have access to additional learning opportunities around building for large screens and foldables. The large screen gallery offers design patterns as well as design inspiration around markets the developers’ app supports.

Additionally, the preview brings improvements to the internal broadcast system that are geared towards improving device battery life. 

These improvements include a standard path for background work and new standard for how foreground services should be used so they are only reserved for the highest priority tasks to enhance battery life and resource consumption. 

Several new customization options and enhanced accessibility and language features are also available with the preview release in order to help users tailor the OS experience for their individual needs.

With Android 14, it has become easier for developers to allow their users to select their preferred language for specific applications as well as add support for different terms of address when referring to users in a gendered language.

Finally, in order to accommodate visually impaired users, Android 14 will have an increased font size of up to 200%, up from its previous 130%. Automatic non-linear font scaling is also available to solve common layout issues and make text easier to read. 

For more information, visit the website.

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Credential Manager is a Jetpack API that brings together various sign-in methods into a single API, which will make it easier for users to become authenticated, regardless of their preferred sign-in method. 

According to the Android team, the simplification provided by Credential Manager will enable users to sign-in without worrying about the underlying authentication technology. 

These days, users are often dealing with multiple sign-in methods, with some of those being parallel ways to get into an account. 

Credential Manager aggregates all of the possible sign-in methods while at the same time deduplicating entries for the account. 

In addition to normal sign-on methods like the standard username and password, Credential Manager supports passkeys, which Google has been working to expand support for. The company first introduced support for passkeys for Android and Chrome at the end of last year. 

“Passkeys are a significantly safer replacement for passwords and other phishable authentication factors. They cannot be reused, don’t leak in server breaches, and protect users from phishing attacks. Passkeys are built on industry standards and work across different operating systems and browser ecosystems, and can be used for both websites and apps,” the Android development team wrote in a blog post at the time. 

The Android development team is currently working to bring support for integrating Credential Manager with third-party password managers.

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