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Android 16 Developer Preview 1 is available now to test with your apps, ahead of the planned release in Q2 of 2025. 16 introduces major and minor API releases to allow us to drive faster innovation with more frequent API releases. We’re planning both a major and minor API release in 2025, and only the Q2 major release will include app-impacting planned behavior changes; the minor release introduces new features without these changes, so you can focus your app testing on major releases.
The week of November 18th was a Spotlight Week on passkeys. These are a safer and easier alternative to passwords allowing users to sign into apps and websites with a biometric sensor, PIN, or pattern.
We kicked off Monday with a quick video on the passkey basics and updated UX guidelines for Credential Manager and passkeys including an in-depth server-side implementation guide. Plus an introduction to the Identity hub: a comprehensive resource for passkeys, passwords, Sign in with Google authorization, and more.
Then Tuesday was all about the developers. This included a guide to help you migrate from legacy APIs to Credential Manager, technical details on FIDO2 attestation format changes, and a troubleshooting guide for common Credential Manager errors.
Wednesday was focused on new capabilities in Credential Manager. This included showing Credential Manager results as autofill suggestions, single-tap sign-in, Signal API for Chrome desktop, and a Restore Credentials feature.
Thursday featured an #AskAndroid session and case studies with Tokyu and X covering their successful passkey deployments.
Finally, Friday capped the week off with learning pathways on Android and Chrome, and a new Compose sample app for Credential Manager and Android.
Based on your feedback, the Android Studio team took a step back from large feature work on the Android Emulator for six months to focus on Project Quartz, an initiative aimed at reducing crashes, speeding up startup time, closing out bugs, and setting up better ways to detect and prevent issues in the future. We have seen 30% fewer reported crashes in the latest stable version of Android Studio, and reduced our open issues by 43.5%, with 17% of these actively fixed during Quartz.
A ton of content came out of #GooglePlaytime Milan. David Crary Mandel talks about monetization with insights about how to make the most from users’ time and wallet share trends.
Mingoo Kim’s covers the myths and fallacies of device optimization to help you make the right investments for your game or app. Hongda Ni shares insights about expanding your apps to new territories in Navigation market expansion: key considerations. Tammy Taw covers Subscription fatigue: from myths to facts to opportunities to help you improve the performance of your subscription app and minimize Churn.
Kevin Flynn Deconstructs successful Google Play game launches. Austin Shoemaker covers Optimizing your app’s revenue: flexible monetization tools to improve your user conversion and reduce churn. Finally, Kenny McCubbins shares insight on improving your ads with Measuring the impact of misleading ads.
Thomas Ezan highlights Gaze Link, the winner of the Best Android App for our Gemini API Developer Competition. Gaze Link demonstrates how the Gemini API can be used to provide a communication system for individuals with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) who develop severe motor and verbal disabilities, enabling them to type sentences using only their eyes.
Gaze Link uses Google’s Gemini 1.5 Flash model to predict a user’s intended sentence based on a few key words and the context of the conversation.
Aditya Pathak writes about how Google Play can help you navigate the ever-changing landscape of commerce and payments — especially when it comes to global tax and regulatory compliance.
In the past two years, we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of new regulations impacting Google Play developers. Aditya highlights how partnering with Google Play enables you to access a global marketplace serving over 190 countries with a powerful ecosystem built on security and trust.
Mindy Brooks covers a few excellent tips and tricks to help you build high quality, engaging, and age-appropriate apps. App developers play a vital role in shaping how people of all ages interact with technology. This is why Mindy covers how Google can help you determine a user’s age with digital ids, shield young users from inappropriate content, develop teacher approved apps and games, and stay up to date with Google Play’s families policies.
At Google Play, we’re committed to providing a safe and secure environment for your business to thrive. This is why Dom Elliott put together this article on how the Play Integrity API helps protect your business from revenue loss and enhances user safety. You’ll be ready to use this API to detect suspicious activity and decide how to respond to abuse such as fraud, bots, cheating, or data theft.
Finally, Mark Taylor and Mihai Cîrlănaru share an update on Chrome’s new reduced user-agent string. Beginning in Android 16, the default user-agent string in Android WebView will match the shortened string now seen in Chrome on the desktop and Android platforms.
In episode 221 of Android Developers Backstage Chet, Romain, and Tor chat with Shai Barack about how the Android platform team studies performance and understands system health. They cover topics such as measuring performance, deciding trade-offs, and some of their favorite tools such as Perfetto, Compiler Explorer, and Android Studio’s Memory Profiler.
Listen to it in podcast or YouTube format.
In #AndroidBuildTime, Christopher Cartland, Mayuri Khinvasara Khabya, and Levi Schmidt cover how to include Ultra HDR images in your Android apps.
Rebecca Frank shared a great series of videos on how to unleash your artistic side with code! First she covers clipping and masking in Jetpack Compose. Which naturally leads into a great overview of how to turn your UI into an artistic masterpiece in Graphics layers | Jetpack Compose Tips.
And if you’re looking for a real quick tip, check out Jossi Wolf’s #short on AnchoredDraggable.
Are you wondering how tablet and stylus support can improve your Android app? Check out this video of how FlippaClip saw a 54% increase in tablet users and improved their revenue by building large screen and stylus support on Android and check this article for more details.
#WeArePlay celebrates people behind the apps and games you know and love on Google Play. Fujio from Tokyo, Japan created Pirika, an app that helps clean up public spaces by combatting litter. (Associated article here.) Over in Indonesia, the husband-and-wife team of Mesty and Garri created an app that gives parents across Indonesia the tools and knowledge they need to care for their children. (Associated article here.)
The first alpha release of ExifInterface 1.4.0 was released, bringing support for reading XMP data from HEIF images and AVIF images and Exif from XVIF as well.
Media3 1.5.0 reached stable with many improvements including:
Faster image encoding and motion photos in Transformer.
Simplified the setup for DefaultPreloadManager and ExoPlayer.
A new IAMF decoder, a Kotlin listener extension, easier Player customization delegation, and so much more.
Check out Kristina Simakova‘s article to find out more about all new APIs and bug fixes.
Finally WebKit had its first 1.13 alpha release, bringing an experimental async startup API and a mechanism to allow developers to trigger URL prefetching.
That’s it for this week, with the first developer preview of Android 16, a spotlight on Passkeys, great improvements to Android emulator stability, and more!
Check back soon for your next update from the Android developer universe! 💫