Tag Archives: Android XR

#TheAndroidShow: Multimodal for Gemini in Android Studio, news for gaming devs, the latest devices at MWC, XR and more!

Posted by Anirudh Dewani – Director, Android Developer Relations

We just dropped our Winter episode of #TheAndroidShow, on YouTube and on developer.android.com, and this time we were in Barcelona to give you the latest from Mobile World Congress and across the Android Developer world. We unveiled a big update to Gemini in Android Studio (multi-modal support, so you can translate image to code) and we shared some news for games developers ahead of GDC later this month. Plus we unpacked the latest Android hardware devices from our partners coming out of Mobile World Congress and recapped all of the latest in Android XR. Let’s dive in!


Multimodality image-to-code, now available for Gemini in Android Studio

At every stage of the development lifecycle, Gemini in Android Studio has become your AI-powered companion. Today, we took the wraps off a new feature: Gemini in Android Studio now supports multimodal image to code, which lets you attach images directly to your prompts! This unlocks a wealth of new possibilities that improve collaboration and design workflows. You can try out this new feature by downloading the latest canary - Android Studio Narwal, and read more about multimodal image attachment – now available for Gemini in Android Studio.

Building excellent games with better graphics and performance

Ahead of next week’s Games Developer Conference (GDC), we announced new developer tools that will help improve gameplay across the Android ecosystem. We're making Vulkan the official graphics API on Android, enabling you to build immersive visuals, and we're enhancing the Android Dynamic Performance Framework (ADPF) to help you deliver longer, more stable gameplay sessions. Learn more about how we're building excellent games with better graphics and performance.


A deep dive into Android XR

Since we unveiled Android XR in December, it's been exciting to see developers preparing their apps for the next generation of Android XR devices. In the latest episode of #TheAndroidShow we dove into this new form factor and spoke with a developer who has already been building. Developing for this new platform leverages your existing Android development skills and familiar tools like Android Studio, Kotlin, and Jetpack libraries. The Android XR SDK Developer Preview is available now, complete with an emulator, so you can start experimenting and building XR experiences immediately! Visit developer.android.com/xr for more.


New Android foldables and tablets, at Mobile World Congress

Mobile World Congress is a big moment for Android, with partners from around the world showing off their latest devices. And if you’re already building adaptive apps, we wanted to share some of the cool new foldable and tablets that our partners released in Barcelona:

    • OPPO: OPPO launched their Find N5, their slim 8.93mm foldable with a 8.12” large screen - making it as compact or expansive as needed.
    • Xiaomi: Xiaomi debuted the Xiaomi Pad 7 series. Xiaomi Pad 7 provides a crystal-clear display and, with the productivity accessories, users get a desktop-like experience with the convenience of a tablet.
    • Lenovo: Lenovo showcased their Yoga Tab Plus, the latest powerful tablet from their lineup designed to empower creativity and productivity.

These new devices are a great reason to build adaptive apps that scale across screen sizes and device types. Plus, Android 16 removes the ability for apps to restrict orientation and resizability at the platform level, so you’ll want to prepare. To help you get started, the Compose Material 3 adaptive library enables you to quickly and easily create layouts across all screen sizes while reducing the overall development cost.


Watch the Winter episode of #TheAndroidShow

That’s a wrap on this quarter’s episode of #TheAndroidShow. A special thanks to our co-hosts for the Fall episode, Simona Milanović and Alejandra Stamato! You can watch the full show on YouTube and on developer.android.com/events/show.

Have an idea for our next episode of #TheAndroidShow? It’s your conversation with the broader community, and we’d love to hear your ideas for our next quarterly episode - you can let us know on X or LinkedIn.

New devices at MWC, gaming news, XR & Gemini in Android Studio: Tune in for our winter episode of #TheAndroidShow on March 13!

Posted by Anirudh Dewani, Director – Android Developer Relations

In just a few days, on Thursday, March 13 at 10AM PT, we’ll be dropping our winter episode of #TheAndroidShow, on YouTube and on developer.android.com!

Mobile World Congress - the annual event in Barcelona where Android device makers show off their latest devices, kicked off yesterday. In our winter episode we’ll take a look at these foldables, tablets and wearables and tell you what you need to get building.

Plus we’ve got some news to share, like a new update for Gemini in Android Studio and some new goodies for games developers ahead of the Game Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco later this month. And of course, with the launch of Android XR in December, we’ll also be taking a look at how to get building there. It’s a packed show, and you don’t want to miss it!

Some new Android foldables and tablets, at Mobile World Congress

Mobile World Congress is a big moment for Android, with partners from around the world showing off their latest devices. And if you’re already building adaptive apps, we wanted to share some of the cool new foldable and tablets that our partners released in Barcelona:

    • OPPO: OPPO launched their Find N5, their slim 8.93mm foldable with a 8.12” large screen - making it as compact or expansive as needed.
    • Xiaomi: Xiaomi debuted the Xiaomi Pad 7 series. Xiaomi Pad 7 provides a crystal-clear display and, with the productivity accessories, users get a desktop-like experience with the convenience of a tablet.
    • Lenovo: Lenovo showcased their Yoga Tab Plus, the latest powerful tablet from their lineup designed to empower creativity and productivity.

These new devices are a great reason to build adaptive apps that scale across screen sizes and device types. Plus, Android 16 removes the ability for apps to restrict orientation and resizability at the platform level, so you’ll want to prepare. To help you get started, the Compose Material 3 adaptive library enables you to quickly and easily create layouts across all screen sizes while reducing the overall development cost.

Tune in to #TheAndroidShow: March 13 at 10AM PT

These new devices are just one of the many things we’ll cover in our winter episode, you don’t want to miss it! If you watch live on YouTube, we’ll have folks standing by to answer your questions in the comments. See you on March 13 on YouTube or at developer.android.com/events/show!

Introducing Android XR SDK Developer Preview

Posted by Matthew McCullough – VP of Product Management, Android Developer

Today, we're launching the developer preview of the Android XR SDK - a comprehensive development kit for Android XR. It's the newest platform in the Android family built for extended reality (XR) headsets (and glasses in the future!). You’ll have endless opportunities to create and develop experiences that blend digital and physical worlds, using familiar Android APIs, tools and open standards created for XR. All of this means: if you build for Android, you're already building for XR! Read on to get started with development for headsets.

With the Android XR SDK you can:

    • Break free of traditional screens by spatializing your app with rich 3D elements, spatial panels, and spatial audio that bring a natural sense of depth, scale, and tangible realism
    • Transport your users to a fantastical virtual space, or engage with them in their own homes or workplaces
    • Take advantage of natural, multimodal interaction capabilities such as hands and eyes
"We believe Android XR is a game-changer for storytelling. It allows us to merge narrative depth with advanced interactive features, creating an immersive world where audiences can engage with characters and stories like never before." 
- Jed Weintrob, Partner at 30 Ninjas

Your apps on Android XR

The Android XR SDK is built on the existing foundations of Android app development. We're also bringing the Play Store to Android XR, where most Android apps will automatically be made available without any additional development effort. Users will be able to discover and use your existing apps in a whole new dimension. To differentiate your existing Compose app, you may opt-in, to automatically spatialize Material Design (M3) components and Compose for adaptive layouts in XR.

Moving image showing sizing capabilities in Android XR
Apps optimized for large screens take advantage of sizing capabilities in Android XR

The Android XR SDK has something for every developer:

Building with Kotlin and Android Studio? You'll feel right at home with the Jetpack XR SDK, a suite of familiar libraries and tools to simplify development and accelerate productivity.

    • Using Unity’s real-time 3D engine? The Android XR Extensions for Unity provides the packages you need to build or port powerful, immersive experiences.
    • Developing on the web? Use WebXR to add immersive experiences supported on Chrome.
    • Working with native languages like C/C++? Android XR supports the OpenXR 1.1 standard.

Creating with Jetpack XR SDK

The Jetpack XR SDK includes new Jetpack libraries purpose-built for XR. The highlights include:

    • Jetpack Compose for XR - enables you to declaratively create spatial UI layouts and spatialize your existing 2D UI built with Compose or Views
    • ARCore for Jetpack XR - brings powerful perception capabilities for your app to understand the real world
“With Android XR, we can bring Calm directly into your world, capturing the senses and allowing you to experience it in a deeper and more transformative way. By collaborating closely with the Android XR team on this cutting-edge technology, we’ve reimagined how to create a sense of depth and space, resulting in a level of immersion that instantly helps you feel more present, focused, and relaxed.” 
- Dan Szeto, Vice President at Calm Studios

Kickstart your Jetpack XR SDK journey with the Hello XR Sample, a straightforward introduction to the essential features of Jetpack Compose for XR.

Learn more about developing with the Jetpack XR SDK.

Moving image of the JetNews sample app adapted for Android XR
The JetNews sample app is an Android large-screen app adapted for Android XR

We're also introducing new tools and capabilities to the latest preview of Android Studio Meerkat to boost productivity and simplify your creation process for Android XR.

    • Use the new Android XR Emulator to create a virtualized XR device for deploying and testing apps built with the Jetpack XR SDK. The emulator includes XR-specific controls for using a keyboard and mouse to navigate an emulated virtual space.
    • Use the Android XR template to get a jump-start on creating an app with Jetpack Compose for XR.
    • Use the updated Layout Inspector to inspect and debug spatialized UI components created with Jetpack Compose for XR.

Learn more about the XR enabled tools in Android Studio and the Android XR Emulator.

Moving image of the The Android XR Emulator in Android Studio
The Android XR Emulator in Android Studio has new controls to explore 3D space within the emulator

Creating with Unity

We've partnered with Unity to natively integrate their real-time 3D engine with Android XR starting with Unity 6. Unity is introducing the Unity OpenXR: Android XR package for bringing your multi-platform XR experiences to Android XR.

Unity is adding Android XR support to these popular XR packages:

We're also rolling out the Android XR Extensions for Unity with samples and innovative features such as mouse interaction profile, environment blend mode, personalized hand mesh, object tracking, and more.

"Having already brought Demeo to most commercially available platforms, it's safe to say we were impressed with the process of adapting the game to run on Android XR." 
– Johan Gastrin, CTO at Resolution Games

Check out our getting started guide for unity and Unity’s blog post to learn more.

Moving image of the The Vacation Simulator
Vacation Simulator has been updated to Unity 6 and supports Android XR

Creating for the Web

Chrome on Android XR supports the WebXR standard. If you're building for the web, you can enhance existing sites with 3D content or build new immersive experiences. You can also use full-featured frameworks like three.js, A-Frame, or PlayCanvas to create virtual worlds, or you can use a simpler API like model-viewer so your users can visualize products in an e-commerce site. And because WebXR is an open standard, the same experiences you build for mobile AR devices or dedicated VR hardware seamlessly work on Android XR.

Learn more about developing with WebXR.

Moving image demonstrating virtual objects interacting with real world surfaces in Chrome on Android XR
Chrome on Android XR supports WebXR features including depth maps allowing virtual objects to interact with real world surfaces

Built on Open Standards

We’re continuing the Android tradition of building with open standards. At the heart of the Android perception stack is OpenXR - a high-performance, cross-platform API focused on portability. Android XR is compliant with OpenXR 1.1, and we’re also expanding the Open XR standards with leading-edge vendor extensions to introduce powerful world-sensing capabilities such as:

    • AI-powered hand mesh, designed to adapt to the shape and size of hands to better represent the diversity of your users
    • Sophisticated light estimation, for lighting your digital content to match real-world lighting conditions
    • New trackables that let you bring real world objects like laptops, phones, keyboards, and mice into a virtual environment

The Android XR SDK also supports open standard formats such as glTF 2.0 for 3D models and OpenEXR for high-dynamic-range environments.

Building the future together

We couldn't be more proud or excited to be announcing the Developer Preview of the Android XR SDK. We’re releasing this developer preview, because we want to build the future of XR together with you. We welcome your feedback and can’t wait to work with you and build your ideas and suggestions into the platform. Your passion, expertise, and bold ideas are absolutely essential as we continue to build Android XR.

We look forward to interacting with your apps, reimagined to take advantage of the unique spatial capabilities of Android XR, using familiar tools like Android Studio and Jetpack Compose. We’re eager to visit the amazing 3D worlds you build using powerful tools and open standards like Unity and OpenXR. Most of all, we can’t wait to go on this journey with all of you that make up the amazing community of Android and Unity developers.

To get started creating and developing for Android XR, check out developer.android.com/develop/xr where you will find all of the tools, libraries and resources you need to create with the Android XR SDK! If you are interested in getting access to prerelease hardware and collaborating with the Android XR team, express your interest to participate in an Android XR Developer Bootcamp in 2025 by filling out this form.