Tag Archives: privacy

Android 11 final Beta update, official release coming soon!

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

It’s already August and the official Android 11 release is coming very soon! As we put the finishing touches on the new platform, today we’re bringing you Beta 3, our last update in this year’s preview cycle. For developers, now is the time to make sure your apps are ready, before we bring the official release to consumers.

You can get Beta 3 today on Pixel 2, 3, 3a, and 4 devices (and coming soon, Pixel 4a!). Just enroll here for an over-the-air update. If you’re already enrolled, you’ll automatically get the update soon. As always, let us know your feedback, and thank you for all of the input you’ve provided so far.

Watch for more information on the official Android 11 release coming soon!

What’s in Beta 3?

Today’s update includes a release candidate build of Android 11 for Pixel devices and the Android Emulator. We reached platform stability at Beta 2, so all app-facing surfaces and behaviors are final, including SDK and NDK APIs, app-facing system behaviors, and restrictions on non-SDK interfaces. With these and the latest fixes and optimizations, Beta 3 gives you everything you need to complete your testing.

As we bring Android 11 to final form, we’re also taking this opportunity to update Android with the Exposure Notifications System in mind. Starting in Beta 3, users will be able to run Exposure Notification apps on Android 11 without needing to turn on the device location setting. This is an exception we’re making for the Exposure Notification System only, given that it has been designed in such a way that apps using it can’t infer device location through Bluetooth scanning. To protect user privacy, all other apps will still be prohibited from performing Bluetooth scanning unless the device location setting is on and the user has granted them location permission. You can read more in our Update on Exposure Notifications post.

Get your apps ready for Android 11!

With the official Android 11 release on the way, we’re asking all Android app and game developers to finish your compatibility testing and publish your updates soon. For SDK, library, tools, and game engine developers, it’s even more important to release a compatible version right away, since your downstream app and game developers may be blocked until they receive your updates.

As we covered in depth at Beta 2, here’s how to test for compatibility with Android 11.

For testing your current app, read behavior changes for all apps to identify areas where platform changes might affect your apps. Here are some of the top changes to watch for (these apply regardless of your app’s targetSdkVersion):

One-time permission - Users can now grant single-use permission to access location, device microphone and camera. Details here.
External storage access - Apps can no longer access other apps’ files in external storage. Details here.
Scudo hardened allocator - Scudo is now the heap memory allocator for native code in apps. Details here.
File descriptor sanitizer - Fdsan is now enabled by default to detect file descriptor handling issues for native code in apps. Details here.

Remember to test the libraries and SDKs in your app for compatibility. If you find an issue, try updating to the latest version of the SDK, or reach out to the developer for help.

For more information on compatibility testing and tools, check out the resources we shared for Android 11 Compatibility week and visit the Android 11 developer site for technical details.

Explore the new features and APIs

Android 11 has a ton of new features to build new experiences for users around people, controls, and privacy. When you’re ready to dive in, check out our #Android11 Beta post for a recap of all of the developer features, and you can also visit the Beta Launch page to see talks from the Android team on what’s new in their areas. For complete details on Android 11 features and APIs, visit the Android 11 developer site.

Also make sure to try the Android 11 features in Android Studio that can improve your productivity and workflow, like ADB incremental for faster installs of large APKs, and additional nullability annotations on platform APIs. You can give these a try by downloading the latest Android Studio Beta or Canary version. Instructions for configuring Android Studio for Android 11 are here.

How do I get Beta 3?

It’s easy! Just enroll here to get the Beta 3 update over-the-air on your Pixel 2, 3, 3a, or 4 device (and coming soon, Pixel 4a). If you're already enrolled, you'll receive the update soon and no action is needed on your part. Alternatively, you can give Android Flash Tool a try for easy on-demand updates, and if you’d rather flash manually, downloadable system images are also available. If you don't have a Pixel device, you can use the Android Emulator in Android Studio or try a GSI image to run Android 11 on supported Treble-compliant devices.

What’s next?

Stay tuned for the official Android 11 launch coming in the weeks ahead! In the meantime, we recommend finishing your testing and publishing your compatible updates as soon as possible. Feel free to share your feedback using our hotlists for filing platform issues (including privacy and behavior changes), app compatibility issues, and third-party SDK issues. You've given us great feedback so far -- thank you again!

A huge thank you to our developer community for your participation in our recent Android 11 AMA and Android Studio AMA on r/anddroiddev! It’s great to hear what’s important to you and we hope we were able to help!

Source: Android Developers Blog

Updates on our work to improve user privacy in digital advertising

Privacy is core to our work at Google, and to our vision for a thriving internet where people around the world can continue to access ad-supported content, while also feeling confident that their data is protected. But in order to get there, we must increase transparency into how digital advertising works, offer users additional controls, and ensure that people’s choices about the use of their data are respected—not worked around or ignored.

Today we’re sharing updates on our work in these areas, including new tools that provide people more information about the ads they see. We’re also introducing new resources for marketers and publishers that offer guidance on how to navigate today’s privacy environment, along with real-world examples from brands and media companies who are delivering effective, privacy-forward ad experiences that use data responsibly.

Greater transparency, more control

For many years Google has offered a feature called Why this ad, where from an icon in a digital ad, users can get more information on some of the factors that were used to select the ad for them, or choose to stop seeing that ad. There are over 15 million user interactions per day with Why this ad as people seek to learn more about and control the ads they see, and we recently extended this feature to ads on connected TVs.

Over the next few months, we’ll be making improvements to the experience with a new feature called About this ad, which will also show users the verified name of the advertiser behind each ad. About this ad will initially be available for display ads purchased through Google Ads and Display & Video 360, and we’ll bring it to other ad surfaces throughout 2021.

Our commitment to increase transparency and offer users more control goes beyond the ads Google shows. Due to the complexity of the digital ads ecosystem and the large number of entities involved, it’s typically not clear to users which companies are even involved in showing them an ad. To provide people with detailed information about all the ads they see on the web, we’re releasing a new tool called Ads Transparency Spotlight, now available to try out as an alpha extension from the Chrome Web Store. We’ll continue to improve this extension based on feedback from users, and over time we expect to offer additional disclosures about ads, as well as introduce controls. Our hope is that other technology providers will build similar transparency and control capabilities into the experiences they offer as well.

Evolving the ad-supported internet

Chrome continues to explore more privacy-forward ways for the web browser to support digital ads with the Privacy Sandbox open standards initiative. As part of the Privacy Sandbox, several proposals have been published for new APIs that would solve for use cases like ad selection, conversion measurement, and fraud protection in a way that doesn’t reveal identifying information about individual users. One of the proposed APIs, for trust tokens that could combat ad fraud by distinguishing between bots and real users, is now available for testing by developers, and more will move to live testing soon.

Once these approaches have addressed the needs of users, publishers and advertisers, Chrome plans to phase out support for third-party cookies. These proposals are being actively discussed in forums like the W3C. Our ads team is actively contributing to this dialog—as we encourage any interested party to do—and we expect to incorporate the new solutions into our products in the years ahead.

We’re also exploring a range of other approaches to improve user privacy while ensuring publishers can earn what they need to fund great content and advertisers can reach the right people for their products. For example, we support the use of advertiser and publisher first-party data (based on direct interactions with customers they have relationships with) to deliver more relevant and helpful experiences—as long as users have transparency and control over the use of that data. What is not acceptable is the use of opaque or hidden techniques that transfer data about individual users and allow them to be tracked in a covert manner, such as fingerprinting. We believe that any attempts to track people or obtain information that could identify them, without their knowledge and permission, should be blocked. We’ll continue to take a strong position against these practices.

Much of the recent conversation about improving the privacy of digital ads has been focused on the web, but there are a range of environments in which people engage with digital ads. Our technical approach and the implementation details may vary based on the unique characteristics of each, but our vision to uplevel user privacy while preserving access to free content is consistent across web, mobile app, connected TV, digital audio -- and whatever the next area to emerge may be.

Guidance for advertisers and publishers

The future state of digital advertising promises new technologies, new standards, and better, more sustainable approaches, but it will take some time to get there. We recognize the unease that many in the industry feel during this period of transition. While there is certainly more change on the horizon, it’s critical that marketers and publishers do not wait to take action.

To help you prepare, we’ve assembled a number of recommendations for marketers and publishers to consider today. From best practices for building direct relationships with your customers and managing data, to tips for evaluating your partner and vendor relationships, to actionable examples for using machine learning and the cloud, these playbooks offer practical guidance and numerous real-world examples of companies that are successfully navigating today’s changing privacy landscape.

We’ll continue our work to move the digital ads industry towards a more privacy-forward future. In the meantime, make sure your organization is having an active discussion about privacy and that you are taking steps now to plan for what lies ahead.

Posted by Mike Schulman, VP, Ads Privacy and Safety

Source: Official Google India Blog

Preparing your Gradle build for package visibility in Android 11

Posted by David Winer, Product Manager

One of the central themes for Android 11 has been protecting user privacy. On Android 10 and earlier, you could query the full set of installed apps using methods like queryIntentActivities(). Often, however, this approach provides much more access than most apps need to implement their functionality. To better protect user privacy, we updated how apps view and interact with other installed apps on Android 11.
To provide better accountability for access to installed apps, apps targeting Android 11 (API level 30) will see a filtered list of installed apps by default. The new <queries> element in your app or library’s Android manifest allows you to describe which other apps you might need to interact with. For more information about this change, check out our Medium post on package visibility in Android 11.

Android Studio and Gradle support

If you are using Android Gradle plugin 4.1+, your tools should work with the new <queries> declaration. However, older versions of the Android Gradle plugin are not aware of this new element. If you add the <queries> element or if you start relying on a library or SDK that supports targeting Android 11, you may encounter manifest merging errors. For example, when building your app you may see the following error in the Build Output Window:

Android resource linking failed
/Users/sample/AndroidStudioProjects/MyApp/app/build/intermediates/merged_manifests/debug/AndroidManifest.xml:18: error: unexpected element <queries> found in <manifest>

Alternatively, you may see an error in the Build Output Window that directs you to the Manifest merger logs:
Manifest merger failed with multiple errors, see logs
Upon expanding the Merged Manifest view you would then see an additional error:
Error: Missing 'package' key attribute on element package

Android Gradle plugin fixes

The best solution to deal with these errors is to upgrade to Android Gradle plugin 4.1 Beta.
We know that not everyone is ready to upgrade to the latest version, though, and you may be relying on old versions of Gradle or libraries that aren’t compatible with 4.1.
So, today we issued a set of dot releases for the Android Gradle plugin that are compatible with <queries>:

For example, if you are currently using Android Gradle plugin version 4.0.0, you can upgrade the version in your project-level build.gradle file:

 buildscript {

    repositories {
        google()
        jcenter()
    }

    dependencies {
        // classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:4.0.0'
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:4.0.1'
    }
}

For more information on this new feature in Android 11, check out the package visibility documentation and the Android Gradle plugin release notes.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Preparing your Gradle build for package visibility in Android 11

Posted by David Winer, Product Manager

Android Studio and Gradle support

Android resource linking failed
/Users/sample/AndroidStudioProjects/MyApp/app/build/intermediates/merged_manifests/debug/AndroidManifest.xml:18: error: unexpected element <queries> found in <manifest>

Android Gradle plugin fixes

For example, if you are currently using Android Gradle plugin version 4.0.0, you can upgrade the version in your project-level build.gradle file:

 buildscript {

    repositories {
        google()
        jcenter()
    }

    dependencies {
        // classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:4.0.0'
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:4.0.1'
    }
}

For more information on this new feature in Android 11, check out the package visibility documentation and the Android Gradle plugin release notes.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Preparing your Gradle build for package visibility in Android 11

Posted by David Winer, Product Manager

Android Studio and Gradle support

Android resource linking failed
/Users/sample/AndroidStudioProjects/MyApp/app/build/intermediates/merged_manifests/debug/AndroidManifest.xml:18: error: unexpected element <queries> found in <manifest>

Android Gradle plugin fixes

For example, if you are currently using Android Gradle plugin version 4.0.0, you can upgrade the version in your project-level build.gradle file:

 buildscript {

    repositories {
        google()
        jcenter()
    }

    dependencies {
        // classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:4.0.0'
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:4.0.1'
    }
}

For more information on this new feature in Android 11, check out the package visibility documentation and the Android Gradle plugin release notes.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Android 11 Beta 2 and Platform Stability

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

A few weeks ago we unwrapped the first Beta of Android 11 with a focus on people, controls, and privacy. As we highlighted in the #Android11Beta Launch, we’re making Android more people-centric and expressive, helping users control their smart devices, and giving them even more control over sensitive permissions. Developers can use APIs like Conversations, Bubbles, Device Controls, and Media Controls, to integrate these experiences into their apps.

Today we’re pushing out the second Beta of Android 11 for you to try. This release takes us to the Platform Stability milestone, which means that Android 11’s APIs and behaviors are finalized. For developers, it’s time to get started on your final compatibility updates and publish them in time for the official release later in Q3.

This week’s theme in #11 Weeks of Android is Android 11 Compatibility and we’ll be sharing helpful content and materials all week. You can find them on the #11 Weeks page or follow Android Developers on Twitter and Youtube.

You can get Beta 2 today on your Pixel 2, 3, 3a, and 4 device by enrolling here for over-the-air updates, and downloads are also available. If you previously enrolled for Beta 1, you will automatically get the over-the-air update. Let us know what you think, and thanks for the feedback you’ve provided so far!

Platform Stability

Beta 2 brings Android 11 to Platform Stability, a new release milestone that we added this year just for developers, based on your feedback.

Platform Stability means that all app-facing surfaces and behaviors are now final in Android 11. This includes not only final SDK and NDK APIs, but also final system behaviors and restrictions on non-SDK interfaces that may affect apps. So from Beta 2, you can release compatibility updates with confidence that the platform won’t change. More on the timeline is here.

With the platform now stable, we’re encouraging all app and game developers to start your final compatibility testing and publish your updates ahead of the final release.

For all SDK, library, tools, and game engine developers, it’s even more important to start testing now and release your compatible updates as soon as possible -- your downstream app and game developers may be blocked until they receive your updates. When you’ve released a compatible update, be vocal and let developers know!

Why app compatibility is important

For Android, the term app compatibility means that your app runs properly on a specific version of the platform, typically the latest version. You can check this right now by installing your production app on a device or emulator running Android 11. Just test all of the user flows and features, and if the app looks and runs properly, then you’re done, it’s compatible!

It sounds simple, but sometimes there’s more to it. With each release, we make integral changes that improve privacy and security, as well as implement changes that evolve the overall user experience across the OS. Sometimes these can affect your apps, so it’s important to take a look at the behavior changes and test against them, then publish the compatible update to users. It’s a basic but critical level of quality.

App compatibility comes into play as users update to the latest version of Android, whether they’ve purchased a new device or installed an update on their current device. They’re excited to explore the latest version of Android, and they want to experience it with their favorite apps. If the apps don’t work properly, it’s a major issue - for users and for all of us.

So while there are a ton of new APIs and capabilities to explore, and more changes to consider when you’re ready to change your app’s targeting, start by testing your current app and releasing a compatible update first.

Updates to Pixel and other devices will get started as soon as Android 11 reaches the final release to Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which we expect later in Q3. Multiple partner devices are also in active public previews now to support your compatibility testing.

Making app compatibility easier in Android 11

With each release, we’re working to reduce the work you’ll need to do to get your apps ready. In Android 11, we’ve added new processes, developer tools, and release milestones to minimize the impact of platform updates and make it easier for apps to stay compatible.

Minimizing the impact of behavior changes - we’re making a conscious effort to minimize platform changes that could affect apps by making them opt-in, wherever possible, until you set targetSdkVersion to Android 11 in your app. If you are distributing through Google Play, you’ll have more than a year to opt-in to these changes.
Easier testing and debugging - To help you test for compatibility, we’ve made many of the breaking changes toggleable - meaning that you can force-enable or disable the changes individually from Developer options or adb. With this change, there’s no longer a need to change targetSdkVersion or recompile your app for basic testing. Check out the details here.
App compatibility toggles in Developer options.

Restrictions on non-SDK interfaces - as part of our ongoing effort to gradually move developers away from non-SDK APIs, we’ve updated the lists of restricted non-SDK interfaces, and as always your feedback and requests for public API equivalents are welcome.
Dynamic resource loader - As part of their migration away from non-SDK interfaces, developers asked us for a public API to load resources and assets dynamically at runtime. We’ve now added a Resource Loader framework in Android 11, and thank you to the developers who gave us this input!
Platform stability milestone - As mentioned, this is a new milestone we’ve added to our release process to give developers a clear date for final changes. It includes not only final SDK/NDK APIs, but also final internal APIs and system behaviors that may affect apps.

Get your apps ready for Android 11!

Now that Android 11 is stable, make your apps compatible as soon as possible. Here’s how to do it.

For testing your current app, start with the behavior changes for all apps to see where it could be affected. Here are the top changes (these apply regardless of your app’s targetSdkVersion):

One-time permission - Users can now grant single-use permission to access location, device microphone and camera. Details here.
External storage access - Apps can no longer access other apps’ files in external storage. Details here.
Scudo hardened allocator - Now the heap memory allocator for native code in apps. Details here.
File descriptor sanitizer - Now enabled by default to detect file descriptor handling issues for native code in apps. Details here.

Remember to test the libraries and SDKs in your app for compatibility. If you find an issue, try updating to the latest version of the SDK, or reach out to the developer for help.

Later, after you’ve published the compatible version of your current app, you can start the process of updating your app's targetSdkVersion. Review the behavior changes for Android 11 apps and try the compatibility framework to help find impacts. Here are some of the top changes to test for (these apply only to targetSdkVersion 30+):

Scoped storage - New storage restrictions, behaviors, and APIs for apps reading and writing files. Details here.
Background location - Changes to how apps request background location and how users grant it. Details here.
Package visibility - Changes to how apps can query and interact with other installed apps. Details here.
Compressed resource files - Apps can’t be installed or updated if they contain a compressed resources.arsc file, or if the file is not aligned on a 4-byte boundary. Details here.
APK Signature Scheme v2 - Apps must now be signed using APK Signature Scheme v2 or higher. Details here.
Heap pointer tagging - For 64-bit processes, native heap allocations have a tag set in the top byte of the pointer that should not be modified by apps. Details here.

During testing, watch for uses of restricted non-SDK interfaces in your app and move those to public SDK equivalents instead. You can read about the restricted APIs here.

Explore the new features and APIs

As soon as you’re ready, dive into Android 11 and learn about the new experiences you can build. Our #Android11 Beta post has a recap of new features for developers, and you can also visit the Beta Launch page to see talks from the Android team on what’s new in their areas.

Android Studio also has new features for Android 11 also, to improve your productivity and workflow, such as ADB incremental for faster installs of large APKs, and additional nullability annotations on platform APIs. You can give these a try by downloading the latest Android Studio Beta or Canary version. Instructions for configuring Android Studio for Android 11 are here.

For complete details on Android 11 features and APIs, visit the Android 11 developer site.

How do I get Beta 2?

It’s easy! You can enroll here to get Android 11 Beta updates over-the-air for Pixel 2, 3, 3a, and 4 devices. Alternatively, give Android Flash Tool a try for easy on-demand updates, and downloadable system images are also available. If you don't have a Pixel device, you can use the Android Emulator in Android Studio or try a GSI image to run Android 11 on supported Treble-compliant devices.

As always, your feedback is critical, so please let us know what you think. You can use our hotlists for filing platform issues (including privacy and behavior changes), app compatibility issues, and third-party SDK issues. You've shared great feedback with us so far -- thank you!

Android 11 compatibility week

This week in #11 Weeks of Android, we’re highlighting Android 11 Compatibility, a theme that’s important for all developers now that the platform has reached stability.

We’re sharing resources to help you with compatibility testing here, and you can follow Android Developers on Twitter and Youtube to catch helpful content and materials in this area all this week!

Also, the Android engineering team will host a Reddit AMA on r/androiddev tomorrow, July 9 at 12:00PM PST, to answer your technical questions about Android 11. See this post for details and to submit your questions.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Bringing modern storage to Viber’s users

This blogpost is a collaboration between Google and Viber. Authored by Kseniia Shumelchyk from Google and Anton Novikov, Sergey Kozlov from Viber.

As a messaging app, Viber needs to store, process and share a significant amount of data. Viber aims to give its users an easy, fast, reliable and secure communication platform by providing an intuitive interface and operating with files in a privacy-preserving way. We believe the modern scoped storage paradigm provides this foundation for app developers and users.

Scoped storage was introduced in Android 10 with further improvements in Android 11 to provide better protection to app and user data on a platform level. Due to Viber's complexity, the team opted to incrementally implement the changes that were required to comply with scoped storage.

In this article, we’ll share how Viber handled the migration to scoped storage, focusing on what they did to optimize working with media files and other data in the app.

Managing storage across Android versions

Android’s storage model has evolved to adapt to changing privacy considerations, leading to the changes in the storage system APIs. Let’s take a look at key platform changes that affected the legacy Viber implementation.

Media directories

Scoped storage changes the way that apps store and access files on a device's external storage. Viber needed to evaluate the differences between the existing app's storage model and updated platform guidelines, followed by gradual application changes to work with files in scoped storage. Therefore Viber invoked the requestLegacyExternalStorage flag to temporarily opt-out of scoped storage on Android 10 until the app was fully compatible.

In order to adjust their app experience to scoped storage, Viber now contributes public media files to well-defined media collections using the MediaStore API. This way, the files are accessible in a device gallery, and can be read by other apps with the storage permission. Private media files are stored in the app-specific directory on external storage and are accessed via the internal ContentProvider.

Storage permissions

The other notable update is related to changes in the storage permissions model: Apps in scoped storage have unrestricted access to their app-specific directories on external storage and can contribute to well-defined media collections without requesting a runtime permission. This change will help Viber provide more granular control to their users:

“This addition supports our efforts to provide our users with the best security and privacy solutions we can provide supported by the Android OS, users will benefit from this added security later without needing to opt-in. We also added a new ‘Save to gallery’ option allowing users to choose to make their photos readable by other apps or not. Because chats may contain private images or videos, it’s important to give users the ability to hide these files from the gallery. This change gives users additional control over the content included in their Viber messages.“ said Anton Novikov and Sergey Kozlov from Viber.

Accessing files outside of app-specific directory

Previously, Viber created and consumed files in a custom top level directory and depended on file path access. With scoped storage, saving app files to a top level directory became an anti-pattern, so Viber has followed best practices to update their implementation to store media files from the chats only in locations that are accessible in scoped storage.

However, to reduce the complexity of migration, Viber decided to keep their own top level directory for Android 10 and below, storing only the media files that are not exposed to the device’s Gallery app, while for Android 11 and above this directory is used in read-only mode to provide backward compatibility.

Another use case that Viber has been refining is sharing files in the chats. The updated storage runtime permission gives read access only to the images, videos and audio files that are available through MediaProvider. Starting from Android 11, the only way for Viber to access non-media files created by other apps is by using the Storage Access Framework document picker, which they had already utilized in a different part of their app.

App-specific files within external storage

In the scoped storage environment, app-specific directories on external storage are becoming private from other apps. This change has helped Viber leverage its use of external storage for storing private user files:

”We find change to app-specific directories to be useful, because it will help to ensure that personal chats are protected and backed with platform security.” said Anton Novikov from Viber. Learn more about how to access app-specific files.

Single interface to access storage

Because Viber targets a large audience running on Android 4.2 and above, they introduced an abstraction layer that aids them in managing storage access efficiently across all supported Android versions and with their use cases in mind.

Previously, Viber heavily used File API to access files, including files in legacy storage locations. Further, they stored absolute file paths for entries in the local database to keep the user's conversation history.

To standardize access to this conversation history and thus ensure that users don’t lose access to their files, Viber replaced absolute file paths with content URIs. In the new implementation, the app is accessing files only via content providers:

Internal FileProvider for Viber app-specific directories.
External file providers available in the Android framework, such as MediaStore or Storage Access Framework, or those belong to another app that shares files with Viber through Intent.ACTION_SEND.

By using a consistent ContentProvider layer, the ContentResolver gives the app a unified interface to access the file content.

This approach has also helped Viber optimize the network layer and define a universal Loader abstraction to upload/fetch and to read/store different types of media files like voice messages, chat images and stickers.

Summary

Android 11 further enhances scoped storage, which provides better protection of app and user data and makes the transition easier for developers. It’s amazing to see many apps like Viber are migrating to take advantage of scoped storage since Android 10.

We hope Viber’s story is useful and will inspire you to modernize your Android apps as well. Learn more about Android storage use cases and best practices.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Unwrapping the Android 11 Beta, plus more developer updates

Posted by Stephanie Cuthbertson, Director, Product Management

Editor’s note: The global community of Android developers has always been a powerful force in shaping the direction of the Android platform; each and every voice matters to us. We have cancelled the virtual launch event to allow people to focus on important discussions around racial justice in the United States. Instead, we are releasing the Android 11 Beta today in a much different form, via short-form videos and web pages that you can consume at your own pace when the time is right for you. Millions of developers around the world build their business with Android, and we're releasing the Beta today to continue to support these developers with the latest tools. We humbly thank those who are able to offer their feedback on this release.

Today, we’re unwrapping the Beta release for Android 11 as well as the latest updates for developers from Kotlin coroutines, to progress on the Jetpack Compose toolkit, to faster builds in Android Studio, even a refreshed experience for the Play Console.

Android 11 Beta: now available

You’ve been helping us with feedback on the Android 11 developer previews since February, and today we released the first Beta of Android 11 focused on three key themes: People, Controls, and Privacy.

People: we’re making Android more people-centric and expressive, reimagining the way we have conversations on our phones, and building an OS that can recognize and prioritize the most important people in your life:

Conversation notifications appear in a dedicated section at the top of the shade, with a people-forward design and conversation specific actions, such as opening the conversation as a bubble, creating a conversation shortcut on the home screen, or setting a reminder.
Bubbles help users to keep conversations in view and accessible while multitasking. Messaging and chat apps should use the Bubbles API on notifications to enable this in Android 11.
Consolidated keyboard suggestions let Autofill apps and Input Method https://developer.android.com/preview/overview#timeline Editors (IMEs) securely offer context-specific entities and strings directly in an IME’s suggestion strip, where they are most convenient for users.
Voice Access, for people who control their phone entirely by voice, now includes an on-device visual cortex that understands screen content and context, and generates labels and access points for accessibility commands.

gif of people features such as prioritize messages across apps from the VIPs in your life

Controls: the latest release of Android can now help you can quickly get to all of your smart devices and control them in one space:

Device Controls make it faster and easier than ever for users to access and control their connected devices. Now, by simply long pressing the power button, they’re able to bring up device controls instantly, and in one place. Apps can use a new API to appear in the controls. More here.
Media Controls make it quick and convenient for users to switch the output device for their audio or video content, whether it be headphones, speakers or even their TV. You can enable this today from Developer Options, and it will be on by default in an upcoming Beta release. More here.

Controls gif including Smart home controls, payment methods and more, all in one place

Privacy: In Android 11, we’re giving users even more control over sensitive permissions and working to keep devices more secure through faster updates.

One-time permission lets users give an app access to the device microphone, camera, or location, just that one time. The app can request permissions again the next time the app is used. More here.
Permissions auto-reset: if users haven’t used an app for an extended period of time, Android 11 will “auto-reset” all of the runtime permissions associated with the app and notify the user. The app can request the permissions again the next time the app is used. More here.
Background location: In February, we announced developers will need to get approval to access background location in their app to prevent misuse. We're giving developers more time to make changes and won't be enforcing the policy for existing apps until 2021. More here.
Google Play System Updates, launched last year, lets us expedite updates of core OS components to devices in the Android ecosystem. In Android 11, we more than doubled the number of updatable modules, and those 12 new modules will help improve privacy, security, and consistency for users and developers.

Privacy gif including more ways to keep your data secure with one-time permissions and permissions auto-reset.

Developer friendliness: We want to make it easy for developers to take advantage of the new release, so to make compat testing easier, we’ve:

Gated most breaking changes until you target Android 11 (so they won’t take effect until you explicitly change your manifest)
Added new UI in developer options to let you toggle many of these changes for testing
added a new Platform Stability release milestone where all API and behavior changes will be complete, so you can finalize your app updates knowing the platform is stable.

Android 11 also includes a number of other developer productivity improvements like wireless ADB debugging, ADB incremental for faster installs of large APKs, and more nullability annotations on platform APIs (to catch issues at build time instead of runtime), and more.

The first Beta for Android 11 is available today, with final SDK and NDK APIs and new features to try in your apps. If you have a Pixel 2, 3, 3a, or 4 device, enroll here to get Android 11 Beta updates over-the-air. As always, downloads for Pixel and the Android Emulator are also available. To learn about all of the developer features in Android 11, visit the Android 11 developer site.

Modern Android development

Over the past several years, the Android team has been hard at work improving the mobile developer experience, to make you more productive. This includes the Android Studio IDE, a great language (Kotlin!), Jetpack libraries to make common tasks easy, and Android App Bundles to improve app distribution. Today we call this modern Android development - bringing you the best of Android to make you as efficient and productive as possible.

Android Studio

Today, we released new features in Android Studio 4.1 Beta and 4.2 Canary, focused on a number of crucial asks from developers:

Debugging is simpler with wireless debugging over ADB with Android 11 devices. We also added the Database Inspector and Dependency Injection (Dagger) tools;
Device testing is better, with the Android Emulator now hosted directly inside the IDE. Tests now run side-by-side so you can see results from multiple devices at the same time. And we’ve improved the device manager to more easily handle your devices.
Machine learning is easier -- you can now import your models for ML Kit and TensorFlow Lite directly in the IDE.
Build and deployment are faster thanks to Kotlin Symbol Processing, caching of the task graph in Gradle, and faster app deployment to all devices on Android 11. And the new build analyzer can help you diagnose where your build may have bottlenecks.
Games tooling is more powerful with an updated performance profiler UI, an overhauled System Trace tool, and support for native memory profiling.

Android Studio - New Features, 4.1 Beta & 4.2 Canary

Try out the latest: Android Studio 4.1 Beta and Android Studio 4.2 Canary.

Kotlin and Jetpack

Languages and libraries are a major area of investment in modern Android development, with Kotlin’s modern, concise language and Jetpack’s opinionated powerful libraries all focused around making you more productive.

With the rise in Kotlin adoption (with over 70% of top 1000 apps on Google Play now using Kotlin) and so many developers using Kotlin, we can now use it to simplify your experience in new ways. Kotlin coroutines are a language feature of Kotlin which make concurrent calls much easier to write and understand. We’re making coroutines our official recommendation, and we’ve built coroutines support into 3 of the most-used Jetpack libraries -- Lifecycle, WorkManager, and Room -- so you can write even better code.

Kotlin itself also continues to get better with every release, thanks to the awesome team at Jetbrains. Kotlin 1.4 provides faster code completion, more powerful type inference enabled by default, function interfaces, as well as helpful quality of life improvements like mixing named and positioning arguments.

We also continue to push Jetpack forward - a suite of libraries which spans multiple Android releases and is designed to make common mobile development patterns fast and easy. Many of us have long loved Dagger, so we worked with the Dagger team to bring you Hilt, a developer-friendly wrapper on top of Dagger, as a recommended Dependency Injection solution for Android. You’ll find this in alpha ready to try out. We’ve also added a second new library App Startup, to help both app developers and library developers improve app startup time by optimizing initialization of libraries. We have many more updates to existing libraries as well, including a major update to Paging 3, rewritten Kotlin-first with full support for coroutines!

The latest on our new UI toolkit, Compose

There’s one more thing you need to be super productive — and that’s a powerful UI toolkit to quickly and easily build beautiful UIs on Android, with native access to the platform APIs. That’s why we’re building Jetpack Compose, our new modern UI toolkit that brings your app to life with less code, powerful tools, and intuitive Kotlin APIs.

Today we are launching Jetpack Compose Developer Preview 2, packed with features developers have been asking us for:

Interoperability with Views (start mixing Composable functions in your existing app) (new!)
Animations (new!)
Testing (new!)
Constraint Layout (new!)
Adapter list (new!)
Material UI components
Text and editable Text (new!)
Theming and Graphics
Window management
Input and Gestures

We've also added a number of new capabilities to Android Studio 4.2, in close partnership with Jetbrains Kotlin team, to help you build apps with Compose:

Kotlin compiler plugin for code generation
Compose Preview Annotations
Real-time interactive Compose previews
Deploy individual composables to device
Compose Code completion
Sample Data API for Compose

Compose isn’t ready for production use yet, in particular as we finish performance optimizations, but we’d love you to give it a try and share feedback. We plan to launch Alpha this summer and 1.0 next year.

An all-new Google Play Console

Google Play is focused on helping developers grow their business. With that mission in mind, we've redesigned the Google Play Console to help you maximize your success on our platform. In addition to being clearer and easier to use, we've added features to help you:

Find, discover, and understand features to help you thrive on Google Play
Find new guidance on policy changes, release status, and user feedback
Better understand performance insights with new acquisition reports
Enable everyone on your team to use Play Console features with new user management options

Learn more about the new Google Play Console in this post or join the beta now at play.google.com/console. Your feedback helps us continue to improve Google Play Console for everyone, so please let us know what you think.

Wrapping it all up

But there’s so much more we’re launching that we didn’t get to talk about!

We have 12 talks we just posted right on the Android Developers YouTube channel.
We’re launching 11 Weeks of Android to keep the conversation going, with new developer content each week on topics you’ve asked for, like UI, Jetpack and Machine Learning. Check out the schedule here to learn more.
We’re introducing a global series of online community meetups to discuss what’s new in Android 11, how to make your app compatible, and the essentials and best practices of modern Android development. Find an Android 11 Meetup near you.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Unwrapping the Android 11 Beta, plus more developer updates

Posted by Stephanie Cuthbertson, Director, Product Management

Android 11 Beta: now available

Conversation notifications appear in a dedicated section at the top of the shade, with a people-forward design and conversation specific actions, such as opening the conversation as a bubble, creating a conversation shortcut on the home screen, or setting a reminder.
Bubbles help users to keep conversations in view and accessible while multitasking. Messaging and chat apps should use the Bubbles API on notifications to enable this in Android 11.
Consolidated keyboard suggestions let Autofill apps and Input Method Editors (IMEs) securely offer context-specific entities and strings directly in an IME’s suggestion strip, where they are most convenient for users.
Voice Access, for people who control their phone entirely by voice, now includes an on-device visual cortex that understands screen content and context, and generates labels and access points for accessibility commands.

Controls: the latest release of Android can now help you can quickly get to all of your smart devices and control them in one space:

Device Controls make it faster and easier than ever for users to access and control their connected devices. Now, by simply long pressing the power button, they’re able to bring up device controls instantly, and in one place. Apps can use a new API to appear in the controls. More here.
Media Controls make it quick and convenient for users to switch the output device for their audio or video content, whether it be headphones, speakers or even their TV. You can enable this today from Developer Options, and it will be on by default in an upcoming Beta release. More here.

Privacy: In Android 11, we’re giving users even more control over sensitive permissions and working to keep devices more secure through faster updates.

One-time permission lets users give an app access to the device microphone, camera, or location, just that one time. The app can request permissions again the next time the app is used. More here.
Permissions auto-reset: if users haven’t used an app for an extended period of time, Android 11 will “auto-reset” all of the runtime permissions associated with the app and notify the user. The app can request the permissions again the next time the app is used. More here.
Background location: In February, we announced developers will need to get approval to access background location in their app to prevent misuse. We're giving developers more time to make changes and won't be enforcing the policy for existing apps until 2021. More here.
Google Play System Updates, launched last year, lets us expedite updates of core OS components to devices in the Android ecosystem. In Android 11, we more than doubled the number of updatable modules, and those 12 new modules will help improve privacy, security, and consistency for users and developers.

Developer friendliness: We want to make it easy for developers to take advantage of the new release, so to make compat testing easier, we’ve:

Gated most breaking changes until you target Android 11 (so they won’t take effect until you explicitly change your manifest)
Added new UI in developer options to let you toggle many of these changes for testing
added a new Platform Stability release milestone where all API and behavior changes will be complete, so you can finalize your app updates knowing the platform is stable.

Modern Android development

Android Studio

Today, we released new features in Android Studio 4.1 Beta and 4.2 Canary, focused on a number of crucial asks from developers:

Debugging is simpler with wireless debugging over ADB with Android 11 devices. We also added the Database Inspector and Dependency Injection (Dagger) tools;
Device testing is better, with the Android Emulator now hosted directly inside the IDE. Tests now run side-by-side so you can see results from multiple devices at the same time. And we’ve improved the device manager to more easily handle your devices.
Machine learning is easier -- you can now import your models for ML Kit and TensorFlow Lite directly in the IDE.
Build and deployment are faster thanks to Kotlin Symbol Processing, caching of the task graph in Gradle, and faster app deployment to all devices on Android 11. And the new build analyzer can help you diagnose where your build may have bottlenecks.
Games tooling is more powerful with an updated performance profiler UI, an overhauled System Trace tool, and support for native memory profiling.

Try out the latest: Android Studio 4.1 Beta and Android Studio 4.2 Canary.

Kotlin and Jetpack

The latest on our new UI toolkit, Compose

Today we are launching Jetpack Compose Developer Preview 2, packed with features developers have been asking us for:

Interoperability with Views (start mixing Composable functions in your existing app) (new!)
Animations (new!)
Testing (new!)
Constraint Layout (new!)
Adapter list (new!)
Material UI components
Text and editable Text (new!)
Theming and Graphics
Window management
Input and Gestures

We've also added a number of new capabilities to Android Studio 4.2, in close partnership with Jetbrains Kotlin team, to help you build apps with Compose:

Kotlin compiler plugin for code generation
Compose Preview Annotations
Real-time interactive Compose previews
Deploy individual composables to device
Compose Code completion
Sample Data API for Compose

An all-new Google Play Console

Find, discover, and understand features to help you thrive on Google Play
Find new guidance on policy changes, release status, and user feedback
Better understand performance insights with new acquisition reports
Enable everyone on your team to use Play Console features with new user management options

Wrapping it all up

But there’s so much more we’re launching that we didn’t get to talk about!

We have 12 talks we just posted right on the Android Developers YouTube channel.
We’re launching 11 Weeks of Android to keep the conversation going, with new developer content each week on topics you’ve asked for, like UI, Jetpack and Machine Learning. Check out the schedule here to learn more.
We’re introducing a global series of online community meetups to discuss what’s new in Android 11, how to make your app compatible, and the essentials and best practices of modern Android development. Find an Android 11 Meetup near you.

Source: Google Developers Blog

Android 11: Beta Plans

Posted by Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

Android 11 Dial logo

When we started planning Android 11, we didn’t expect the kinds of changes that would find their way to all of us, across nearly every region in the world. These have challenged us to stay flexible and find new ways to work together, especially with our developer community.

To help us meet those challenges we’re announcing an update to our release timeline. We’re bringing you a fourth Developer Preview today and moving Beta 1 to June 3. And to tell you all about the release and give you the technical resources you need, we’re hosting an online developer event that we’re calling #Android11: the Beta Launch Show.

Join us for #Android11: The Beta Launch Show

While the circumstances prevent us from joining together with you in-person at Shoreline Amphitheatre for Google I/O, our annual developer conference, we’re organizing an online event where we can share with you all the best of what’s new in Android. We hope you’ll join us for #Android11: The Beta Launch Show, your opportunity to find out what’s new in Android from the people who build Android. Hosted by me, Dave Burke, we’ll be kicking off at 11AM ET on June 3. And we’ll be wrapping it up with a post-show live Q&A; tweet your #AskAndroid questions to get them answered live!

Later that day, we’ll be sharing a number of talks on a range of topics from Jetpack Compose to Android Studio and Google Play–talks that we had originally planned for Google I/O–to help you take advantage of the latest in Android development. You can sign-up to receive updates on this digital event at developer.android.com/android11.

Android 11 schedule update

Our industry moves really fast, and we know that many of our device-maker partners are counting on us to help them bring Android 11 to new consumer devices later this year. We also know that many of you have been working to prioritize early app and game testing on Android 11, based in part on our Platform Stability and other milestones. At the same time, all of us are collaborating remotely and prioritizing the well-being of our families, friends and colleagues.

So to help us meet the needs of the ecosystem while being mindful of the impacts on our developers and partners, we’ve decided to add a bit of extra time in the Android 11 release schedule. We’re moving out Beta 1 and all subsequent milestones by about a month, which gives everyone a bit more room but keeps us on track for final release later in Q3.

Here are some of the key changes in the new schedule:

We’re releasing a fourth Developer Preview today for testing and feedback.
Beta 1 release moves to June 3. We’ll include the final SDK and NDK APIs with this release and open up Google Play publishing for apps targeting Android 11.
Beta 2 moves to July. We’ll reach Platform Stability with this release.
Beta 3 moves to August and will include release candidate builds for final testing

By bringing you the final APIs on the original timeline while shifting the other dates, we’re giving you an extra month to compile and test with the final APIs, while also ensuring that you have the same amount of time between Platform Stability and the final release, planned for later in Q3. Here’s a look at the timeline.

You can read more about what the new timeline means to app developers in the preview program overview.

App compatibility

The schedule change adds some extra time for you to test your app for compatibility and identify any work you’ll need to do. We recommend releasing a compatible app update by Android 11 Beta on June 3rd to get feedback from the larger group of Android Beta users who will be getting the update.

With Beta 1 the SDK and NDK APIs will be final, and as we reach Platform Stability in July, the system behaviors and non-SDK greylists will also be finalized. At that time, plan on doing your final compatibility testing and releasing your fully compatible app, SDK, or library as soon as possible so that it is ready for the final Android 11 release. You can read more in the timeline for developers.

You can start compatibility testing today on a Pixel 2, 3, 3a, or 4 device, or you can use the Android Emulator. Just flash the latest build, install your current production app, and test the user flows. Make sure to review the behavior changes for areas where your app might be affected. There’s no need to change the app’s targetSdkVersion at this time, although we recommend evaluating the work since many changes apply once your app is targeting the new API level.

Get started with Android 11

Today we're pushing a Developer Preview 4 with the latest bug fixes, API tweaks, and features to try in your apps. It’s available by manual download and flash for Pixel 2, 3, 3a, or 4 devices, and if you’re already running a Developer Preview build, you’ll get an over-the-air (OTA) update to today’s release.

For complete information on Android 11, visit the Android 11 developer site, and please continue to let us know what you think!