HOI LAM: It has been more than 10 years since we launched
Android, and your apps has been at the heart of their success.
As the platform grows, so have the users' expectations,
from privacy to user experience.
Today, app developers need to make sure
that their app not only works, but works well,
and that it takes advantage of the latest Android features.
We know you want your apps to offer great user experience.
But we also understand that there are
lots of competing priorities.
So we have created the new App Quality section
at developers.android.com/quality
to help you keep up with key aspects of app quality
and provide related resources.
The first thing you will notice is an updated app quality
checklist, which takes into account
of the advances of recent Android releases,
as well as the current state of the app ecosystem,
with things such as dark theme.
This checklist covers five main areas of quality.
And here are some highlights to those sections.
In visual experience, in addition to dark theme,
we have added check items to best support
gesture navigation.
Edge-to-edge screens are now commonplace for Android, even
for entry-level devices.
Supporting gesture navigation is no longer a niche concern.
We have a separate video highlighting
some of the new recommendations in more details.
Be sure to check it out.
In app functionality, we made three sets of updates.
For media applications, we have updated our recommendations
around the playback experience, as well as
codec recommendations.
In sharing, we highlight the importance
of using the Android system Sharesheet,
especially as there are new restrictions around access
to the list of in-store apps in Android 11.
This is typically used in a custom Sharesheet.
Last but not least, under functionality,
we have updated the background processing guidance.
In principle, developers should minimize
the amount of background work in their app
and test any remaining background
work is compatible with both Doze and App Standby.
As a direction of travel, developers
should expect restrictions to background work
to continue to tighten.
This is so that we can be more transparent to the user
about what is currently running and be
more battery-efficient in future releases of Android.
In performance and stability, we added tooling, now
available under Android Vitals in the Google Play Developer
Console, as well as additional guidance to test and reduce
app startup time.
One point worth highlighting is around the Android Not
Responsive, or ANR, warnings.
There's a common misconception that this is
caused by device performance.
In reality, this is caused by threading mistakes.
Please check out this guide on how to diagnose and resolve
ANRs in your app.
We're working on more performance-related tooling,
and we will update this section as they become available.
As security and privacy continue to be a focus area,
we highlight the latest safeguards built into Android,
from one-time permission to securely using WebViews.
In addition, we've also added privacy
best practices to help you create
apps that give user both control and transparency over data
access.
This includes guidance like using resettable IDs and scoped
storage.
Last but not least, a friendly reminder
to comply with the Google Play policy
around appropriate content, content quality,
not to mislead users around the app's functionality,
and address user review comments.
Going forward, you can expect three things around app quality
from us.
First, the app quality checklist will
be updated on a quarterly basis to provide the latest
up-to-date best practices.
Second, we plan to update the quality checklists
for other form factors such as tablets and Wear OS.
Lastly, this is just the beginning for app quality.
We're working on additional tools and best practices
to make it easier for you to build quality
applications on Android.
We hope that these new guidelines make it easier
for you to stay up to date with the most important things you
can do to build great apps.
[MUSIC PLAYING]