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MADAN ANKAPURA: Hi, everyone.
Thank you for joining us today.
I am Madan Ankapura, Product Manager in the Android
Automotive Team, here to talk about building
media apps for cars.
So I want to start by actually sharing our vision, which
is to bring a safe and seamless connected experience
in every car.
What it really means is we want to ensure
that the apps and services that the users are used to
are able to be experienced within the cars as well.
We have two in-car platforms.
On the left side, you see Android Auto, and on the right,
you see Android Automotive OS.
We'll go through each one of them in detail.
So let's start with Android Auto.
Android Auto runs on phones and integrates
with the compatible cars.
This means your favorite apps and services
will be available on the screen in a driver-optimized way.
You can interact with these apps through your car
screens and the controls, but everything
is running on your phone.
We initially previewed this almost five years ago,
and today, Android Auto is available in 36 plus markets
across 500 different car monitors from over 50 brands.
We also have thousands of applications already compatible
with Android Auto, and we continue
to see strong growth with the developer adoption.
And of course, our partnerships with developers
is a key reason for the great success of Android Auto.
The second platform is Android Automotive OS,
is what we are going to actually focus on today.
With Automotive OS, Android is running
as an embedded infotainment platform in the car,
enabling a much deeper integration to the car.
>From everything from navigating via Google Maps to listening
to music with Spotify to adjusting your cabin
temperature.
Unlike Android Auto, the apps and services
are directly running on the head unit.
And it doesn't matter what phone you bring along with it.
We previewed Android Automotive OS in Google I/O on Polestar 2
back in May.
So the car manufacturer adoption is also gaining momentum.
We had previously announced our partnership
with Volvo and Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance as well.
We're happy to share that over the last several weeks,
GM has also made similar announcements.
We continue to work with the rest
of the automotive ecosystem to drive further adoption.
We are seeing a lot of interest and momentum
on this, so stay tuned.
Of course, ultimately, it matters what cars
are going to be on the road.
So the first of those would be Polestar 2.
If you joined us at Google I/O, you
may have actually seen it in person.
And for those of you who are all here,
we have Volvo XC40 right outside the building on the patio area.
We also have some live demos in the Android for Cars sandbox.
I strongly encourage you to experience that yourself.
And finally, we are also seeing more applications
which are getting ported over to Android Automotive OS.
As you can see, we have Audioburst, Amazon Music,
and YouTube Music.
And these are screenshots from the emulator.
And you can see them live in the head unit
as well on the XC40 car.
So in order to get your app ready for Automotive OS,
there are four key steps.
I'll go through each one of them in some level of detail.
So the first step is design, develop, test, and distribute.
So we'll go through each one of them and do a brief recap.
Back in May, we presented a much more detailed design
and technical talk on how to build Android apps for cars.
If you haven't already looked into it,
I highly recommend this as a good starting point as well.
But let's go into each of those four steps now.
On design, we have published detailed guidelines
which help us inform some of our design decisions.
And you can find them at g.co/automotive-design.
We continue to update this guideline site,
and we'll continue to improve that.
So doing a quick recap of the design
itself, if you are starting fresh,
the first thing that you may want to think about
is how do you want to map the structure.
And plan for the browsing views--
how many tabs do you want, whether you
want grid view or list view.
The next is really trying to think
about how do you want to customize your playback
controls.
Of course, we provide affordances
to have overflow controls, but it's
up to you and your app to figure out which are required
and how many do you need.
The next is sign-in and settings.
I'll go through a bit more in detail later in the slides.
And finally, as you can see, there
are some accent colors that are representative of your brand
that you can actually choose.
Going next to the develop part of the application,
there is a detailed documentation which
goes into the technical detail.
So as a recap, so let's say, for example,
you have no app at all.
We have an Automotive template in Android Studio
that you can actually use, which actually produces two modules--
one for automotive and the second one for common media
session-related things that will get you started.
Another way to also start is start with the Universal Media
Player sample.
But if you already have an app but
if you don't have a media service,
you can start with the Media Service template.
These are all templates that are available within the Android
Studio.
And finally, the main thing to note
is, if you have all of this, ensure
that if it is monolithic, make sure that it is modularized.
And the way to modularize it is essentially
ensuring that you start with a new automotive module.
So you will find all of these templates
within the Android Studio.
And lastly, unlike your phone app where you have actually
ported it to work on projected, you
have to think about adding sign-in and settings.
Because in case of projected, these things
can happen on the phone, whereas in case
of Automotive OS, because it is standalone,
you have to develop a couple of these activities.
So at the end of the day, when you have ported all of it,
this is how it actually looks like.
You have a shared module, which includes MediaSession
and MediaBrowse Service, and then you have form-factor
specific modules--
one for mobile that may also include support for projected,
and then automotive app, which includes
automotive-specific aspects like sign-in and settings.
As you can see, a majority of the code is actually shared.
So if you have already a media app
that supports Android Auto projected,
adding automotive support is going
to be extremely straightforward.
So let me go back into the sign-in
to some level of detail.
Our intention is to ensure that when
you are enabling your users to sign in to your app,
you want to make it as seamless as possible.
By seamless, what I really mean is,
like, as single-click as possible.
So here are some few preferred guidances.
The first one is Google sign-in.
Login with Google sign-in.
The users with Automotive OS that
will have PlayStore will anyway have to log in with the Google
account, so if you already support login with Google, just
clicking Sign-In with Google will actually
get them started already.
If you don't have that yet and want to support,
another alternate method would be using pin and pattern.
The way it actually works is, as you can see on the screen,
the pin will be shown by your application on the Automotive
OS, and then on the phone, you can validate that endpoint
by entering these pins, which means now,
the app on the head unit is validated.
You can do similar things with pattern as well.
Instead of a pin, you show a pattern, then on the phone,
you can scan it.
And these are things that are already,
you will see examples of applications trying
to enable endpoint when the same app is
being used on a web browser.
And finally, there is Autofill with Google,
which means if you have already enabled autofill
on the phone, when the user actually
logs into the car with the same account,
the username and password is right there
with a single click.
If all of these actually fail, then you
may want to think about as a backup, which
means you need to have it but that is not the first thing
that you want to promote your user to use,
which is entering manually username
and password via the keyboard.
So we have completed the development.
Now, you have to actually test it.
We, back in Google I/O, published an emulator system
image for Automotive OS.
So we continue to iterate on this,
and I'm going to talk about briefly what
we have updated on the emulator system image itself.
So you can download these emulator system images
from the Android Studio, but you should
ensure that it is at least 3.6 beta, not 3.5, which
is currently in stable.
So we talked about the first three,
and the last one is distribute.
And this is new that we are announcing here
at the Developer Summit.
When you have an APK ready, you definitely
want to try to ensure that the whole flow of publishing
on the PlayStore via the Play Console
and trying to get it onto a device is well tested.
In order to actually accomplish it,
we request developer whitelisting
via the form in the blog that was recently published.
The link is on there, ads2019-cars.
So I'm going to briefly summarize
what we will be sharing with you once we send you instructions
on whitelisting.
On the developer console, you will
be using the automotive form factor track.
You need to create a closed track
and whitelist your Gmail account.
And once that is done, the latest automotive emulator
image includes the PlayStore.
And that is a new update compared to the emulator
image that was published back in I/O.
And once you have all this setup done,
you can use the ADB to deeplink into the Details page.
So the emulator doesn't contain the PlayStore icon directly,
but you will be able to actually go to the deeplink.
And here is an example of how it might actually
look on the emulator.
So we covered all four steps.
All of this and much more is available
in the developer.android.com/cars.
And this is a developer documentation site
that we'll continue to improve over the coming weeks
and months.
And last but not least, if you haven't already
got a chance to visit our sandbox, which is right across,
you will see a Volvo XC40 RECHARGE, which
is an all-electric vehicle.
It was just unveiled last week.
And also, we have a couple of reference units
where you can actually see some of these applications
in action.
Here are some resources and thank you.
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