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SPEAKER: Welcome to Now in Android,
your ongoing guide to what's new and notable
in the world of Android development.
And today, we're talking about Android 12
Beta 4, some large-screen UI updates
we did for the Google IO app, tiles
on WearOS, Android study jams, new Mad performance
episodes, and more.
We released the fourth beta of Android 12,
which takes us to platform stability.
Android 12's APIs and all app-facing behaviors
are finalized.
So it's really, really time now to make any necessary app
updates to prepare for the official release
later in the year.
You can get it in the Emulator, as well as on Pixel and partner
devices.
Tiles provide WearOS users quick access
to information and actions with a swipe from the watch face
homescreen.
We released the Jetpack tiles API alpha a while ago
to allow you to build tiles and preview them
within your WearOS app.
But now you can make them available to users
by publishing your app in Google Play.
Make sure to let your users know about your new titles,
such as by uploading a tile screenshot to your Play Store
preview assets.
While this year's Google IO didn't
include a new release of the Google IO app,
we updated the code base to showcase some new features
and trends in modern Android development.
With lots more large-screen devices out there,
we focused on improving the app experience
on tablets, foldables, and Chrome OS laptops and desktops.
To better take advantage of large-screen landscape
displays, we use the navigation rail
to place navigation elements along the side when
in landscape mode instead of the bottom.
Sliding-pane layout, with good pane width default,
allowed us to display one or two panes depending
on the size and orientation of the screen,
including a single pane of content in our narrow portrait
view on tablets.
Constraint layout prevented UI elements
from becoming too stretched, too far apart, or packed too
closely together.
We used an alternative layout to take advantage of extra screen
space displaying a list of expandable items
on narrow screens and a grid of cards on wider screens.
And the blog post has lots more details on what we did.
Android development is more fun with friends.
Android study jams are currently taking place
across North America, community events where participants
come together and followed guided code labs designed
to improve development skills with a focus on app quality.
Now, we created code labs with three different tracks
for new developers, experienced developers,
and advanced developers that want
to learn about modern Android development.
So sign up, learn something, and be social.
This week continues the Modern Android Development Performance
Series with two more episodes.
In the first episode, Carmen covers the Perfetto trace
viewer, which is an alternative to Android Studio for reviewing
system traces.
It has functionality to examine interactions
between multiple processes, such as the ability
to get details on who is running code
at the other end of a binder transaction.
While in the second episode, Pierre from Square
shows how to start sampling traces from code using
the choreographer to stop the trace as soon as the frame is
done, allowing you to easily profile
the time associated with a UI change, such as navigation.
For ongoing content, be sure to check the Mad Skills
playlist on YouTube, the articles on Medium,
or are handy landing page.
Isai authored two new code labs to help you
learn about nearby APIs.
The first code lab covers the nearby Messages API,
which enables user interactions over the internet based
on physical proximity.
The second code lab covers the nearby connections API,
which lets local users communicate with each other
without needing an internet connection.
Head over to the code labs to learn more.
We had lots of Android access library updates.
Jetpack Compose updated its column version along
with adding an optional filter quality
parameter to help enhance the look of scale pixel art.
Games activity, games controller, and games text
input, the new C libraries in the Android game development
kit have all been released to stable.
We released a new version of startup,
enabling support for automatic initialization
in multiple processes.
Data store was released.
And it allows you to asynchronously, consistently,
and transactionally store key/value pairs
or structured protobufs, overcoming
some shared preferences drawbacks.
Core Google shortcuts is now in alpha,
offering indexing support for your AI-based icons
in donated shortcuts.
Android Developers Backstage released podcast episode 172,
where Chet, Romain, and Tor talk with Sarah, Fred, and Eric
about the new privacy features in Android 12,
such as the privacy dashboard and the camera and microphone
usage indicators.
So that's it for this time with Android 12 Beta 4
and platform stability, large-screen UI updates
in the Google IO app, WearOS tile support from your app,
Android study jams, new episodes from the Mad Performance
Series, new code labs, Android X releases, and a new privacy
podcast.
Make sure to like, subscribe, share, stay safe, and come
back soon for our next update from the Android Developer
universe.
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