Posted by Matthew McCullough – VP of Product Management, Android Developer Android 16 has officially reached Platform Stability today with Beta 3! That means the API surface is locked, the app-facing behaviors are final, and you can push your Android 16-targeted apps to the Play store right now. Read on for coverage of new security and accessibility features in Beta 3. Android delivers enhancements and new features year-round, and your feedback on the Android beta program plays a key role in helping Android continuously improve. The Android 16 developer site has more information about the b ..read 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 ..read more

Posted by Paris Hsu – Product Manager, Android Studio At every stage of the development lifecycle, Gemini in Android Studio has become your AI-powered companion, making it easier to build high quality apps. We are excited to announce a significant expansion: Gemini in Android Studio now supports multimodal inputs, which lets you attach images directly to your prompts! This unlocks a wealth of new possibilities that improve team collaboration and UI development workflows. You can try out this new feature by downloading the latest Android Studio canary. We’ve outlined a few use cases to try, bu ..read more

Posted by Aurash Mahbod – VP and GM of Games on Google Play We’re stepping up our multiplatform gaming offering with exciting news dropping at this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC). We’re bringing users more games, more ways to play your games across devices, and improved gameplay. You can read all about the updates for users from The Keyword. At GDC, we’ll be diving into all of the latest games coming to Play, plus new developer tools that’ll help improve gameplay across the Android ecosystem. Today, we’re sharing a closer look at what’s new from Play. We’re expanding our support for ..read more

Posted by Matthew McCullough – VP of Product Management, Android We’re stepping up our multiplatform gaming offering with exciting news dropping at this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC). We’re bringing users more games, more ways to play your games across devices, and improved gameplay. You can read all about the updates for users from The Keyword. At GDC, we’ll be diving into all of the latest games coming to Play, plus new developer tools that’ll help improve gameplay across the Android ecosystem. Today, we’re sharing a closer look at what’s new from Android. We’re making Vulkan the ..read more

Posted by Xiaodao Wu - Developer Relations Engineer Jetpack WindowManager keeps getting better. WindowManager gives you tools to build adaptive apps that work seamlessly across all kinds of large screen devices. Version 1.4, which is stable now, introduces new features that make multi-window experiences even more powerful and flexible. While Jetpack Compose is still the best way to create app layouts for different screen sizes, 1.4 makes some big improvements to activity embedding, including activity stack spinning, pane expansion, and dialog full-screen dim. Multi-activity apps can easily ta ..read more

Posted by Brenda Shaw – Health & Home Partner Engineering Technical Writer At Google, we are committed to empowering developers as they build exceptional health and fitness experiences. Core to that commitment is Health Connect, an Android platform that allows health and fitness apps to store and share the same on-device data. Android devices running Android 14 or that have the pre-installed APK will automatically have Health Connect by default in Settings. For pre-Android 14 devices, Health Connect is available for download from the Play Store. We're excited to announce significant Healt ..read more

Posted by Tyler Beneke – Product Manager, and Lucas Silva – Software Engineer Widgets are now available on your Pixel Tablet lock screens! Lock screen widgets empower users to create a personalized, always-on experience. Whether you want to easily manage smart home devices like lights and thermostats, or build dashboards for quick access and control of vital information, this blog post will answer your key questions about lock screen widgets on Android. Read on to discover when, where, how, and why they'll be on a lock screen near you. Lock screen widgets in clock-wise order: Clock, Weather ..read more

Posted by Nevin Mital – Developer Relations Engineer, and Kristina Simakova – Engineering Manager Android users have demonstrated an increasing desire to create, personalize, and share video content online, whether to preserve their memories or to make people laugh. As such, media editing is a cornerstone of many engaging Android apps, and historically developers have often relied on external libraries to handle operations such as Trimming and Resizing. While these solutions are powerful, integrating and managing external library dependencies can introduce complexity and lead to challenges wi ..read more

Posted by Thomas Ezan Sr. – Android Developer Relation Engineer (@lethargicpanda) Imagen 3, our most advanced image generation model, is now available through Vertex AI in Firebase, making it even easier to integrate it to your Android apps. Designed to generate well-composed images with exceptional details, reduced artifacts, and rich lighting, Imagen 3 represents a significant leap forward in image generation capabilities. Image generated by Imagen 3 with prompt: “Shot in the style of DSLR camera with the polarizing filter. A photo of two hot air balloons over the unique rock formations in ..read more