Posted by Purnima Kochikar, Director, Apps and Games Business Development, Google Play
During a special ceremony last tonight at Google I/O, we honored ten apps and games for their outstanding achievements as part of the inaugural Google Play Awards.
As we shared onstage, when you look at how Google Play has evolved over the years, it’s pretty amazing. We’re now reaching over 1 billion users every month and there’s literally something for everyone. From real-time multiplayer to beautiful Indie games, industry changing startups to innovative uses of mobile technology, developers like you continue to push the boundaries of what apps can do.
Congrats to the following developers in each category!
This week at Google I/O 2016 we launched Android Studio 2.2 Preview. This release is a large update that builds upon our focus to create a fast and productive integrated development environment (IDE) for Android. Developed in sync with the Android platform, Android Studio allows you to develop with the latest Android APIs and features. Since launching Android Studio at Google I/O just 3 years ago, we received great feedback from on you on what features you want the most. Today 92% of the top 125 apps & game developers on Google Play, plus millions of developer worldwide, use Android Studio. We want to continue to build features that will continue to make you more efficient when developing for Android and more productive.
Android Studio 2.2 Preview includes a portfolio of new features along the spectrum of developments, ranging from designing user interfaces to building and debugging your app in new ways. This preview includes the following new categories of features:
Design
Layout Editor: A new user interface designer that helps you visually design the layouts in your app. Features like blueprint mode and the new properties panel allow you to quickly edit layouts and widgets faster.
Constraint Layout: A new powerful and flexible Android layout that allows you to express complex UIs without nesting multiple layouts.
Layout Inspector: Debug a snapshot of your app layout running on the Android Emulator or device. Inspect the view hierarchy and corresponding attributes.
Develop
Firebase Plugin: Explore and integrate the suite of services offered by Firebase inside of Android Studio. Adding services like Analytics, Authentication, Notifications, and AdMob are just a few clicks away.
Enhanced Code Analysis: Android Studio checks the quality of your Android app code. In addition to 260 Android lint and code inspections, this release includes new code quality checks for Java 8 language usage and a new inspection infrastructure for more cross-file analysis.
Samples Browser: Referencing Android sample code is now even easier. Within the code editor window, find occurrences of your app code snippets in Google Android sample code to help jump start your app development.
Improved C++ Support: Android Studio 2.2 improves C++ development with the ability to edit, build, and debug pre-existing Android projects that use ndk-build or CMake rather than Gradle. Additionally, the existing lldb C++ debugger is now even better with project type auto-detection and a Java language aware C++ mode that lets you use a single debugger process to inspect both Java language and C++ runtimes.
IntelliJ 2016.1: Android Studio 2.2 includes all the latest updates from the underlying JetBrains product platforms IntelliJ.
Build
Jack Compiler Improvements: For those using the new Jack compiler, Android Studio 2.2 adds support for annotation processing, as well as incremental builds for reduced build times.
Merged Manifest Viewer: Diagnose how your AndroidManifest.xml merges with your app dependences across your project build variants.
Test
Espresso Test Recorder: Record Espresso UI tests simply by using your app as a normal user. As you click through your app UI, reusable and editable test code is then generated for you. You can run the generated tests locally, in your Continuous Integration environment, or in Firebase Test lab.
APK Analyzer: Drill into your APK to help you reduce your APK size, debug 64K method limit issues, view contents of Dex files and more.
Google I/O ‘16: What’s New in Android Development Tools
Deeper Dive into the New Features
Design
Layout Editor: Android Studio 2.2 features a new user interface designer. There are many enhancements but some of the highlights include:
Drag-and-drop widgets from the palette to the design surface or the component tree view of your app.
Design surface has a blueprint mode to inspect the spacing and arrangement of your layout.
Properties panel now shows a curated set of properties for quick widget edits with a full sheet of advanced properties one click away.
UI builder can edit menu and system preference files.
The new Layout Editor in Android Studio 2.2 Preview
Edit Menus in the new Layout Editor
Constraint Layout: This new layout is a flexible layout manager for your app that allows you to create dynamic user interfaces without nesting multiple layouts. It is distributed as a support library that is tightly coupled with Android Studio and backwards compatible to API Level 9.
At first glance, Constraint Layout is similar to RelativeLayout. However, the Constraint Layout was designed to be used in Studio and it can efficiently express your app design so that you rely on fewer layouts like LinearLayout, FrameLayout, TableLayout, or GridLayout. Lastly, with the built-in automatic constraints inference engine. You can freely design your UI to your liking and let Android Studio do the hard work.
To help you get started, the built-in templates in the New Project Wizard in Android Studio 2.2 Preview now generate a Constraint Layout. Alternately, you can right click on any layout in the new Layout Editor and select the Convert to ConstraintLayout option.
This is an early preview of the UI designer and Constraint Layout, and we will rapidly add enchantments in upcoming releases. Learn more on the Android Studio tools site.
Constraint Layout
Start Layout Inspector
Layout Inspector: For new and existing layouts, many times you may want to debug your app UI to determine if your layout is rendering as expected. With the new Layout Inspector, you can drill into the view hierarchy of your app and analyze the attributes of each component of UI on the screen.
To use the tool, just click on Layout Inspector Icon in the Android Monitor Window, and then Android Studio creates a snapshot of the current view hierarchy of your app for you to inspect.
Layout Inspector
Develop
Firebase Plugin:Firebase is the new suite of developers services that can help you develop high-quality apps, grow your user base, and earn more money. Inside of Android Studio, you can add Firebase to a new or existing Android app with the new Assistant window. To access the Firebase features click on the Tools menu and then select Firebase. You will want to first setup the brand new Firebase Analytics as the foundation as you explore other Firebase services like Firebase Cloud Messaging or Firease Crash Reporting to add your application. Learn more about the Firebase integration inside Android Studio here.
Firebase Plugin for Android Studio
Code Sample Browser: In addition to importing Android Samples, the Code Sample Browser is a menu option inside Android Studio 2.2 Preview that allows you to find high-quality, Google-provided Android code samples based on the currently highlighted symbol in your project. To use the feature, highlight a Variables, Types and Methods in your code then Right Click to show a context menu for Find Sample Code. The results are displayed in a bottom output box.
Code Sample Browser
Build
CMake and NDK-Build: For those of you using the Android NDK, Android Studio now supports building CMake and NDK-Build Android app projects by pointing Gradle at your existing build files. Once you’ve added your cmake or ndk-build project to Gradle, Android Studio will automatically open your relevant Android code files for editing and debugging in Studio.
For CMake users, just add the path to your CMList.txt file in the externalNativeBuild section of your Gradle file:
CMake Build in Android Studio
For NDK-Build Users, just add the path to your *.mk file in the section of your Gradle file:
NDK-Build in Android Studio
Improved Jack Tools: The new Jack Toolchain compiles your Java language source into Android dex bytecode. The Jack compiler allows some Java 8 language features, like lambdas, to be used on all versions of Android. This release adds incremental build and full support for annotation processing, so you can explore using Java 8 language features in your existing projects.
To use incremental build with Jack add the following to your build.gradle file:
Enable Jack Incremental Compile Option
Jack will automatically apply annotations processors in your classpath. To use an annotation processor at compile-time without bundling it in your apk, use the new annotationProcessor dependency scope:
Enable Jack Annotation Processing
Merged Manifest Viewer: Figuring out how your AndroidManifest merges with your project dependencies based on build types, flavors and variants is now easier with Android Studio. Navigate to your AndroidManifest.xml and click on the new Merged Manifest bottom tab. Explore how each node of your AndroidManifest resolves with various project dependencies.
Merged Manifest Viewer
Test
Espresso Test Recorder: Sometimes writing UI tests can be tedious. With the Record Espresso UI tests feature, creating tests is now as easy as just using your app. Android Studio will capture all your UI interactions and convert them into a fully reusable Espresso Test that you can run locally or even on Firebase Test lab. To use the recorder, go to the Run menu and select Record Espresso Test.
Espresso Test Recorder
APK Analyzer: The new APK Analyzer helps you understand the contents and the sizes of different components in your APK. You can also use it to avoid 64K referenced method limit issues with your Dex files, diagnose ProGuard configuration issues, view merged AndroidManifest.xml file, and inspect the compiled resources file (resources.arsc). This can help you reduce your APK size and ensure your APK contains exactly the things you expect.
The APK Analyzer shows you both the raw file size as well as the download size of various components in your APK. The download size is the estimated size users need to download when the APK is served from Google Play. This information should help you prioritize where to focus in your size reduction efforts.
To use this new feature, click on the Build menu and select Analyze APK… Then, select any APK that you want to analyze.
APK Analyzer
Java-aware C++ Debugger: When debugging C++ code on targets running N and above, you can now use a single, Java language aware lldb instance. This debugger continues to support great lldb features like fast steps and memory watchpoints while also allowing you to stop on Java language breakpoints and view your Java language memory contents.
Auto Debugger Selection: Android Studio apps can now use debugger type “Auto.” This will automatically enable the appropriate debugger -- the Java language aware C++ debugger if enabled and otherwise the hybrid debugger for C++ projects. Projects exclusively using the Java language will continue to use the Java language debugger.
Enable Auto Debugger for C++
What's Next
Download
If you are using a previous version of Android Studio, you can check for updates on the Canary channel from the navigation menu (Help → Check for Update [Windows/Linux] , Android Studio → Check for Updates [OS X]). This update will download a new version, and not patch your existing copy of Android Studio. You can also download Android Studio 2.2 Preview from canary release site.
For the Android Studio 2.2 Preview, we recommend you run a stable version alongside the new canary. Check out the tools site on how to run two versions at the same time.
We appreciate any feedback on things you like, issues or features you would like to see. Connect with us -- the Android Studio development team -- on our Google+ page or on Twitter.
Posted by Dylan Reid and Elijah Taylor, Software Engineers, Chrome OS Users love Chromebooks for their speed, security and simplicity. According to IDC1, in Q1 of this year Chromebook shipments overtook Macs in the U.S. That means, thanks to your support, in the U.S. Chrome OS is now the second most popular PC operating system. As we continue to increase our focus on mobility, we want to make sure your apps are easily available on this new form factor, reaching the many Chrome devices while maintaining a great experience.
Today we announced that we’re adding Android apps to Chromebooks, which means users will be able to install the apps they know and love. Later this year you can expand your app’s reach to a new hardware platform and wider audience while maximizing the Google Play ecosystem. With expanded app availability, new use cases and improved workflows can be achieved for all Chromebook users, whether for personal use, for work or for education. As a developer we encourage you to test your app as described here.
Developers can start to optimize their app for the Chromebook form factor in advance of launch later in 2016. Here are some of the benefits:
Android Apps can be shown in 3 different window sizes to allow the best experience
Users can multi-task with multiple Android apps in moveable windows along with a full desktop browser, all within the familiar Chrome OS interface.
Keyboard, mouse, and touch input will seamlessly work together
Users will get Android notifications on their Chromebooks
Android apps benefit from the Wifi or Bluetooth connectivity setup by the user or the administrator
File sharing is seamless between Chrome and Android apps through the Files app
Performance of demanding apps such as games or design apps is excellent
In addition to being a great personal device, one of the reasons Chromebooks are popular in schools and businesses is that you can centrally manage and configure them with 200+ policies. Administrators can manage Android apps on Chromebooks using the same Admin Console. In addition to whitelisting or push installing specific apps to users, admins can selectively enable them for parts of their organization while disabling in others.
Please come to our Google I/O session on May 19th at 4 pm. You will hear directly from our friendly engineers on how to optimize your Android app for Chromebooks. We are making the feature available in early June on Asus Chromebook Flip, Chromebook Pixel (2015) and Acer Chromebook R11 specifically for developers to have sufficient time to test their apps. For the actual launch and thereafter we will keep adding support for the following list of devices. Please see detailed instructions on how to get started with testing your apps.
1 - IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker, May 2016
Posted by Pali Bhat, Senior Director, Product Management
Today, we’re enhancing our APIs, making it easier than ever for the developer community to integrate with Android Pay. With just a few lines of code, you can enable quick and seamless checkout to help increase purchase conversions and ongoing engagement.
Improve conversions within apps
We’ve been working with popular apps such as Airbnb, Yelp Eat24, Kickstarter, TicketMaster, Uber and many others to bring the ease of speedy checkouts to apps. We also want to make the same great in-app experience available to all developers, big or small. So we’re taking a few steps:
Earlier today, we announced Android Instant Apps, which gives users the ability to pay using Android Pay with a single tap, without the friction of getting a user to install the app to complete their transaction.
Example of Android Pay in Android Instant Apps
We’re opening the Android Pay API to all developers selling physical goods and services in markets where Android Pay is available—just sign up at http://ift.tt/1OK1DOI
We’ve teamed up with payment processors globally so developers can integrate Android Pay with their Android apps in just a few hours.
Enhance mobile web payments
Many users continue to make purchases on mobile sites. But buying something from a website on your phone can be clumsy and cumbersome, which results in much lower conversion rates on mobile sites than on desktop sites.
To make painful web checkout forms a thing of the past, we will be launching PaymentRequest, a brand new web API that we are developing together with Chrome and standardizing across browsers through W3C. Android Pay will be part of this API to allow users to pay on mobile websites as they do in-store and in-app.
Example of Android Pay in PaymentRequest
Drive deeper engagement
Thanks for all the great feedback on our Save to Android Pay API since launch. You spoke and we’ve listened: We think you’ll be thrilled with the latest improvements to the Save to Android Pay API. The following enhancements help developers build stronger loyalty and engagement with new and existing customers:
Enable users to add offers, loyalty cards and gift cards in the Android Pay app with the tap of a button. Simply add a deep link to an email, SMS message, push notification or within an app and you’re all set.
Enroll new customers into a loyalty program in a variety of ways with the new simplified sign-up feature. Customers can sign-up either in store via a NFC tap or through a sign-up page linked from an Android Pay transaction notification.
Example sign-up feature for Walgreens Balance Reward®
via Save to Android Pay from transaction notification
We believe that mobile payments can make for a better, more secure shopping experience - so we're in this together for the long haul. We’re building a robust Android Pay ecosystem, one that’s open and scalable, to enable developers to drive mobile payments - and their businesses - forward. We're very excited for the road ahead and we hope you are too.
To learn more about Android Pay and share your feedback, visit our developer pages.
It’s been a little while since we made a release of Google Play services, because we’ve been busy integrating Firebase. While Firebase will contain the SDKs you’ve come to know and love for building mobile applications that run cross platform, we’ll also continue to ship Google Play services updates with new SDKs regularly. Firebase was built using Google Play services 9.0, so let’s dig a little deeper into some of the new and cool APIs that are available in this release.
Ads
If you build apps that monetize with ads, we’ve added a lot of updates since 8.4. There's a new Initialization method that publishers can use to kick off the SDK at app start. There's also a new native ads format: Native Ads Express. With Native Ads Express, publishers can define CSS templates for their ad units that define fonts, colors, positioning, and other style information. AdMob combines these with advertiser assets like headlines and calls to action to make a finished ad, which is displayed in a NativeExpressAdView. Moving the work of customizing presentation off the device means there's less mobile code required, plus it's possible to update templates without redeploying the app.
Nearby
We’re continuing to update BLE beacon scanning in Nearby Messages. Any app with ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION will be able to scan for beacons via Nearby without any additional permissions. We recommend developers check to see if the app has the location permission prior to calling GoogleApiClient.connect(). Get started here.
For peer-to-peer Nearby Messages, there’s now an option to show the opt-in dialog upon connection to the GoogleApiClient which significantly reduces boilerplate for obtaining the Nearby permission.
Player Stats API
We’re also continuing to update the Play Games Client SDK with improvements to the Player Stat API and the public launch of the video recording API. The Player Stats API now has Predictive Analytics to help you identify which groups of players are likely to spend or churn, and we are adding new predictions for how much a player is likely to spend within 28 days and the probability that a player is a high spender. This allows you to tailor experiences for these players to try to increase their spend or engagement. Learn more about the Player Stats API.
Video recording API
You will be able to easily add video recording to your app and let users share their videos with their friends and on YouTube in a few simple steps. In the coming months, we are also adding live streaming functionality to allow your fans to broadcast their gameplay experiences in real time on YouTube.
That’s it for this release of Google Play services 9.0 -- we’re continuing to ship new APIs all the time so watch this blog for future announcements.
Posted by Purnima Kochikar, Director, Google Play Apps & Games Google Play reaches over 1 billion monthly active users giving developers the world’s largest app distribution platform. Last year, Play users installed apps 65 billion times. To keep that great momentum going, we’re continuing to listen to your feedback and invest in more ways to help you grow your app or game business. Today, we’re sharing new features that benefit developers of all sizes. Improvements to beta tests and app discovery on Google Play Beta testing is a crucial tool that many developers use in the Google Play Developer Console to test their apps with real users, gather feedback, and make improvements before launching widely. Open beta tests are helpful to get feedback from a large group of users and allow any user to join a beta test. We're making open beta tests easier to find and participate in: apps that are available only as open betas and aren’t in production yet will soon appear in Play search results, users will be able to opt-in from Play store listings directly, and users will be able to send you private feedback through your Play store listing too. We'll also be adding a new featured section to the store, called Google Play Early Access, showcasing a hand-picked group of promising open betas that haven’t gone to production yet. There are more than a million apps available on Google Play and we continue to work on making it easy for people to discover the apps they’ll love. To that end, you’ll start seeing new collections on the store for tasks that might require a combination of apps. For example, when you're buying a house, you’ll see the best apps for finding real estate, keeping notes, getting a mortgage, and travelling in the area in one handy collection. Developers don’t need to take any action to take advantage of this benefit, apps will automatically be chosen. These contextual collections make it easier for users to discover complimentary apps as well as new types of apps.
Users can now opt-in to beta tests from the Play Store
An example of a new collection for apps relating to buying a house
Improve your app with the Play pre-launch report Your app business relies on having high quality apps. To achieve quality, your apps need to be tested on a range of real devices before you ship them to your users. Play’s new pre-launch report summarizes issues found when testing your app on Firebase Test Lab for Android on a wide range of devices.
The pre-launch report in the Developer Console
Along with diagnostics to help you fix any crashes we detected in your app, your reports will also include screenshots from devices that use different Android versions, languages, and screen resolutions. These can help you find layout issues. We’ve also included early warnings of known security vulnerabilities that may have sneaked into your app -- even via third party libraries you rely on. You can enable the pre-launch report in the Developer Console. Gain deeper insights from user reviews at a glance and reply to user reviews more easily Your app reviews offer a wealth of information on what your users like and dislike about your app. We’re expanding on the improvements we made to ratings and reviews earlier this year, to offer you more ways to take advantage of reviews and better engage your audience. Review benchmarks let you see your app’s rating distribution compared to similar apps in your category for a list of common topics which are relevant for all apps – like design, stability, and speed. You are also able to see how each area impacts your app’s rating. Review topics will let you see your app’s rating distribution for a list of topics which are specific to your app. With this analysis functionality, you can more easily identify what users think of your app and where to focus your improvement efforts.
Review benchmarks in the Developer Console
Developers frequently tell us they find replying to reviews valuable as a channel to directly engage their audience and gather feedback. In fact, we have found that users who update their star rating after a developer has responded to their review increase it by an average of 0.7 stars. For developers who have their own customer support solutions, we’re making replying easier with a new Reply to Reviews API. In the last few months, we’ve tested the API with Zendesk and Conversocial, so you can now start replying to reviews directly from those popular platforms or build your own custom integration.
Developers can now reply to reviews on Google Play from platorms such as Zendesk and Conversocial
Understand more about user acquisition and conversion, and see how you’re doing compared to others The User Acquisition performance report in the Developer Console gives you a snapshot of how many users visit your store listing, how many install your app, and how many go on to make purchases. We’ve now added the ability to see user acquisition data by country and you’ll soon be able to see user acquisition benchmarks and compare your app’s conversion rates to similar apps on the Play store. With this data, you can find opportunities to focus your marketing efforts and increase your installs with tools like Store Listing Experiments.
User acquisition country data in the Developer Console
Building apps and games for billions of users Hundreds of millions of users, many of them in emerging markets, are coming online and, for many of them, their first experience is on an Android device. To help you get your app ready for this opportunity, we’ve created Building for Billions guidelines with a development checklist to help you optimize your app. You can also get more in-depth tips and best practices for expanding to new markets in the accompanying Building for Billions Playbook. To help you meet local expectations when you set your prices and make purchases more attractive to your users, the Developer Console will now automatically round prices to local conventions in each market. For example, for a US app priced at $1.99, a user in Japan would see ￥200 rather than a non-rounded price from a straight FX conversion. You can also set up pricing templates to change pricing for products in bulk. You can make this change in the Developer Console. While you're working on getting your app ready for billions of users, we've been enhancing the Google Play experience for them too. With improved compression, we've made app updates more data efficient, and we're focusing on making the Play Store itself faster than ever on all connection types. We’ve also revamped how we select visible apps in key markets like India and Brazil to better showcase apps that are more relevant locally and apps made by local developers. And we continue to add more payment methods in new countries, including carrier billing and gift cards in India and Indonesia. Two new apps: Get your app data and important notifications on the go, and stay up to date with best practices To give you access to your data when you need it, and to keep you informed of crucial business updates with notifications, we’re launching the Play Console app. You can access your app’s data including installs, uninstalls, crashes, ratings, and reviews. You can also receive push notifications for important news like when your app update is live on Google Play. And you can even reply to reviews directly in the app, making it easier and quicker to engage your audience when you want to. Get the Play Console app on Google Play today. Staying on top of all the features and best practices and strategies you should consider when growing your business can be a challenge. We’ve built another app, the Playbook by Google Play. The Playbook is a tailored list, based on your objectives, of the latest articles and videos from Google experts and across the web to help you grow a successful business on Google Play. Join the Playbook beta today and let us know your feedback.
The Play Console app
Playbook by Google Play
Finally, we will be soon making some updates to the Developer Distribution Agreement (DDA), which includes the ability for family members to share purchased apps on Google Play. Here you can see the updated DDA.
