دسته: اخبار اندروید

Develop with confidence, powered by AI
Posted by Sandhya Mohan – Product Manager

To empower Android developers at work, we’re excited to announce a new offering of Gemini in Android Studio for businesses. This offering is specifically designed to meet the added privacy, security, and management needs of small and large organizations. We’ve heard that some people at businesses have additional needs that require more sensitive data protection, and this offering delivers the same Gemini in Android Studio that you’ve grown accustomed to, now with the additional privacy enhancements that your organization might require.

Developers and admins can unlock these features and benefits by subscribing to Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise editions. A Google Cloud administrator can purchase a subscription and assign licenses to developers in their organization directly from the Google Cloud console.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xSdSv75xck

Your code stays secure

Our data governance policy helps ensure customer code, customers’ inputs, as well as the recommendations generated will not be used to train any shared models. Customers control and own their data and IP. It also comes with security features like Private Google Access, VPC Service Controls, and Enterprise Access Controls with granular IAM permissions to help enterprises adopt AI assistance at scale without compromising on security and privacy. Using a Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise license enables multiple industry certifications such as:
More details are at Certifications and security for Gemini.

IP indemnification

Organizations will benefit from generative AI IP indemnification, safeguarding their organizations against third parties claiming copyright infringement related to the AI-generated code. This added layer of protection is the same indemnification policy we provide to Google Cloud customers using our generative AI APIs, and allows developers to leverage the power of AI with greater confidence and reduced risk.

Code customization

Developers with a Code Assist Enterprise license can get tailored assistance customized to their organization’s codebases by connecting to their GitHub, GitLab or BitBucket repositories (including on-premise installations), giving Gemini in Android Studio awareness of the classes and methods their team is most likely to use. This allows Gemini to tailor code completion suggestions, code generations, and chat responses to their business’s best practices, and save developers time they would otherwise have to spend integrating with their company’s preferred frameworks.

Designed for Android development

As always, we’ve designed Gemini in Android Studio with the unique needs of Android developers in mind, offering tailored assistance at every stage of the software development lifecycle. From the initial phases of writing, refactoring, and documenting your code, Gemini acts as an intelligent coding companion to boost productivity. With features like:
In Android Studio, Gemini is designed specifically for the Android ecosystem, making it an invaluable tool throughout the entire journey of creating and publishing an Android app.

Check out Gemini in Android Studio for business

This offering for businesses marks a significant step forward in empowering Android development teams with the power of AI. With this subscription-based offering, no code is stored, and crucially, your code is never used for model training. By providing generative AI indemnification and robust enterprise management tools, we’re enabling organizations to innovate faster and build high-quality Android applications with confidence.

Ready to get started? Here’s what you need

To get started, you’ll need a Gemini Code Assist Enterprise license and Android Studio Narwhal or Android Studio for Platform found on the canary release channel. Purchase your Gemini Code Assist license or contact a Google Cloud sales team today for a personalized consultation on how you can unlock the power of AI for your organization.

Note: Gemini for businesses is also available for Android Studio Platform users.

We appreciate any feedback on things you like or features you would like to see. If you find a bug, please report the issue and also check out known issues. Remember to also follow us on X, LinkedIn, Blog, or YouTube for more Android development updates!
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26/04/2025
Prioritize media privacy with Android Photo Picker and build user trust
Posted by Tatiana van Maaren – Global T&S Partnerships Lead, Privacy & Security, and Roxanna Aliabadi Walker – Product Manager

At Google Play, we’re dedicated to building user trust, especially when it comes to sensitive permissions and your data. We understand that managing files and media permissions can be confusing, and users often worry about which files apps can access. Since these files often contain sensitive information like family photos or financial documents, it’s crucial that users feel in control. That’s why we’re working to provide clearer choices, so users can confidently grant permissions without sacrificing app functionality or their privacy.

Below are a set of best practices to consider for improving user trust in the sharing of broad access files, ultimately leading to a more successful and sustainable app ecosystem.

Prioritize user privacy with data minimization

Building user trust starts with requesting only the permissions essential for your app’s core functions. We understand that photos and videos are sensitive data, and broad access increases security risks. That’s why Google Play now restricts READ_MEDIA_IMAGES and READ_MEDIA_VIDEO permissions, allowing developers to request them only when absolutely necessary, typically for apps like photo/video managers and galleries.

Leverage privacy-friendly solutions

Instead of requesting broad storage access, we encourage developers to use the Android Photo Picker, introduced in Android 13. This tool offers a privacy-centric way for users to select specific media files without granting access to their entire library. Android photo picker provides an intuitive interface, including access to cloud-backed photos and videos, and allows for customization to fit your app’s needs. In addition, this system picker is backported to Android 4.4, ensuring a consistent experience for all users. By eliminating runtime permissions, Android photo picker simplifies the user experience and builds trust through transparency.

Build trust through transparent data practices

We understand that some developers have historically used custom photo pickers for tailored user experiences. However, regardless of whether you use a custom or system picker, transparency with users is crucial. Users want to know why your app needs access to their photos and videos.

Developers should strive to provide clear and concise explanations within their apps, ideally at the point where the permission is requested. Take the following in consideration while crafting your permission request mechanisms as possible best practices guidelines:
Learn how Snap has embraced the Android System Picker to prioritize user privacy and streamline their media selection experience. Here’s what they have to say about their implementation:

“One of our goals is to provide a seamless and intuitive communication experience while ensuring Snapchatters have control over their content. The new flow of the Android Photo Picker is the perfect balance of providing user control of the content they want to share while ensuring fast communication with friends on Snapchat.”

– Marc Brown, Product Manager

Get started

Start building a more trustworthy app experience. Explore the Android Photo Picker and implement privacy-first data practices today.

Acknowledgement

Special thanks to: May Smith – Product Manager, and Anita Issagholyan – Senior Policy Specialist
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26/04/2025
New Android Vitals Metrics are here

Posted by Karan Jhavar – Product Manager, Android Frameworks, and Dan Brown – Product Manager, Google Play

Android has long championed performance, continuously evolving to deliver exceptional user experiences. Building upon years of refinement, we’re now focusing on pinpointing resource-intensive use cases and developing platform-level solutions that benefit all users, across the vast Android ecosystem.

Since the launch of Android vitals in Play Console in 2017, Play has been investing in providing fleet-wide visibility into performance issues, making it easier to identify and fix problems as they occur. Today, Android and Google Play are taking a significant step forward in partnership with top OEMs, like Samsung, leveraging their real-world insights into excessive resource consumption. Our shared goal is to make Android development more streamlined and consistent by providing a standardized definition of what good and great looks like when it comes to technical quality.

“Samsung is excited to collaborate with Android and Google Play on these new performance metrics. By sharing our user experience insights, we aim to help developers build truly optimized apps that deliver exceptional performance and battery life across the ecosystem. We believe this collaboration will lead to a more consistent and positive experience for all Android users.”

– Samsung

We’re embarking on a multi-year plan to empower you with the tools and data you need to understand, diagnose, and improve your app’s resource consumption, resulting in happier and more engaged users, both for your app, and Android as a whole.

Today, we’re launching the first of these new metrics in beta: excessive wake locks. This metric directly addresses one of the most significant frustrations for Android users – excessive battery drain. By optimizing your app’s wake lock behavior, you can significantly enhance battery life and user satisfaction.

The Android vitals beta metric reports partial wake lock use as excessive when all of the partial wake locks, added together, run for more than 3 hours in a 24-hour period. The current iteration of excessive wake lock metrics tracks time only if the wake lock is held when the app is in the background and does not have a foreground service.

These new metrics will provide comprehensive, fleet-wide visibility into performance and battery life, equipping developers with the data needed to diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks. We have also revamped our wake lock documentation which shares effective wake lock implementation strategies and best practices.

In addition, we are also launching the excessive wake lock metric documentation to provide clear guidance on interpreting the metrics. We highly encourage developers to check out this page and provide feedback with their use case on this new metric. Your input is invaluable in refining these metrics before their general availability. In this beta phase, we’re actively seeking feedback on the metric definition and how it aligns with your app’s use cases. Once we reach general availability, we will explore Play Store treatments to help users choose apps that meet their needs.

Later this year, we may introduce additional metrics in Android vitals highlighting additional critical performance issues.

Thank you for your ongoing commitment to delivering delightful, fast, and high-performance experiences to users across the entire Android ecosystem.

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25/04/2025
Improve app quality and performance with new Play Console insights
Posted by Dan Brown, Dina Gandal and Hadar Yanos – Product Managers, Google Play

At Google Play, we partner with developers like you to help your app or game business reach its full potential, providing powerful tools and insights every step of the way. In Google Play Console, you’ll find the features needed to test, publish, improve, and grow your apps — and today, we’re excited to share several enhancements to give you even more actionable insights, starting with a redesigned app dashboard tailored to your key workflows, and new metrics designed to help you improve your app quality.

Focus on the metrics that matter with the redesigned app dashboard

The first thing you’ll notice is the redesigned app dashboard, which puts the most essential insights front and center. We know that when you visit Play Console, you usually have a goal in mind — whether that’s checking on your release status or tracking installs. That’s why you’ll now see your most important metrics grouped into four core developer objectives:
Each objective highlights the three metrics most important to that goal, giving you a quick grasp of how your app is doing at a glance, as well as how those metrics have changed over time. For example, you can now easily compare between your latest production release against your app’s overall performance, helping you to quickly identify any issues. In the screenshot below, the latest production release has a crash rate of 0.24%, a large improvement over the 28-day average crash rate shown under “Monitor and Improve.”

The redesigned app dashboard in Play Console helps you see your most important metrics at a glance.

At the top of the page, you’ll see the status of your latest release changes prominently displayed so you know when it’s been reviewed and approved. If you’re using managed publishing, you can also see when things are ready to publish. And based on your feedback, engagement and monetization metrics now show a comparison to your previous year’s data so you can make quick comparisons.

The new app dashboard also keeps you updated on the latest news from Play, including recent blog posts, new features relevant to your app, and even special invitations to early access programs.

In addition to what’s automatically displayed on the dashboard, we know many of you track other vital metrics for your role or business. That’s why we’ve added the “Monitor KPI trends” section at the bottom of your app dashboard. Simply scroll down and personalize your view by selecting the trends you need to monitor. This customized experience allows each user in your developer account to focus on their most important insights.

Later this year, we’ll introduce new overview pages for each of the four core developer objectives. These pages will help you quickly understand your performance, showcase tools and features within each domain, and list recommended actions to optimize performance, engagement, and revenue across all your apps.

Get actionable notifications when and where you need them

If you spend a lot of time in Play Console, you may have already noticed the new notification center. Accessible from every page, the notification center helps you to stay up to date with your account and apps, and helps you to identify any issues that may need urgent attention.

To help you quickly understand and act on important information, we now group notifications about the same issue across multiple apps. Additionally, notifications that are no longer relevant will automatically expire, ensuring you only see what needs your attention. Plus, notifications will be displayed on the new app dashboard within the relevant objectives.

Improve app quality and performance with new Play Console metrics

One of Play’s top goals is to provide the insights you need to build high-quality apps that deliver exceptional user experiences. We’re continuing to expand these insights, helping you prevent issues like crashes or ANRs, optimize your app’s performance, and reduce resource consumption on users’ devices.

Users expect a polished experience across their devices, and we’ve learned from you it can be difficult to make your app layouts work seamlessly across phones and large screens. To help with this, we’ve introduced pre-review checks for incorrect edge-to-edge rendering, while another new check helps you detect and prevent large screen layout issues caused by letterboxing and restricted layouts, along with resources on how to fix them.

We’re also making it easier to find and triage the most important quality issues in your app. The release dashboard in Play Console now displays prioritized quality issues from your latest release, alongside the existing dashboard features for monitoring post-launch, like crashes and ANRs This addition provides a centralized view of user-impacting issues, along with clear instructions to help you resolve critical user issues to improve your users’ experiences.

The quality panel at the top of the release dashboard gives you a prioritized view of issues that affect users on your latest release and provides instructions on how to fix them.

A new “low memory kill” (LMK) metric is available in Android vitals and the Reporting API. Low memory issues cause your app to terminate without any logging, and can be notoriously difficult to detect. We are making these issues visible with device-specific insights into memory constraints to help you identify and fix these problems. This will improve app stability and user engagement, which is especially crucial for games where LMKs can disrupt real-time gameplay.

The low memory kill metric in Android vitals gives you device-specific insights into low memory terminations, helping you improve app stability and user engagement.

We’re also collaborating closely with leading OEMs like Samsung, leveraging their real-world insights to define consistent benchmarks for optimal technical quality across Android devices. Excessive wakelocks are a leading cause of battery drain, a top frustration for users. Today, we’re launching the first of these new metrics in beta: excessive wake locks in Android vitals. Take a look at our wakelock documentation and provide feedback on the metric definition. Your input is essential as we refine this metric towards general availability, and will inform our strategy for making this information available to users on the Play Store so they can make informed decisions when choosing apps.

Together, these updates provide you with even more visibility into your app’s performance and quality, enabling you to build more stable, efficient, and user-friendly apps across the Android ecosystem. We’ll continue to add more metrics and insights over time. To stay informed about all the latest Play Console enhancements and easily find updates relevant to your workflow, explore our new What’s new in Play Console page, where you can filter features by the four developer objectives.
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25/04/2025
The Fourth Beta of Android 16
Posted by Matthew McCullough – VP of Product Management, Android Developer

Today we’re bringing you Android 16 beta 4, the last scheduled update in our Android 16 beta program. Make sure your app or game is ready. It’s also the last chance to give us feedback before Android 16 is released.

Android 16 Beta 4

This is our second platform stability release; the developer APIs and all app-facing behaviors are final. Apps targeting Android 16 can be made available in Google Play. Beta 4 includes our latest fixes and optimizations, giving you everything you need to complete your testing. Head over to our Android 16 summary page for a list of the features and behavior changes we’ve been covering in this series of blog posts, or read on for some of the top changes of which you should be aware.

Now available on more devices

The Android 16 Beta is now available on handset, tablet, and foldable form factors from partners including Honor, iQOO, Lenovo, OnePlus, OPPO, Realme, vivo, and Xiaomi. With more Android 16 partners and device types, many more users can run your app on the Android 16 Beta.

Get your apps, libraries, tools, and game engines ready!

If you develop an SDK, library, tool, or game engine, it’s even more important to prepare any necessary updates now to prevent your downstream app and game developers from being blocked by compatibility issues and allow them to target the latest SDK features. Please let your developers know if updates to your SDK are needed to fully support Android 16.

Testing involves installing your production app or a test app making use of your library or engine using Google Play or other means onto a device or emulator running Android 16 Beta 4. Work through all your app’s flows and look for functional or UI issues. Review the behavior changes to focus your testing. Each release of Android contains platform changes that improve privacy, security, and overall user experience, and these changes can affect your apps. Here are several changes to focus on that apply, even if you aren’t yet targeting Android 16:
Other changes that will be impactful once your app targets Android 16:

Get your app ready for the future:
Remember to thoroughly exercise libraries and SDKs that your app is using during your compatibility testing. You may need to update to current SDK versions or reach out to the developer for help if you encounter any issues.

Once you’ve published the Android 16-compatible version of your app, you can start the process to update your app’s targetSdkVersion. Review the behavior changes that apply when your app targets Android 16 and use the compatibility framework to help quickly detect issues.

Two Android API releases in 2025

This Beta is for the next major release of Android with a planned launch in Q2 of 2025 and we plan to have another release with new developer APIs in Q4. This Q2 major release will be the only release in 2025 that includes behavior changes that could affect apps. The Q4 minor release will pick up feature updates, optimizations, and bug fixes; like our non-SDK quarterly releases, it will not include any intentional app-breaking behavior changes.

We’ll continue to have quarterly Android releases. The Q1 and Q3 updates provide incremental updates to ensure continuous quality. We’re putting additional energy into working with our device partners to bring the Q2 release to as many devices as possible.

There’s no change to the target API level requirements and the associated dates for apps in Google Play; our plans are for one annual requirement each year, tied to the major API level.

Get started with Android 16

You can enroll any supported Pixel device to get this and future Android Beta updates over-the-air. If you don’t have a Pixel device, you can use the 64-bit system images with the Android Emulator in Android Studio. If you are currently on Android 16 Beta 3 or are already in the Android Beta program, you will be offered an over-the-air update to Beta 4.

While the API and behaviors are final and we are very close to release, we’d still like you to report issues on the feedback page. The earlier we get your feedback, the better chance we’ll be able to address it in this or a future release.

For the best development experience with Android 16, we recommend that you use the latest Canary build of Android Studio Narwhal. Once you’re set up, here are some of the things you should do:
We’ll update the beta system images and SDK regularly throughout the Android 16 release cycle. Once you’ve installed a beta build, you’ll automatically get future updates over-the-air for all later previews and Betas.

For complete information on Android 16 please visit the Android 16 developer site.
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25/04/2025
Pixel’s Call Notes hints at automatic call recording for the US
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
TL;DR

Pixel 9 phones in the US currently require manually activating Call Notes on every call to record, transcribe, and summarize them.

Google has been spotted testing automatic call recording within the Call Notes feature, indicating that automatic call recording could finally make its way to the US.

However, Google has previously stated that automatic activation wasn’t meant for public release and was limited to internal testing only. So the fate of the feature remains in the air.
The Google Phone app, which is preloaded on several Android flagships, offers call recording in several regions globally, but not in the US (even though you can legally record calls in most states after adequate consent). Instead, users in the US have to use the Pixel 9’s Call Notes feature to record a phone call. However, Call Notes is only available per call, requiring users to consciously activate it whenever they want to record, transcribe, or summarize a phone call. Now, Google has been spotted working on automatic call recording within the Call Notes feature that would make life a lot easier, but we aren’t sure if the company ever plans to release it.

You’re reading an Authority Insights story on Android Authority. Discover Authority Insights for more exclusive reports, app teardowns, leaks, and in-depth tech coverage you won’t find anywhere else.

An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.

Currently, on Pixel 9 series devices in the US, you can activate the Call Notes feature during a call to start recording it and receive an AI-generated summary and even the call transcript.

However, this action is deliberate and manual, as you have to activate the feature by tapping the Call Notes button during every call you want to record. Needless to say, it’s pretty cumbersome if you want to use the feature on many calls.

But what if you could generate call notes automatically? Google was spotted deliberating on the idea in August 2024, with settings to automatically start Call Notes for various phone calls.

However, in a statement to Android Police back then, a Google spokesperson mentioned that the code related to automatic activation wasn’t meant for public release and was limited to internal testing only. Consequently, automatic Call Notes did not roll out to Pixel 9 users in the US at the time.
Curiously, these options still exist within the Phone by Google app. With Phone v172.0 beta, Google has now tweaked the automatic Call Notes option to Automatic Call Recording, switching from an automatic summary to automatic recording. The options are also now limited to these two:

Automatically record unknown numbers

Automatically record these numbers

We managed to activate the settings page for the feature, and here’s what it looks like right now:
The above-mentioned new options are similar to the Call Recording settings, which users in several countries already have.

However, the US doesn’t have the Call Recording feature in the Phone by Google app, so this is one roundabout way of bringing that functionality to the region. The revised settings also don’t mean Call Notes will automatically summarize or transcribe the recordings. But, presuming you have the recordings stored for later use, you can always select to do so later on calls that you need summaries and transcriptions for, so it won’t be all that inconvenient.

It remains to be seen whether Google finally allows US users to automatically record calls and work its Call Notes magic. For now, users in the US must stick to the manual and cumbersome method of individually beginning Call Notes for every call they need to record, transcribe, and summarize. Given its utility and the progress the company has already made on the feature, we hope it will be released soon.

Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at news@androidauthority.com. You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it’s your choice.
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24/04/2025
Android Developers Blog: Get ready for Google I/O: Program lineup revealed
Posted by the Google I/O team

The Google I/O agenda is live. We’re excited to share Google’s biggest announcements across AI, Android, Web, and Cloud May 20-21. Tune in to learn how we’re making development easier so you can build faster.

We’ll kick things off with the Google Keynote at 10:00 AM PT on May 20th, followed by the Developer Keynote at 1:30 PM PT. This year, we’re livestreaming two days of sessions directly from Mountain View, bringing more of the I/O experience to you, wherever you are.

Here’s a sneak peek of what we’ll cover:

AI advancements: Learn how Gemini models enable you to build new applications and unlock new levels of productivity. Explore the flexibility offered by options like our Gemma open models and on-device capabilities.

Build excellent apps, across devices with Android: Crafting exceptional app experiences across devices is now even easier with Android. Dive into sessions focused on building intelligent apps with
Google AI and boosting your productivity, alongside creating adaptive user experiences and leveraging the power of Google Play.

Powerful web, made easier: Exciting new features continue to accelerate web development, helping you to build richer, more reliable web experiences. We’ll share the latest innovations in web UI, Baseline progress, new multimodal built-in AI APIs using Gemini Nano, and how AI in DevTools streamline building innovative web experiences.

Plan your I/O

Join us online for livestreams May 20-21, followed by on-demand sessions and codelabs on May 22. Register today and explore the full program for sessions like these:

We’re excited to share what’s next and see what you build!
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24/04/2025
What’s new in the Jetpack Compose April ’25 release
Posted by Jolanda Verhoef – Developer Relations Engineer

Today, as part of the Compose April ‘25 Bill of Materials, we’re releasing version 1.8 of Jetpack Compose, Android’s modern, native UI toolkit, used by many developers. This release contains new features like autofill, various text improvements, visibility tracking, and new ways to animate a composable’s size and location. It also stabilizes many experimental APIs and fixes a number of bugs.

To use today’s release, upgrade your Compose BOM version to 2025.04.01 :
implementation(platform("androidx.compose:compose-bom:2025.04.01"))
Note: If you are not using the Bill of Materials, make sure to upgrade Compose Foundation and Compose UI at the same time. Otherwise, autofill will not work correctly.

Autofill

Autofill is a service that simplifies data entry. It enables users to fill out forms, login screens, and checkout processes without manually typing in every detail. Now, you can integrate this functionality into your Compose applications.

Setting up Autofill in your Compose text fields is straightforward:
TextField( state = rememberTextFieldState(), modifier = Modifier.semantics { contentType = ContentType.Username } )
For full details on how to implement autofill in your application, see the Autofill in Compose documentation.

Text

When placing text inside a container, you can now use the autoSize parameter in BasicText to let the text size automatically adapt to the container size:
Box { BasicText( text = "Hello World", maxLines = 1, autoSize = TextAutoSize.StepBased() ) }
You can customize sizing by setting a minimum and/or maximum font size and define a step size. Compose Foundation 1.8 contains this new BasicText overload, with Material 1.4 to follow soon with an updated Text overload.

Furthermore, Compose 1.8 enhances text overflow handling with new TextOverflow.StartEllipsis or TextOverflow.MiddleEllipsis options, which allow you to display ellipses at the beginning or middle of a text line.
val text = "This is a long text that will overflow" Column(Modifier.width(200.dp)) { Text(text, maxLines = 1, overflow = TextOverflow.Ellipsis) Text(text, maxLines = 1, overflow = TextOverflow.StartEllipsis) Text(text, maxLines = 1, overflow = TextOverflow.MiddleEllipsis) }
And finally, we’re expanding support for HTML formatting in AnnotatedString, with the addition of bulleted lists:
Text( AnnotatedString.fromHtml( """ <h1>HTML content</h1> <ul> <li>Hello,</li> <li>World</li> </ul> """.trimIndent() ) )
Visibility tracking

Compose UI 1.8 introduces a new modifier: onLayoutRectChanged. This API solves many use cases that the existing onGloballyPositioned modifier does; however, it does so with much less overhead. The onLayoutRectChanged modifier can debounce and throttle the callback per what the use case demands, which helps with performance when it’s added onto an item in LazyColumn or LazyRow.

This new API unlocks features that depend on a composable’s visibility on screen. Compose 1.9 will add higher-level abstractions to this low-level API to simplify common use cases.

Animate composable bounds

Last year we introduced shared element transitions, which smoothly animate content in your apps. The 1.8 Animation module graduates LookaheadScope to stable, includes numerous performance and stability improvements, and includes a new modifier, animateBounds. When used inside a LookaheadScope, this modifier automatically animates its composable’s size and position on screen, when those change:
Box( Modifier .width(if(expanded) 180.dp else 110.dp) .offset(x = if (expanded) 0.dp else 100.dp) .animateBounds(lookaheadScope = this@LookaheadScope) .background(Color.LightGray, shape = RoundedCornerShape(12.dp)) .height(50.dp) ) { Text("Layout Content", Modifier.align(Alignment.Center)) }
Increased API stability

Jetpack Compose has utilized @Experimental annotations to mark APIs that are liable to change across releases, for features that require more than a library’s alpha period to stabilize. We have heard your feedback that a number of features have been marked as experimental for some time with no changes, contributing to a sense of instability. We are actively looking at stabilizing existing experimental APIs—in the UI and Foundation modules, we have reduced the experimental APIs from 172 in the 1.7 release to 70 in the 1.8 release. We plan to continue this stabilization trend across modules in future releases.

Deprecation of contextual flow rows and columns

As part of the work to reduce experimental annotations, we identified APIs added in recent releases that are less than optimal solutions for their use cases. This has led to the decision to deprecate the experimental ContextualFlowRow and ContextualFlowColumn APIs, added in Foundation 1.7. If you need the deprecated functionality, our recommendation for now is to copy over the implementation and adapt it as needed, while we work on a plan for future components that can cover these functionalities better.

The related APIs FlowRow and FlowColumn are now stable; however, the new overflow parameter that was added in the last release is now deprecated.

Improvements and fixes for core features

In response to developer feedback, we have shipped some particularly in-demand features and bug fixes in our core libraries:
Get started!

We’re grateful for all of the bug reports and feature requests submitted to our issue tracker – they help us to improve Compose and build the APIs you need. Continue providing your feedback, and help us make Compose better.

Happy composing!
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24/04/2025
Some Pixel 9 owners are convinced video quality just got worse
Joe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR

Owners of Pixel 9 family phones report stuttering and tearing video recorded from their cameras.

The issues seem to manifest when recording while zoomed in.

It’s possible a recent software update may be responsible
Across the world of smartphones, the landscape is always evolving. Every day we see the arrival of new updates, apps, and firmware patches that change the mobile experience for users in myriad ways — both desired and not. And while some of those changes are quite conspicuous, others are much more difficult to characterize, and we’re left wondering if something’s truly different, or if we’re just imagining things. Right now, we find ourselves in just such that kind of situation, asking if Pixel 9 video recording quality is getting worse, or if we’re just hallucinating.

While browsing Reddit’s GooglePixel sub the other day, we spotted a post from user oowwweee that caught our our eye, complaining about worse-than-expected video quality when filming on a Pixel 9 Pro XL past 3x zoom. Even though they were a pretty new owner of the phone, they noted that they only first observed the problem after installing the latest updates.

We might write that off as new-user unfamiliarity, but a number of other owners of Pixel 9-series phones chimed in with their own complaints, and it’s hard to ignore all the details aligning. We seem to be looking at some kind of temporal issue, with stuttering frames or images tearing. It only appears to manifest at intermediate zoom levels, and users report first noticing it after installing recent updates.

Compared to some of the other ways video quality could be impacted, not everyone’s going to necessarily notice or even really be bothered by something like this. That almost makes us even more curious: Is this an actual problem? Let’s hear from you:

Has your Pixel 9 gotten worse at recording video recently?

0 votes

More than just knowing whether or not you’re dissatisfied with zoomed video quality on your phone, we want to know exactly which Pixel model you’re experiencing this with. We’ve seen reports mentioning both the 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL, but we’re curious if this is impacting any other handsets, too.

After responding to our poll, scroll down and let us know in the comments which Pixel model you’re testing with, as well as when you first noticed a problem. Hopefully that will give us a little more data towards working out exactly what might be going on here.

Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at news@androidauthority.com. You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it’s your choice.
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22/04/2025
Google Chat could soon get scheduled messages and Gemini
Joe Hindy / Android Authority
TL;DR

Google Chat could finally get the ability to schedule messages, saving users from opting for third-party workarounds.

Users will be able to set the exact date and time for message delivery, and even view all scheduled messages in one place.

Google is also bringing Gemini features to Google Chat, letting users use the AI digital assistant within conversations.
Gmail comes preloaded on Android flagships, so it’s often the de facto email app for most people since it does the job quite well. Nestled within Gmail is Google Chat, another one of Google’s many messaging apps, but one that not as many people use daily. Google hasn’t forgotten about Google Chat, though, as it is working on the ability to schedule messages and even bring Gemini features to it.

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Scheduling messages within Google Chat

Currently, there is no way to schedule a message within Google Chat. Users have to resort to third-party services as a workaround to schedule a message in the DM. Thankfully, in the Gmail app v2025.04.13 release, we spotted clues that indicate Google is adding a way to schedule messages to send to people.
Code

<string name="MSG_SCHEDULING_MENU_TITLE">Schedule message</string> <string name="MSG_SEE_ALL_SCHEDULED_MESSAGES_BUTTON_TEXT">See all scheduled messages</string> <string name="MSG_X_NUMBER_MORE_SCHEDULED_MESSAGES_GOING_TO_BE_SENT_TO">{COUNT}+ messages scheduled to be sent to {GROUP_NAME}.</string> <string name="MSG_X_NUMBER_OF_SCHEDULED_MESSAGES_GOING_TO_BE_SENT_TO">{COUNT} messages scheduled to be sent to {GROUP_NAME}.</string> <string name="MSG_ONE_MESSAGE_SCHEDULED_TO_BE_SENT_BEYOND_THIS_WEEK">Your message will be sent to {GROUP_NAME} on {MONTH_AND_DAY} at {TIME}.</string> <string name="MSG_ONE_MESSAGE_SCHEDULED_TO_BE_SENT_LATER_IN_THIS_WEEK">Your message will be sent to {GROUP_NAME} on {DAY_OF_WEEK} at {TIME}.</string> <string name="MSG_ONE_MESSAGE_SCHEDULED_TO_BE_SENT_TODAY">Your message will be sent to {GROUP_NAME} at {TIME}.</string> <string name="MSG_ONE_MESSAGE_SCHEDULED_TO_BE_SENT_TOMORROW">Your message will be sent to {GROUP_NAME} tomorrow at {TIME}.</string>
As you can see from the strings, users will soon be able to schedule messages for a pre-defined time, day of the week, or specific date. There will be a dedicated section that will also allow users to see all the messages they have scheduled out already, making it easier to make any changes if needed. This ability to schedule messages will remove the need for third-party services to get the same functionality.

Gemini features for Google Chat on mobile

Beyond this, Google is also working on bringing Gemini features for Google Chat, which are already available on the web version.
Code

While using Gemini in Chat, you can use Gemini to summarize, list action items, or answer specific questions about a conversation you have open.
We managed to activate the feature to give you an early look from within the Gmail mobile app:

You will be able to access Gemini within the Google Chat tab in Gmail for Android by clicking on the Gemini icon in the header bar. Tapping on it will reveal a bottom sheet that has a few recommended actions. If these suggestions don’t work, you can type your prompt in the text box. Either way, Gemini will often suggest more follow-up prompts that users can fall back on to keep the conversation going with the AI until they are satisfied.

You can already use Gemini in Chat on the web to summarize a conversation or file, generate a list of action items, or answer specific questions about that space or conversation. It’s fair to presume that this functionality will also make its way to the Gmail mobile app.

Neither the ability to schedule messages nor Gemini in Chat on mobile is available to users right now. These features may or may not be coming in the future, but given their utility, we hope they do. We’ll keep you updated when we learn more.

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21/04/2025