Author/Stephanie Cuthbertson
Editor's note: Android developers all over the world have always been an important force in shaping the future of the Android platform. We cherish the voice of every developer. Today we are bringing you Android Beta in another form. Through a series of short videos and online release, it is convenient for you to read it flexibly according to your own schedule. There are millions of developers all over the world building their businesses on Android. The Beta version released today will continue to bring you the latest tools and continue to support your work. We also sincerely thank the developers who provided feedback on this release.
Today, we released the Android 11 Beta version and brought many blockbuster updates to developers. These updates include Kotlin coroutines, the latest developments in the Jetpack Compose toolkit, faster build completion in Android Studio, and a new revision of the Play Console.
Android 11 Beta is now available
Since February, everyone has provided us with a lot of feedback through the Android 11 developer preview. The first Beta version of Android 11 released today focuses on three themes: people-oriented , flexible control, and privacy .
people oriented
Android now highlights the human element and is better at communication. We have reshaped the way you communicate on your mobile phone, and let the operating system recognize those who are more important to you so that you can contact them more quickly.
- Conversation notifications will be displayed in a special area at the top of the notification bar. The design highlights the contact person and provides conversation-specific operations, such as opening chat in the form of Bubbles, creating conversation shortcuts on the home screen, and setting reminders.
- Bubbles allows users to keep the conversation visible and usable when switching between multiple tasks on the phone. Messaging and chat applications can provide this new experience on Android 11 through the notification-based Bubbles API.
- The keyboard prompt integration function brings users more convenient input completion and prompts. Auto-fill applications and IME (input method editor) can use this function to safely give context-based entity and string suggestions in the IME prompt list.
- Voice Access (voice operation) . For users who use voice-operated devices completely, Android now provides the device's integrated screen content perception function (visual cortex), which can understand the content presented on the screen and its context, thereby generating labels and operating points for barrier-free instructions.
Flexible control
The latest version of Android now helps you quickly access all smart devices and centrally control them:
- Device Controls allow users to access and control their connected devices faster and easier. Just long press the power button to bring up the device control menu, and complete device control in one stop. Applications can also appear in this control menu through the new API. Read the official documentation to learn more.
- Media Controls allow users to more quickly switch audio and video content playback devices-whether it is a headset, microphone or TV. You can now enable this feature in the developer options, and it will be enabled by default in subsequent Beta versions. Read the official documentation to learn more.
Privacy security
In Android 11, we bring users a higher level of control, allowing them to better manage sensitive permissions. We will also continue to ensure equipment safety through faster system updates.
- Single authorization: Users can now grant the application one-time authorization to access the device's microphone, camera, or location information. The next time the app is used, you need to request permission again to access it. Read the official documentation to learn more.
- Automatic resetting of permissions: If the user has not used an app for a long period of time, Android 11 will automatically reset all permissions associated with the app and notify the user. When the user uses the app next time, the app can request permission again. Read the official documentation to learn more.
- Back-end location: We announced in February this year that developers need to get approval before allowing apps to access location information in the back-end to avoid improper use of this information. Now we provide developers with more time to make changes. We will not force existing apps to comply with this policy before 2021. Read the official documentation to learn more.
- Since the release of the Google Play system update last year, we have been able to update the core components of the operating system more quickly and cover many devices in the Android ecosystem. In Android 11, the number of updateable modules has more than doubled, and the newly added 12 updateable modules will more effectively ensure privacy and security, and bring better consistency to users and developers.
Developer friendly
We hope to make it easier for developers to use the new version of Android. In terms of compatibility testing, there are these measures to reduce everyone's workload:
- Breaking changes only take effect when you release your app for Android 11. So until you explicitly modify the application manifest file, these changes will not affect you.
- A new interface has been added to the developer options to allow you to switch these update options one by one to better complete the test.
- A new platform stability milestone has been added. In this version, all API and behavior changes have been adjusted and entered a stable state. At this time, you can safely make the final update to the application.
- Version release schedule https://developer.android.google.cn/preview/overview#timeline
Android 11 also brings other improvements to improve development efficiency, such as ADB wireless debugging, ADB Incremental (ADB incremental installation) that can install large APKs faster, and adding more nullability annotations to the platform API (thus The problem is found during the build, and there is no need to wait until the runtime to make an error), etc.
The first Beta version of Android 11 has been released. You can experience the final SDK and NDK API, as well as various new features in your own apps. If you are using a Pixel 2, 3, 3a or 4 series device, please take the test and get the OTA update for Android 11 Beta. As always, you can directly download the system and install it on Pixel devices and Android emulators. Please visit the Android 11 developer site to view the complete Android 11 developer features.
Modern Android development
In the past few years, the Android team has made outstanding efforts to continuously improve the experience of mobile developers and enhance everyone's development efficiency. These efforts include Android Studio IDE, an excellent development language (yes, Kotlin), Jetpack library to make daily tasks easier, and Android App Bundle for better application distribution. These efforts will be collectively referred to as the modern Android development (Modern Android development), all to enable you to improve efficiency, so enjoy the release of the Android's potential.
Android Studio
Today, we have also brought you many new features through Android Studio 4.1 Beta and 4.2 Canary, focusing on these key demands from developers:
- Debugging is simpler , and it is easier to debug on Android devices through the ADB wireless debugging function. We have also added Database Inspector and dependency injection (Dagger) tools.
- The equipment testing experience is better . The Android emulator is now directly integrated in the IDE, and you can display the applications under test side by side while viewing the running results on different devices. We have also improved the Device Manager to make it easier for you to manage multiple devices.
- Easier machine learning : You can now import ML Kit and TensorFlow Lite models directly into the IDE.
- Faster construction and deployment : Kotlin symbol processing can cache task graphs in Gradle, making application deployment to Android 11 devices faster. The new Build Analyzer allows you to quickly find the performance bottleneck of application building.
- More powerful game tools : Improve the performance analysis interface, and bring you a brand new System Trace tool and native memory analysis functions.
Experience Android Studio 4.1 Beta and Android Studio 4.2 Canary now.
Kotlin and Jetpack
One of the important links in modern Android development is the programming language and development library: Kotlin is a modern and concise programming language, Jetpack provides a distinctive and powerful development library, both of which focus on improving the work of developers effectiveness.
- Tencent video link
https://v.qq.com/x/page/h0980xhkr5t.html
- Bilibili video link
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Xk4y1B7sT/
The rapid popularity of Kotlin (more than 70% of the top 1,000 apps on Google Play currently use Kotlin) and the favor of many developers have allowed us to use this language to optimize the development experience in a new way. Kotlin coroutines are one of the many powerful features of the Kotlin language. It allows you to write concurrent calls more easily and at the same time achieve higher readability. Now, we officially recommend that developers use coroutines. We also use coroutines in the 3 most commonly used Jetpack libraries ( Lifecycle , WorkManager, and Room ) so that you can use these libraries to write better quality code.
Kotlin itself has become more and more colorful with the evolution of the version, which is inseparable from the outstanding contributions of the Jetbrains team. Kotlin 1.4 brings faster code completion, more powerful type inference (enabled by default), various functional interfaces, and various improvements to improve the developer experience, such as the ability to mix named and positional parameters.
We are also continuing to promote the evolution of Jetpack. This set of development libraries covers multiple Android versions and helps you to implement common mobile development paradigms faster and easier. Many users have always been fond of Dagger, so we launched Hilt in conjunction with the Dagger team, which is a Dagger-based packaging solution and is easy for developers to use. We recommend using Hilt as a dependency injection solution for Android and provide an Alpha trial version. We also added an App Startup library to help application and library developers optimize the initialization of the library, thereby reducing application startup time. In addition, we have also updated many existing development libraries , including a major update to Paging 3 -first rewrite using Kotlin, and fully support coroutines!
New UI kit: the latest developments in Compose
To further improve development efficiency, you also need a powerful interface toolkit to quickly and easily build a beautiful interface on Android, while still having native access to system APIs. To this end, we built Jetpack Compose , which is a brand new modern interface toolkit that helps you create your ideal application with less code through powerful tools and intuitive Kotlin API.
Today, we bring you Jetpack Compose Developer Preview 2 , which contains many features that developers have been asking for:
- Interoperability with View (start to mix Composable methods in current applications) (New!)
- Animation (new!)
- Test (new!)
- Constraint layout (new!)
- Adapter list (new!)
- Material UI components
- Text and editable text (new!)
- Themes and images
- Window management
- Input and gesture
Through close cooperation with the Jetbrains Kotlin team, we have added many new features to Android Studio 4.2 to help you build applications with Compose:
- Kotlin compiler plugin for generating code
- Compose preview annotation
- Real-time interactive Compose preview
- Deploy a single Composable to the device
- Compose code completion
- Sample data API for Compose
Compose is not yet ready for production. Although we have optimized performance, we still need to try it out to get feedback. We plan to release the alpha version this summer, and release version 1.0 next year.
New revision of Google Play Console
Google Play is committed to helping developers grow their businesses. In order to better achieve this goal, we have redesigned the Google Play Console so that you can achieve further success on our platform. In addition to being more concise and easier to use, the new version of Play Console also adds a lot of features, allowing you to:
- Find, discover and understand the functions of the Play Console to be successful on Google Play
- Get the latest guidance on policy changes, release status and user feedback
- Better interpret data performance with new user acquisition reports
- With new user management options, everyone on the team can make good use of the features provided by the Play Console
Please read the article "Google Play Console Beta Version New Release" for further details. You can also visit play.google.com/console to participate in the Beta version experience. Your feedback can help us build a better Google Play Console for everyone, and we look forward to your voice.
- Tencent video link
https://v.qq.com/x/page/x0980f5awj2.html
- Bilibili video link
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1EC4y1a7bU/
to sum up
The updates we bring are much more than these! Welcome everyone to continue to pay attention to what we will release next:
- We have prepared 12 wonderful speeches for everyone , which will be released in the next period of time.
- We will continue to attract everyone's enthusiasm for Android 11 through the " 11 Weeks of Android " series of content, and every week we will bring new developer content that everyone pays attention to, such as UI, Jetpack and machine learning. Please go to the official website to check the release schedule.
- We will hold a series of online events around the world to discuss with you the new content of Android 11, application compatibility, and the basic knowledge and best practices of modern Android development. Go to the official website for more information. At the same time, you can also directly participate in the local activities of your GDG community:
July 4th Shanghai GDG Community
https://www.meetup.com/Shanghai-GDG/events/270723097/
Other community activities will be released later, so stay tuned.
At last
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