Android Developers Backstage
Android Backstage, a podcast by and for Android developers. Hosted by developers from the Android engineering team, this show covers topics of interest to Android programmers, with in-depth discussions and interviews with engineers on the Android team at Google. Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs
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Episode 205: Time for Playtime
03/26/2024
Episode 205: Time for Playtime
In this episode, Tor, Romain, and Chet talk with Aurash Mahbod from the Play Games team at Google -- covering trends in mobile games, challenges for Android games developers, console games, and more! Chapters: Intro (00:00) What’s Aurash working on currently? (02:40) How much is Play store providing users with content based on previous interests? (05:29) Longstanding games vs new games (08:34) Mobile gaming vs console (10:07) Are there stats on what type of games people are playing? (18:07) Difficulties and solutions for transitioning games from various devices (21:14) Movie corner - War Games (25:15) How does Play console help devs optimize engagement? (26:23) What is the breakdown of tools that devs actually use for games? (27:53) Reducing the backend costs for devs (30:18) Where does loyalty content surface? (34:28) Balancing add load (35:16) Cloud saves (38:18) Aurash’s history with Play store (42:18) Wrap up (42:58) Romain: uy, , Tor: and Chet: se, , and Aurash: - @aurash Catch videos on YouTube →
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Episode 204: Fan’otations
02/21/2024
Episode 204: Fan’otations
In this episode, Tor, Romain, and Chet talk about one of Tor’s favorite topics: Lint! Specifically, we talk about Lint checks and the annotations that use them to enable better, more robust, and more self-documenting APIs. Lint: It’s not just for pockets anymore. Chapters: Intro (00:00) Lint checks for annotations (01:50) Lint checks in Android (05:38) Logic checks (07:34) Color representations (10:01) How does lint know the type of integer? (14:40) Kotlin annotations (17:19) Unsigned (20:10) HalfFloat (22:25) Thread annotations (25:12) @CallSuper (28:18) LayoutOpt (30:26) Lint checks in AndroidX (32:00) Restrict to annotation (36:45) Writing your own custom Lint checks (39:51) Lint testing framework (43:26) Kotlin buildList Lint check example (45:25) @Discouraged (48:15) Wrap up (50:08) @Deprecated Chet (50:50) Romain: , , Tor: and Chet: , , and Catch videos on YouTube → Subscribe to Android Developers →
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Episode 203: (W)rap
12/21/2023
Episode 203: (W)rap
In this episode, Tor, Romain, and Chet talk about some of the many things that happened this year in the world of Android development, including new devices and form factors, tool improvements, AndroidX features and libraries, and Jetpack Compose releases. And any tech podcast would be remiss without mentioning AI/ML, so we talk about that too. Tor, Romain and Chet Chapters: Intro (00:00) Google engineers vs Android (00:57) Big changes of 2023 intro (3:03) AI (3:38) Programming with AI (5:08) Writing with AI (8:52) New devices from Android - Pixel fold (12:31) Pixel watch (18:50) Bard (19:37) Changes in device release times (20:23) Major changes in devices vs incremental updates (21:42) Camera (22:40) Platform developments - mainline modules (24:03) More testing for Android (25:12) Flaky tests (26:55) Jetpack compose features (32:32) RTO (38:00) Shapes library and KMP (42:42) Final thoughts on big events of 2023 (45:03) Studio build improvements (46:43) Baseline profiles (49:21) Listener mail (50:45) Where has Chet been? (52:46) Metalava question (55:46) Wrap up wrap up (57:00) Romain: , , Tor: and Chet: , , and Catch videos on YouTube → Subscribe to Android Developers →
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Episode 202: AndroidX, Gradle and Metalava
11/01/2023
Episode 202: AndroidX, Gradle and Metalava
In this episode, Tor and Romain chat with Aurimas Liutikas from the AndroidX team. Topics include performance tuning the AndroidX Gradle builds using configuration caching, local caching and remote caching, as well as tracking API compatibility using the Metalava tool. Aurimas, Romain and Tor Romain: , , Tor: and Aurimas: and Catch videos on YouTube → Subscribe to Android Developers →
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Episode 201: Firebase in Android Studio
09/21/2023
Episode 201: Firebase in Android Studio
In this episode, Tor and Romain chat with Greg Baker and Joe Baker-Malone about exciting new Android Studio features made possible by Firebase integration. Physical device streaming allows you to connect remotely to physical devices hosted in Google’s secure data centers and use them for all your development needs. We also explore other time saving features like the ability to go from a crash report directly to the correct line of code, even across git branches. Tor, Romain, Joe, Greg Links: Romain: , romainguy@threads, Tor: tor.norbye@threads and Greg: @[email protected]
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Episode 200: WebGPU
08/15/2023
Episode 200: WebGPU
In this episode, Chet and Romain speak with Ken Russell and Corentin Wallez from the WebGPU team. WebGPU is a new API that brings modern GPU rendering and compute functionality to web and other platforms (including Android!). We talk about the genesis and capabilities of WebGPU, WGSL (WebGPU’s new shading language), the state of WebGL (the predecessor API for web GPU rendering), and lots of other fun related graphics topics. Ken, Romain, and Chet (not pictured: Corentin, who is on the monitor behind the photographer) Links: (and its ) Google I/O presentation (and associated ) Draft specs for and from Google/Chromium from Firefox Romain: , romainguy@threads, Tor: tor.norbye@threads and Chet: , chet.haase@threads, and Ken: Corentin: and Catch more from ADB → https://goo.gle/adb-podcast Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs
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Episode 199: Compose performance
07/18/2023
Episode 199: Compose performance
This time, Romain, Tor, and Chet talk with Leland Richardson, George Mount, and Chuck Jazdzewski from the Jetpack Compose team about performance. The team has been looking at performance issues recently and discusses what they’ve found, what gotchas lie in wait for library developers, what tools and compilers can magically handle for you... and what they can’t. Tune in to learn about why we worry about autoboxing (and why you probably shouldn’t). Foreground: Romain, Tor, George, and Chuck Background (on the monitor): Chet, Leland, and Cody (audio engineer/producer), plus another view of the Studio with Romain, Tor, George and Chuck again, for your recursive pleasure. Links: Romain: and Tor: tor.norbye@threads and Chet: and Leland: George: Chuck: Catch ADB on YouTube → Subscribe to Android Developers →
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Episode 198: Location location location, revisited
06/26/2023
Episode 198: Location location location, revisited
Since our original episode on location nearly nine years ago, a lot has happened in the location support for Android. In this episode, Wyatt Riley and Roy Want answer all of Tor's questions about how it works and cover recent developments like indoor location, elevation, and some tips for developers. Wyatt, Roy and Tor. Links: Precise indoor location Google Play Store has three apps that demonstrate Wi-Fi RTT (IEEE 802.11mc) capabilities for devices with 11mc support. (phone positioning in a building with 11mc capable Access Points) (Phone to Access Point ranging) (Phone to phone ranging) Catch ADB on YouTube→ Subscribe to Android Developers → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs
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Episode 197: Studio Bot
05/17/2023
Episode 197: Studio Bot
You saw it at Google I/O - now you can hear about it in the comfort of your own headphones! Tor, Romain, and Chet talk with Siva Velusamy and Sandhya Mohan from the Android Studio team about the just-launched Studio Bot. This new AI-powered assistant enables conversational queries in the IDE to help with coding, commenting, confusion, or if you just need a friend. Chet, Tor, Romain, Sandhy, and Siva in the Sunnyvale studio Studio Bot: Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube →
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Episode 196: Android Studio, behind the scenes
03/22/2023
Episode 196: Android Studio, behind the scenes
Raluca Sauciuc joins Tor and Romain to talk about what goes on behind the scenes in Android Studio. Raluca takes us through the tools and workflows used by the Android Studio team to improve performance and memory usage, and avoid future regressions. She also explains how the team adopts new versions of the IntelliJ IDE and platform, and how they can deal with massive code merges. Raluca, Romain, and Tor Romain: and Tor: and Chet: and Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube →
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Episode 195: Mainlining
02/15/2023
Episode 195: Mainlining
Chet and Romain talk to Jeff Hamilton and Anton Hansson from the Mainline team about "modular system components", and the new SDK extension framework which lets developers access them. Anton Hansson top right, and Jeff Hamilton bottom left, with Romain and Chet Blog post: AndroidX convenience constants, e.g. T_EXTENSION_INT: Subscribe to Android Developers →
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Episode 194: Subtext
01/17/2023
Episode 194: Subtext
This time, Tor, Romain, and Chet were joined by Siyamed Sinir and Sean McQuillan from the Android Text team to talk about, well, text. Which, it turns out, is a very deep, complicated, and constantly evolving technology. The conversation covered everything from the fundamentals of the text stack on Android to the capabilities and implementation of text in Jetpack Compose to internationalization to fonts to emojis to performance to.... you get the idea. There was a lot of stuff to talk about. And so much subtext. Romain, Chet, Sean, Tor, and Siyamed (using RTL support: Siyamed, Tor, Sean, Chet, and Romain) Links: Text is hard! & Romain: and Tor: and Chet: and Siyamed: Sean: Subscribe to Android Developers →
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Episode 193: Kotlin
12/22/2022
Episode 193: Kotlin
In this episode, James Ward joins Chet, Tor, and Romain to talk about Kotlin. We talked about Kotlin Multiplatform (both KMP and KMM) and what’s coming for Kotlin in 2023, especially the new K2 frontend. James, Tor, Romain, and Chet. Links: (KMP) (KMM) by JetBrains Romain: and Tor: and Chet: and James: Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs
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Episode 192: The Path Forward
11/21/2022
Episode 192: The Path Forward
This time, Romain and Chet ditched Tor so that they could geek out about graphics, talking about paths, Bézier curves, morphing, and more. Romain and Chet alone in the recording Studio. Links: Chet: Romain:
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Episode 191: Compose Lazy Layouts
11/11/2022
Episode 191: Compose Lazy Layouts
We recorded episode 191 from the studio in the London office, where Rebecca Franks from the developer relations team joined Chet as a guest host. We talked with Andrei Shikov, Matvei Malkov, and Andrey Kulikov from the Jetpack Compose engineering team about layouts, especially the lazy ones, which are the Compose equivalent of RecyclerView. Rebecca, Chet, Andrei, Andrey, and Matvei, in the London recording studio. Links: Chet: Romain: Tor: Rebecca Franks: Andrei Shikov: Matvei Malkov: Andrey Kulikov:
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Episode 190: Performance Review
11/04/2022
Episode 190: Performance Review
In this episode, Tor and Chet learn some more about performance from Carmen. Carmen works on the Android Platform Performance team and is an expert on everything related to performance. This is the perfect episode for you if you ever wanted to learn more about R8, perfetto, baseline profiles, custom performance tracing, power metrics, etc. Tor, Carmen, and Chet Links: Chet: Romain: Tor: Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs
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Episode 189: Video Conference
09/22/2022
Episode 189: Video Conference
In this episode (the first in-studio-with-guests recording since early 2020!), Tor and Chet spoke with Marc Bächinger, Toni Heidenreich, and Andrew Lewis from the Android Media team, where they work on video technologies and APIs like ExoPlayer. We talked about the evolution of ExoPlayer and platform media capabilities as well as ongoing and near-future features. Back: Chet and Tor, Front: Mark, Toni, and Andrew Links: Subscribe to Android Developers → Chet: Romain: Tor:
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Episode 188: Android 13
09/01/2022
Episode 188: Android 13
It’s our first episode back in the studio, and in a new, shiny studio too! In this episode, we talk about some of our favorite new features and changes of the new version of Android, both for users and developers. More importantly, the audio quality of this episode is much better thanks to the amazing work from the media production teams at Google. Tor, Romain, and Chet happy to be back in a studio with proper audio equipment Links Chet: Romain: Tor: Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube →
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Episode 187: System UI: A Retrospective
07/25/2022
Episode 187: System UI: A Retrospective
“Our job isn’t to remove complexity, but to manage it”- Glen Murphy (as remembered by Dan) In this episode, we talk with Dan Sandler and Adam Cohen from the SystemUI team. We dip into a bit of history, talking about where things were at when they joined the team (2009-10), and how things have developed in the many years since, including how these projects and teams scaled from a single person working on it part-time to now having much larger teams doing many more things. Which kind of describes software development in general. We also talk about how to expose (or not) gestures and features in a UI system. Related: there are some bonus pro-tips on using some hidden features of System UI, as a prize for careful listeners and podcast hosts. Top: Tor & Adam, Bottom: Dan, Dan’s book cover illustration, & Chet Links: Dan: Adam: Chet: Romain: Tor: Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube →
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Episode 186: Live Edit
06/08/2022
Episode 186: Live Edit
In this episode, we talk with Alan and Esteban from Android Studio about the new "Live Edit" feature recently launched at Google I/O in the Electric Eel canary build. We dive into the technology -- how it works, what the technical challenges are, and its current state. Chet with Esteban and Alan on the top row, Romain and Tor below Links: Alan: Esteban: Chet: Romain: Tor:
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Episode 185: Play Store
05/03/2022
Episode 185: Play Store
In this episode we chat with Jon and Andrew from the Play team about the Play Store app. The Play Store recently went through a major refactoring of their app, and Jon and Andrew will guide you through the reasons why they did it, the impact on their architecture, what problems they ran into, and why they decided to adopt Jetpack Compose for the UI layer. Jon, Romain, Andrew, Tor, and Chet Links: to help you build your app
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Episode 184: Skia and AGSL - Shaders of Things to Come
04/05/2022
Episode 184: Skia and AGSL - Shaders of Things to Come
In this episode we chat with Derek and Brian from the Skia team about Skia, pixel shaders, and the new “AGSL” API that lets you provide pixel shaders for advanced graphics effects, which was recently added to the preview release of Android T. If you’re interested in graphics technology, this is the episode for you. If you’re not interested in graphics... you should be. Brian, Romain DerekChet, Tor Links: Skia's SkSL/AGSL playground & debugger → Skia's SkSL documentation → Brian: Chet: Romain: Tor:
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Episode 183: Baseline Profiles
02/25/2022
Episode 183: Baseline Profiles
In this episode we chat with Rahul and Leland from the Android toolkit team about "baseline profiles", a new mechanism which lets applications ship with profiling metadata used at application install time to make it start faster. We discuss how this is used in Jetpack Compose, cloud profiles in general, and more. Chet, Romain, Rahul, Leland and Tor Links: Rahul: Leland: Chet: Romain: Tor:
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Episode 182: Large screens are a big deal
02/01/2022
Episode 182: Large screens are a big deal
In this episode, Clara (Android Toolkit), Florina (Android Developer Relations), and Daniel (Android Product Management) join your usual hosts to talk about large screens, what they are and what they mean for app developers. You will also learn about the resources at your disposal to build high quality experiences on large screen devices: from samples and guidance to canonical layouts and new APIs such as window size classes Romain, Clara, Florina, Daniel, Chet, and Tor Links: ADS talk: Codelab: Samples : Responsive UI implementation with Compose : Tabletop support implementation with Compose : Responsive UI implementation with Views : Responsive UI implementation with Views Clara: Daniel: Florina: Chet: Romain: Tor:
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Episode 181: Architecture → Fewer bugs at the end
01/11/2022
Episode 181: Architecture → Fewer bugs at the end
In this episode, we chat with Yigit Boyar (again!) from the Android Toolkit Team and Manuel Vivo from the Developer Relations team about application architecture. The team has released new architecture guidance, and we talk about that guidance here, as well as how our architecture recommendations apply in the new Jetpack Compose world.
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Episode 180: Kotlin Magic Platform
12/16/2021
Episode 180: Kotlin Magic Platform
In this episode, we chat with Yigit Boyar from the Android Toolkit Team about Kotlin multi platform, while Romain provides light background music on his piano.
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Episode 179: Flibberty Widget
11/30/2021
Episode 179: Flibberty Widget
In this episode, Chet and Romain talked with Nicole McWilliams and Petr Čermák from the London engineering office about their work on App Widgets and Digital Wellbeing.
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Episode 178: Hosts 3, Guests 0
11/15/2021
Episode 178: Hosts 3, Guests 0
In this episode, Chet, Romain and Tor sit down to chat about the Android DevSummit, and in particular all the new features arriving in Android Studio, along with a few other topics like Chet's new jank stats library, the Android 12L release, and more.
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Episode 177: Honor every photon
10/18/2021
Episode 177: Honor every photon
In this episode, Bart Wronski takes Tor, Romain, and Chet through the camera pipeline that powers the Pixel phones. We talked about how cameras capture images, and how the algorithms responsible for Pixel’s beautiful images work. If you’ve ever wondered how HDR+ or Night Sight works, this episode if for you!
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Episode 176: Android 12 - S stands for System UI
09/27/2021
Episode 176: Android 12 - S stands for System UI
In this episode, Chet, Romain and Tor have a chat with Selim, Vadim and Lucas from the Android system UI team, discussing many of the new features in Android 12's user interface.
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