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

Episode 212: Happy birthday, Android Studio! 01/24/2025

Episode 212: Happy birthday, Android Studio! In this episode Chet, Romain and Tor chat with Xav and Jamal from the Android Studio team to talk about the history of Android’s IDE. Chapters: Intro (00:00) Topic of the day - Android Studio releases (00:59) What was before Android studio? (2:33) Eclipse (7:22) Jamal joins Android (13:56) Android studio 1.0 (16:40) Android studio 1.0 - launch (21:56) Android studio 3.0 (25:17) Differences after the Kotlin announcement (28:02) Studio 2.1 big complaints (31:32) Code names in Android (33:23) Favorite versions of Android Studio (38:01) Team growth 2010 - 2017 (41:22) Android Studio 4.0 - motion editor (43:26) Gradle (45:27) Profilers (53:06) Regrets? (54:04) Favorite features? (56:37) Wrap up (59:53) Links: → → → Jamal: Xavier: Romain: , , Tor: and Chet: , , and Catch videos on YouTube → Subscribe to Android Developers → #Featured #Android #AndroidDevelopersBackstage /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/34995125

Episode 211: Rules about performance tools 11/26/2024

Episode 211: Rules about performance tools In this episode Chet, Romain and Tor chat with Shai Barack about how the Android platform team studies performance and understands system health - and what is system health anyway? We talk about measuring performance, deciding trade-offs, and our favorite tools such as Perfetto, Compiler Explorer, and Android Studio's Memory Profiler. Chapters: Intro (00:00) System health (0:27) Efforts to make apps more efficient (3:35) Telemetry data (5:59) Trade offs between long battery life and good performance (8:21) Scheduling groups (10:38) Static drain (13:32) Collaborating with App developers vs operating system (19:10) High refresh rates (23:26) Reach vs engagement (32:02) What tools does your team use to optimize performance? (34:10) Godbolt.org (37:09) Demystifying (39:39) The best tools are multi-player (43:52) R8 or R-Not? (45:42) Optimizing for feature sets (48:05) Tools, not Rules (50:08) What are the tools I should be aware of as an app developer looking to upscale performance? (54:36) Allocation tracker (55:37) Open source tools (57:08) Useful resources for devs to understand various tools (59:04) Final thoughts (1:06:19) Links: Compiler Explorer → Perfetto → and Tools, not Rules → Shai: Romain: , , Tor: and Chet: , , and Catch videos on YouTube → Subscribe to Android Developers → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/34168665

Episode 210: Studio Jewelry 10/24/2024

Episode 210: Studio Jewelry In this episode Chet, Romain and Tor chat with Sebastiano about how the Android Studio team builds UIs. We talk about how Compose for Desktop is used in parts of Android Studio and how the Compose Markdown renderer available in the Jewel library makes Studio Bot tick. Chapters: Intro (00:00) Android Dev UX team (00:39) What kind of libraries and languages are used to build Android studio? (1:52) Swing (2:53) Reactive and declarative programming models (8:25) SKIA for Kotlin (10:01) Jetpack Compose widgets (11:54) Jewel (13:07) Text rendering across platforms (15:51) Differences in behaviors (17:40) Support for markdown files (20:26) What is markdown? (21:25) Swing and html (25:45) Selection handling in StudioBot (28:46) Boosting productivity with Compose (30:40) Standalone vs plugin artifacts (34:29) The difference between Jewel & Swing (35:30) HTML vs Markdown (39:31) Markdeep (41:53) Jewel's Markdown API (43:46) Where to find Jewel? (46:54) Sebastiano’s podcast - Code with the Italians (47:34) Final thoughts (49:13) Links: , for Desktop Sebastiano: , Romain: , , Tor: and Chet: , , and Catch videos on YouTube → Subscribe to Android Developers → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/33601522

Episode 209: Compose animations 09/12/2024

Episode 209: Compose animations In this episode Chet, Romain and Tor chat with Doris Liu from the Compose team about animations in Compose -- covering everything from the basic primitives up to the recently added Shared Element Transitions. Chapters: Intro (00:00) Animation capabilities of Compose (1:06) Different types of animation specs (3:43) Layers of functionality, transitions (7:49) TargetBasedAnimation (9:48) Vectors & velocity of color change (12:43) Second layer parallel to animation spec (16:39) Animation interruptions (18:48) Motion layout problem-solving (20:19) Both scale and move in question (25:45) Different mental models for layout animation in Compose vs. View (26:20) Shared element (31:05) Are there things you wish more people were aware of? (34:19) What's the tooling story for this? (41:57) What is Look Ahead? (43:16) All software is regret (48:49) New API: Modifier.animateBounds (51:52) How to reach Doris – leave a comment (55:57) Motion Frame of Reference Placement (57:29) Wrap up (59:10) Links: Shared element tutorial → https://goo.gle/3XrGYp5 Shared element talk → https://goo.gle/47tm3qm A quick guide to compose animations → https://goo.gle/3Tm853p The API layers except the highest level APIs we chatted about in the podcast → Doris: Romain: , , Tor: and Chet: , , and Catch more Android Developers Backstage on YouTube → https://goo.gle/adb-podcast Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/33025277

Episode 208: Micro optimizations 07/18/2024

Episode 208: Micro optimizations In this episode Tor and Romain find themselves without a guest and decide to chat about micro optimizations and writing custom tools. Tor and Romain Chapters: Intro (00:00) Micro optimizations (00:32) Kotlin explorer (3:25) Avoiding object allocations (6:49) Code Inefficiencies (8:10) Compilers (12:13) Understand assembly with AI (18:39) Layout opt (21:20) Programmers writing tools (21:52) char.isBlank (25:35) Lint checks (27:59) Companion objects (29:40) Java assertion mechanism (32:00) Hash maps (35:13) When to micro optimize and when not to (43:46) Benchmarking (47:26) New optimizations (48:46) Wrap up (50:46) Romain: , , Tor: and Catch videos on YouTube → Subscribe to Android Developers → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/32205897

Episode 207: AI development assistance 06/20/2024

Episode 207: AI development assistance In this episode we talk with Kathy Korevec from the AIDA team at Google about AI assisted developer tools, such as Android Studio -- which is using Gemini AI models provided by AIDA. Romain, Kathy, and Tor Kathy: Romain: , , Tor: and Check out → Catch videos on YouTube → Subscribe to Android Developers → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/31827772

Episode 206: Make it faster 05/22/2024

Episode 206: Make it faster In this episode we cover ADB -- not "Android Developers Backstage", but "Android Debug Bridge", the technology powering device connections. Romain and Tor talk with Fabien Sanglard from the Android Studio team on his work to improve the debug stack -- including the new USB speed detection feature recently unveiled at Google I/O. Chapters: Intro (00:00) You may know Fabien from… (00:50) Applying relevant knowledge to Android Studio (3:28) Communicating with remote devices and debugging (12:18) Accommodating a debugger (13:55) Fixed protocols and how to work around (16:10) What other versions of ADB do you use to get the suite faster? (19:27) Other ways to make the debugger faster (20:38) The differences between USB cables (21:51) How to find the right cable (30:17) ADB over wifi (32:41) How to detect which usb port is faster on your laptop? (34:46) Complexity of new cables (36:57) Install time of APK’s (37:41) New ways of helping full stack devs (45:44) Final thoughts (49:19) Viewer questions (57:54) Romain: , , Tor: and Fabien: , Check out → Catch videos on YouTube → Subscribe to Android Developers → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/31424717

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 → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/30551853

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 → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/30054463

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 → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/29188853

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 → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/28487309

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] /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/28106525

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 /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/27763362

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 → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/27500469

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 /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/27280083

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 → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/26872068

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 → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/26307453

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 → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/25943352

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 → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/25635228

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 /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/25410840

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: /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/25086297

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: /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/24983952

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 /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/24907944

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: /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/24460386

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 → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/24242235

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 → /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/23855616

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: /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/23368133

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 /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/22995911

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: /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/22689362

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: /episode/index/show/adbackstage/id/22259240

Android Developers Backstage

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