

Android Developers Backstage
Android Developers
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
Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs
Episodes
Mentioned books

Sep 22, 2022 • 50min
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: Introduction to Media3 ExoPlayer on GitHub Guide for migrating to Media3 Jetpack Media3 on GitHub Subscribe to Android Developers → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye

Sep 1, 2022 • 52min
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 Android 13 for developers API diff Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs

Jul 25, 2022 • 44min
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: xkcd: Workflow Dan: @dsandler Adam: adam-cohenChet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs

Jun 8, 2022 • 43min
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: https://goo.gle/3QmMVPV Alan: @acleung Esteban: @estebandlc Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye

May 3, 2022 • 31min
Episode 185: Play Store
Jon and Andrew from the Play team discuss the major refactoring of the Play Store app, including the adoption of Jetpack Compose. They highlight the improvements made to architecture, network fetching, UI rendering, and data storage. The podcast also covers tech debt issues, adoption of Kotlin and MVVM architecture, handling accessibility challenges, app performance improvements, and considerations in migrating code.

Apr 5, 2022 • 43min
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 → https://goo.gle/3DHFJYm Skia's SkSL documentation → https://goo.gle/3uZK0CA Brian: @BrianOsman Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye

Feb 25, 2022 • 42min
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: Baseline Profile DAC Documentation Android Developers Blog Post on baseline profiles Jetpack Macrobenchmarking Library Rahul: @tikurahul Leland: @intelligibabble Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye

Feb 1, 2022 • 43min
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: Large screens documentation Material adaptive design docs ADS talk: Build Android UIs for any screen size Codelab: Support foldable and dual-screen devices with Jetpack WindowManager Samples Jetnews: Responsive UI implementation with Compose Jetcaster: Tabletop support implementation with Compose Google I/O Android App: Responsive UI implementation with Views Trackr: Responsive UI implementation with Views Clara: @clarabayarri Daniel: @pmatgoog Florina: @FMuntenescu Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye

Jan 11, 2022 • 37min
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. Yigit, Tor, Manuel, and Chet. Romain was AWOL. Check out the revamped and enhanced Guide to app architecture. Yigit: @yigitboyar Manuel: @manuelvicnt Romain: @romainguy Chet: @chethaase Tor: @tornorbye

Dec 16, 2021 • 46min
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.Yigit: @yigitboyar Romain: @romainguy Chet: @chethaase Tor: @tornorbye Subscribe to Android Developers → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs