When it comes to building apps for Android TV, things get pretty different when compared to building apps for phones. The experience completely changes for the user – in both the way that content is consumed and how the device is interacted with. Luckily for us we have the Leanback library from Android Jetpack which… Continue reading
Post Category → Android
Media Store access using openFile() on Android 10
As of Android 10, things have changed slightly with how we access files that are contained outside of our application. This change of behaviour has come from the concept of scoped storage – which aims to improve the privacy of user files, adding more control to how files are accessed within the android system. Even… Continue reading
Using Firebase on Android with Kotlin Coroutines
Whilst recently working on a side project I ran into a situation where I needed to make use of the Android Firebase SDKs. This project of mine uses Kotlin Coroutines for all of the asynchronous task handling, so ideally I wanted to keep any Firebase calls to use the same approach – not only so… Continue reading
Exploring View Binding on Android
When it comes to manipulating our user interfaces within Android applications, there are a couple of approaches that we can take. In these cases, we need to obtain a reference these views in-order to manipulate them in some way. For this, we’ll either use findViewById(), followed by casting the view to the corresponding type. Or… Continue reading
Performing OAuth on Android with Custom Tabs
Whether we’re building third-party clients for existing API services, or working on our own product that communicates with our own API, it’s likely that we might be working with authentication that uses a form of OAuth. This standard of authentication approach is something that we’re bound to use at some point in our careers, but… Continue reading
Exploring App Actions on Android: What are App Actions?
At Google I/O 2018 we were introduced to App Actions, but it was only at I/O this year that we were given the ability to hook into this functionality within our own apps. In this first part of articles focused on App Actions I want to take a quick look into exactly what they are,… Continue reading
Keeping cool in Android Q with the Thermal API
We’ve all been there are some point – using our Android device and things start to feel like they’re getting a bit warm in our hands. Whether we’re playing a game or using an application that is performing an intensive operation, these things can often require a lot of resources which makes our device work… Continue reading
Our favourite things from Google I/O 2019
This year I was lucky enough to attend Google I/O with some great company. Over the course of the event we attended many sessions, so we decided to write a short post together on our favourite parts from the event. Note: These are just a few of our favourite events. Be sure to check them… Continue reading
Exploring CameraX on Android: Use Cases
In my last article we introduced the CameraX API, along with the Camera View component found within the source of the project. In this article we’re going to dive into the second part of the CameraX API – the core library to learn what it is and how we can make use of the functionality… Continue reading
Exploring CameraX on Android: Camera View
If you’ve ever used the Camera APIs on Android, you may have felt that they’ve never been the simplest thing to implement. There was originally the Camera API, which was deprecated in favour of the Camera2 API – this iteration aimed to provide developers with a better experience when dealing with camera APIs on Android…. Continue reading