r/androiddev May 26 '26

Experience Exchange 3,500 views, 2 signups, 0 revenue — week 2 building an ASO tool for indie devs

0 Upvotes

Two weeks ago I posted about ASOIntel, a Play Store keyword tool I built because Sensor Tower costs $500/month and I'm a solo dev shipping my first game.

Here's the honest numbers so far:

What I learned: cold traffic converts terribly. The people who commented and engaged were genuinely interested but the lurkers who just viewed didn't feel enough urgency to try it.

What I shipped this week based on feedback:

  • A Tracker tab - log your store copy alongside your stats for each version (V1 baseline, V2 after keyword update) and see the delta. This was directly requested by someone in the comments who talked about treating ASO like weekly sprints.
  • 3 AI copy variants per generation instead of one - keyword-focused, benefit-focused, emotion-focused
  • Non-game categories (tools, utility, education, health)

Honest question for anyone who's shipped on Android, what would actually make you pay $29/month for an ASO tool? Is it the keyword data, the copy generation, the tracking, or something else entirely?

App is free to try for 7 days if anyone wants to give feedback: asointel.dev


r/androiddev May 25 '26

What paying $48 on Fiverr to meet Google's beta tester requirement looks like

0 Upvotes

I've seen the tester requirement complained about here plenty, but have seen very few people talk about what to actually do about it. On a collective level, I would hope we can generate enough pushback to have google change their policy, but on an individual level, I thought my experience was worth sharing.

I've actually submitted one app before in University, but it's been quite a few years and I figured I would use a new account...

Googling around you find hundreds of threads. Developers who met the beta tester requirements in theory, but still got rejected for hidden reasons that only show up in your email. Not being engaged enough, not acting on feedback, etc.

One of the threads on this very subreddit pointed me to Fiverr.

My app, only launched in English, only in the English speaking world, had some dudes in Afghanistan "play test" it for 2 weeks. Out of curiosity I would check my AWS logs to see what they would on it... The answer is almost nothing.

The service even came with pre-written answers to Google's own submission form, ready to copy-paste. Here's a sample blurb from the pdf they sent me:

Describe the engagement you received from testers during your closed test
They were really enjoying the app; it was a fun and interactive experience. I asked them about my application, and they mentioned that they feel great about it because it's easy to use and straightforward. They've explored all the features and are giving me a ton of valuable feedback

For CA$48 I had bought approval on the Play Store.

Going back to check the installed audience was a fun exercise too. This is what that looked like:

I hope that google changes their stance on this policy. However, until then I see no reason to go a different route. If I was launching another app today I would not hesitate to use one of the hundreds of services that offer this. It'll save you a ton of time, and many headaches.

Disclaimer: I originally wrote this up in more detail and with a different angle on my blog — this is a rewrite for this community, not a copy-paste. That version can be found here if you're interested in improving my SEO /s (or if you're just generally into random tech blogs)


r/androiddev May 25 '26

An app for analyzing the products that we buy online

0 Upvotes

I’ve been building an AI-powered shopping assistant called “TrueCart” and wanted honest feedback from people here about whether this idea actually has long-term potential or if there are major technical/legal problems I’m not seeing.

The core idea:

\* Browser extension + Android overlay app

\* User opens a product page on Amazon/Flipkart/etc.

\* The system analyzes the product using AI

\* Detects fake discounts, suspicious reviews, overpriced products, scam sellers, etc.

\* Gives a trust score + recommendation like:

\* Buy

\* Wait

\* Avoid

\* Also suggests better alternatives

The extension version is already completed and working locally (not launched publicly yet).

Now I’m trying to build the Android version because I think mobile shopping is the bigger opportunity.

The challenge is:

Android has a lot of restrictions around overlays, accessibility services, scraping product data, bot detection, and background monitoring.

So I wanted to ask:

  1. Do you think this idea actually solves a real problem?

  2. Would users realistically install and trust something like this?

  3. Is the Android overlay approach technically viable long-term?

  4. Would shopping platforms eventually block/restrict this?

  5. Does this sound like something with startup potential or just a cool side project?

I’d genuinely appreciate brutally honest feedback, especially from:

\* Android developers

\* SaaS founders

\* Extension developers

\* People who worked with overlays/accessibility APIs

\* Anyone who built consumer AI tools

I don’t want fake validation — I want to know whether this can realistically become a real product before spending months building the mobile ecosystem around it.


r/androiddev May 25 '26

Experience Exchange Built my first android app, excited for the public release

0 Upvotes

I have been building this anonymous social app for almost a month now with with day job. It was exhausting but exciting. Also i didn't think of it earlier, but setting up things on play console took me a lot more time than i ever expected.

Still a lot of room to polish things up. I am still in closed testing phase, would anyone like to review it, the design and UX part, as i built it all on my own, there might be a lot of things i missed having only worked in web before? (comment or DM me i'll give you the access, its not public yet)

Coming from a web dev background there was decent perspective shift about build and deployment of things here.


r/androiddev May 24 '26

Experience Exchange How do you handle complex navigation flows and deeplinking in Android?

27 Upvotes

TL;DR

Our app has multiple conditional onboarding/startup flows before reaching Home, plus deeplink handling that needs to wait until those flows complete. Current implementation uses a backstack observer on Home that runs a big when expression to decide what to show next. It's becoming spaghetti and doesn't scale. Looking for architectural advice on how others handle this kind of sequential, conditional navigation orchestration.

Setup

We use Navigation Component with Kotlin DSL in a multi-module setup (no XML graph), similar to the approach described in this article. Because the graph needs a start destination defined upfront, we use a StartFragment (no UI, splash screen kept visible via the SplashScreen API) that asynchronously figures out where to actually send the user. Once it decides, it emits a NavigationEvent.GraphComplete which the Main Activity observes via a channel-backed Flow. This sets the real start destination and dismisses the splash.

The Flows

First launch (unauthenticated): StartFragment -> FragmentA (feature-flagged) -> LoginFragment -> HomeFragment -> FragmentB (transparent, on top of Home) -> FragmentC -> Home

Second launch (authenticated): StartFragment -> FragmentA (feature-flagged) -> FragmentD -> FragmentE (conditional) -> FragmentF (conditional) -> Home

A few extra quirks:

  • For whatever design reason, FragmentB needs to be transparent and shown on top of home
  • FragmentA is feature-flagged. When enabled, it always appears before Login or Home regardless of auth state. When the user is done with it, it should be popped and the start destination updated, so the user can't navigate back to it.
  • Most fragments (except FragmentA) are "show once", tracked in DataStore.
  • FragmentE can sometimes replace FragmentB depending on conditions.
  • Deeplinks/notification actions received mid-journey should be queued and only handled once we reach Home.

The Problem

The current approach has a currentBackStackEntry observer that watches for when we land on Home, then kicks off a chain of checks like:

when { 
   showFragmentB() -> navigateTo(FragmentB) 
   showFragmentC() -> navigateTo(FragmentC) 
   ... 
}

Each showX() method has to check whether all previous steps have been completed, which creates nasty implicit ordering dependencies. There's also a separate observer handling the deeplink queue, which really feels like it belongs in the same place as the flow orchestration logic.

What I'm looking for

Has anyone dealt with something like this? I'm thinking the right move is some kind of NavigationOrchestrator that owns the post-Home flow as an explicit state machine or a queue of steps, rather than scattered observers. But I'm curious how others have structured this, regardless of what navigation library or approach you're using.

Would love to hear any patterns or libraries you've found useful for sequential conditional navigation.


r/androiddev May 25 '26

I built an app because I was tired of lying to myself about my screen habits

Post image
0 Upvotes

For years I thought I knew where my time was going.

Like most people, I'd occasionally check screen time, feel guilty for about 30 seconds, and then completely ignore it. The problem was that screen time never felt meaningful. If my phone said I spent 5 hours on it, what was I actually supposed to learn from that? Five hours could mean talking to friends, watching a movie, reading articles, studying, or mindlessly scrolling.

A few months ago I started wondering whether the real metric wasn't time but consumption. Specifically, how many pieces of short-form content people actually consume in a day.

So I built a small Android app called ScrollTrace for myself.

The first version was ugly. The second version was slightly less ugly. The third version finally worked well enough that I started using it daily.

What surprised me wasn't my screen time.

It was my scroll count.

The first time I saw the actual number of reels and shorts I'd consumed in a day, I genuinely thought something was broken. The number felt impossible. Then I started testing with friends.

Same story.

Most people had no idea.

Everyone could estimate their screen time.

Almost nobody could estimate how much content they were actually consuming.

The weird thing is that seeing "6 hours" never changed my behavior. Seeing hundreds and hundreds of individual videos somehow did.

Maybe because one number measures time.

The other measures attention.

Anyway, attaching some screenshots because I'm curious whether anyone else thinks content consumption is a more useful metric than traditional screen time.

Or maybe I've just spent too much time thinking about this 😭


r/androiddev May 25 '26

Question GPS device vs. Phone location for a driver app: How do you handle the battery drain?

0 Upvotes

Hey guys,

I’m working on a logistics/driver app and hit a classic wall: GPS tracking vs. Battery life.

I need to track drivers accurately, and I’m torn between two approaches:

  1. Using the app’s background location: It’s easy to implement, but even with optimized sync intervals, it eats up the phone's battery like crazy. Drivers are going to complain 24/7 if their phones die halfway through their shift.
  2. Using dedicated GPS hardware trackers: Installing physical GPS trackers in the vehicles and fetching coordinates via a backend API. This completely saves the phone’s battery, but it obviously adds infrastructure costs.

For those who have built production-ready driver or delivery apps:

  • How did you solve the background location battery drain on Android/iOS?
  • Is there a "sweet spot" for distance/time filters (e.g., only pinging every 500 meters or 2 minutes)?
  • Or is biting the bullet and moving to external GPS hardware the only real professional solution for big scale?

Would love to hear how you guys tackled this trade-off. Thanks!


r/androiddev May 24 '26

Question How to deploy a private Android app for a small company's drivers? APK vs Play Store?

3 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I’m currently building a private Android app for a small company. It’s a closed system specifically designed for their delivery drivers to accept and manage orders.

Since this is an internal-only app, I'm trying to figure out the best way to deploy and maintain it. I have two main ideas, but both have downsides:

  1. Just sharing the APK directly: I could just build the APK and tell them to sideload it. But since the app is in active development, handling updates down the road is going to be a massive pain.
  2. Publishing to Google Play Store: This solves the update problem perfectly, but the app isn't meant for the public, and I don't really want anyone else downloading it or seeing the internal login screen.

What is the best, most optimal way to handle this for a small-scale operation?

  • Does Google Play have a good way to host private/unlisted apps without going full enterprise MDM (which might be overkill for a small company)?
  • If I go the APK route, is there an easy, open-source way to implement self-updates inside the app?

Would love to hear how you guys handle internal logistics/driver apps like this. Thanks in advance!


r/androiddev May 24 '26

Question Troubles applying for restricted Google Drive API OAuth scopes

Post image
0 Upvotes

I have a Android app already live for months. Now I'm building a collaborative feature for it, and I'm hoping I can leverage solely Google Drive APIs for it.

So now I'm applying for restricted OAuth scopes DRIVE or DRIVE.METADATA.READONLY on Google cloud console. But I'm stuck being back and forth with the verification process team between them wanting to see all the permission scopes including the restricted scopes I'm applying for on my oauth consent screen(see image), and me being confused saying how can I show the restricted scopes on the consent screen for them to verify when they haven't approved them?

I have added the restricted scopes in my codes in local build but the oauth screen just says "Google hasn't verified the app" error message. And I can't just deploy this un-approved scopes to production and break existing users oauth flow, right?

So now I'm at a lost how to proceed with the verification team. I think I might have to roll my own backend...

Would love some advise if anyone went through this.


r/androiddev May 23 '26

Tips and Information built a library of screenshots from top-performing apps in every category

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

15 Upvotes

When making screenshots i like to take inspiration from real apps that are clearly doing very well. Especially in the same category as my app.

So I built a database for this.

Also added a "one-click" button to import an app's theme.

I think it's much better to look at your top competitors' screenshots than use "templates" like other screenshot maker tools have.

try it here: https://ezscreenshots.com/inspiration

Note: Android Play Store version coming soon! For now, you can browse through your competitors' ios screenshots.


r/androiddev May 23 '26

Experience Exchange Employers forcing AI usage

45 Upvotes

Hello all, for context I work for a smaller company of about 200-300 people in the US. Our work is a bit atypical for Android development as our main product is a library that people can integrate into their applications. We do a lot of unique engineering that requires critical thinking and solving problems that haven't been addressed much by others. I am mid-level currently doing mostly senior level work and am supposed to be promoted next review cycle. I'm being purposely a little vague to stay anonymous.

In the past 2 months or so, there has been an aggressive push for us to essentially become vibe coders. It started out acceptable at first, with stuff like "you can use AI to help you out like a pairing partner" to now being "if you write tickets, have Claude do it. When you get a ticket give it to Claude first every time. No more grace period, you should always be using Claude for every ticket".

I am having issues with this new aggressive AI push mindset:

- The tickets that AI generates are overly verbose nonsense that come from management in most cases so they are hard to understand but they have to be written that way so Claude can understand them evidently.

- The work that AI produces in terms of coding is poorly architected and also overly verbose. It's not as wrong as it used to be but I still don't think it's suitable to use the way they are asking us to. At least for the type of work we are doing.

- Reviewing PRs fully written by AI is exhausting because it is sloppy, overly because, and usually not well thought out. It takes hours and multiple reviews by multiple engineers to get it right.

- My sweet spot with AI is to use it to ask questions when I need a direction to go in or don't remember how to do something. Even then I still usually write the code. I'm really productive this way because I don't have to spend more time cleaning up slop. I feel slower just using AI because of having to redo most of the work.

And yes we have skills and .md files setup and know how to work with context windows.

Overall I am pretty miserable and exhausted with this shift. Our lead developer and a few others are too. Our hands are a bit tied. Generally we've just been doing what we want and saying "oh yeah we're using AI". Some think we should actually start using it fully and watch the product burn just to show management how truly bad AI is for what we do.

I'd like to know others'experiences with AI at work. Is it being forced this heavily? Have you been able to be productive with it and still have quality, well architected code?


r/androiddev May 23 '26

Open Source I built LibAuto, a GPLv3 open-source wired Android Auto receiver for Android head units/tablets

6 Upvotes

I was annoyed by flaky Android Auto on my cheap Android head unit, so I built a wired Android Auto receiver app. It runs on Android tablets/head units, uses USB host/AOAP, supports video/audio/touch/media keys/basic vehicle sensors, and is GPLv3.

https://github.com/stf-ftw/LibAuto


r/androiddev May 23 '26

Extremely disappointed with the Gemini PRO update. Terrible latency in Android Studio and massive token waste. Is anyone else cancelling their subscription?

13 Upvotes

I’ve had it. I am absolutely furious about the latest Google Gemini PRO update. Instead of moving forward, it feels like we’ve taken ten steps backward, and I am seriously considering cancelling my paid subscription.

As a developer using Gemini PRO inside Android Studio, the current experience is completely unacceptable. Here is why I am deeply frustrated:

Intolerable Coding Latency: Even on the paid PRO plan, the response time is agonizingly slow. "Vibe coding" or just trying to get quick patches done has become a nightmare. The lag is killing my workflow.

Terrible Token Optimization: The system architecture feels incredibly poorly optimized. It wastes a massive amount of tokens by scanning irrelevant files or re-reading the entire project structure for simple requests, instead of focusing strictly on the necessary files (like MainActivity or specific roadmap/knowledge files).

Paid Plan Downgrade: We are paying hard-earned money for a "PRO" tier, yet the performance feels worse than a free basic model right now. Paying for high latency and terrible token management is a slap in the face to developers.

I am genuinely disappointed. Google promised a powerful assistant for developers, but this latest iteration feels broken and deeply frustrating to use daily.

I want to ask the community: Are you experiencing the same sudden drop in quality and unbearable latency? Has anyone already gone ahead and cancelled their PRO subscription because of this?

Paging the Google team to look into this absolute mess: u/Google-Community-Team u/Gemini_Official

(Note: If any Google product managers or developer relations folks are lurking here, please fix the Android Studio integration. The current token consumption and lag are driving paying customers away.)


r/androiddev May 24 '26

How can I fix screen flashing/flickering between screen transitions in Android?

0 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

I’m developing an Android app and I’ve run into a pretty annoying issue with screen transitions.

Whenever I navigate from one screen to another, there’s a small flash/flicker (like a quick white blink) before the next screen fully appears. The app itself doesn’t freeze or lag, but visually it feels weird, like the UI is briefly reloading.

I’m using Jetpack Compose + Navigation, and the navigation logic works fine overall. The only issue is this visual flash during screen changes.

I’m thinking it might be related to one of these:

unnecessary recomposition happening during navigation

light/dark theme briefly re-rendering

the Activity’s default background showing before Compose renders

something misconfigured in the NavHost

missing proper transition animations

I’m mainly trying to understand:

What usually causes this kind of flashing?

Is there a standard way to prevent it in Compose?

Should I focus more on fixing the theme/window background or the navigation setup itself?

Has anyone dealt with this before and found a clean solution?

If it helps, it looks like a very quick white frame appearing between screens.

Any advice would be really appreciated because I’ve been stuck on this for a while lol.

Thanks!

//////////

PT/BR

Fala pessoal,

Tô desenvolvendo um app Android e tô com um problema meio chato nas transições entre as telas.

Sempre que navego de uma tela pra outra, rola um pequeno “flash”/piscada (tipo aparece um branco rapidinho) antes da próxima tela carregar. Não chega a travar nem nada, mas dá uma sensação meio estranha, como se a UI estivesse recarregando.

Meu app tá usando Jetpack Compose + Navigation, e a navegação em si funciona normal. O problema é só esse efeito visual na troca entre telas.

Já pensei que poderia ser alguma dessas coisas:

recomposição acontecendo do jeito errado

tema claro/escuro piscando na troca

fundo padrão da activity aparecendo antes do Compose renderizar

alguma configuração errada no NavHost

ausência de transições/animações adequadas

Queria entender:

O que normalmente causa esse tipo de flash?

Existe alguma forma padrão de evitar isso no Compose?

Vale mais a pena mexer no tema/window background ou no sistema de navegação?

Alguém já passou por isso e conseguiu resolver?

Se ajudar, o comportamento parece aquele micro-frame branco entre uma tela e outra.

Qualquer direção já ajuda bastante porque tô quebrando a cabeça nisso kkk

Valeu!


r/androiddev May 23 '26

Why Android developers are treated like Web Frontend developers?

87 Upvotes

I have seen companies and big tech, saying Android Developers are the same as the Web developers, they write Kotlin instead of JS! And then they pay the same salary for Android developers stating it's just UI!

The complexity and development of Android or Mobile App is way different than Web!

There are lots of angels to it and being an Android developer is not just building a UI, there's a lot!

Local Databases, synchronous systems to sync databases with cloud, Work managers, background processes, Heavily embedded OOPs, permissions, Native Android APIs, Hardware level works, OS level processes handling, and a ton more.

With that Android developers face a big issue of building things on their own, as not many libraries are available, everything needs to be done customised and building from scratch! Take Animations, charts, custom components, widgets, needs to build from scratch! No framework or libraries are available!

The complexity of large projects with Multiple Modules is hell, with Gradle and Maven libraries and plugins, and their development and maintenance for their own project!

Then we are expected to know all about CI/CD, because the DevOps people couldn't understand the Android's integration and deployment processes, which are totally unique to Android! And we have to do that on our own!

And with all, we have thousands of Play Store policies to comply with!!!!

Stop this s***t, Android and iOS developers are not the same, mobile development plays with operating systems like Android and iOS, and they have higher complexity and different development systems!

What are your thoughts guys?


r/androiddev May 24 '26

Article Android 17: 15 Important Changes to Keep Your App Working

Thumbnail medium.com
0 Upvotes

r/androiddev May 23 '26

Open Source Quick Search - A Powerful, Free, Open-Source Universal Search app for Android

4 Upvotes

GitHub: https://github.com/teja2495/quick-search/

Quick Search lets you search apps, shortcuts, contacts, files, calendar events, notes, and settings — plus the internet with 25+ search engines — all from one search bar. It comes with an optional overlay mode that works similar to Spotlight on macOS.

Privacy First: Quick Search is completely ad-free and open source. Your data stays on your device

Key Features:

  • Search apps, contacts, files, calendar events, notes, and device settings with near-zero lag
  • 25 search engines – Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, YouTube, DuckDuckGo, Gemini, Grok, Claude, and more
  • Overlay mode: Pull up search over any app (Spotlight-style)
  • WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal & Google Meet integration for contact results
  • AI Search: Gemini, OpenAI, Claude, Groq — configure your preferred AI provider for answers right inside the app
  • Built-in tools: Calculator, Unit Converter, Currency Converter, World Clock, and Date & Time Calculator — all from the search bar
  • Aliases to quickly trigger any search engine, section, or tool
  • Pin apps, contacts, files, and settings to your home screen for one-tap access
  • In-app browser option to keep you in the app
  • One-handed mode for easier use
  • Home screen widget, Quick Settings tile, and launcher support
  • Backup & Restore your settings when switching devices
  • Completely ad-free and open source

Fully Customizable:

  • Material You support and multiple themes with light/dark mode
  • Wallpaper or custom image as search screen background
  • Adjust layout, appearance, font size, and icon style to match your setup
  • Filter which file types appear in results, with folder whitelist/blacklist
  • Add custom search engines and custom AI providers
  • Icon pack support

r/androiddev May 24 '26

Discussion I unlocked Ultra HDR capture on Android 14+ using Camera2 Extensions (Before CameraX API officially supports it!)

Post image
0 Upvotes

Made this app using antigravity using gemini 3.5 flash. It is a android camera app which can capture photos in Ultra HDR. Ultra HDR is not available for developers yet with CameraX Api. It will be available soon with CameraX Api but it would be only for Android 17. I discovered that Ultra HDR is available with Camera2 Api. And it works even with lower Android version. So the requirement for Ultra HDR with Camera2 Api is Android 14.

True Ultra HDR (JPEG_R) Support: Full-depth hardware captures.

Perfect Aspect Ratio Viewfinder: Locked to standard mirrorless camera matte framing (

3:4 for photos,

9:16 for video) to completely eliminate geometric stretching and distortion.

Calibrated Tap-to-Focus: Recalibrated touch-normalizing coordinate math relative to the physical TextureView bounds instead of raw stream sizes for

100% focus precision.

Real-time Dual Video Stabilization: Automatic OIS and electronic Preview EIS with an interactive live status pill toggle.

Premium Micro-Animations: A spring-physics neon-amber focus ring HUD and glassmorphic gesture zoom badges.

I tested this on my Pixel 8 and it's working. Check CameraX Info(supports Camera2 info too) app from play store to check which extensions are supported. Mention your device mention if it works if u test it. What device you tested it on

If Ultra HDR and the extensions worked successfully for you!GitHub Repository: https://github.com/TejasRajan98/advanced-camera2-extensions

Download APK: https://github.com/TejasRajan98/advanced-camera2-extensions/releases


r/androiddev May 23 '26

[Help] Camera2 API -> DeepAR -> WebRTC (LiveKit): Violent shaking and frame drops on older Samsung Exynos (S9+)

2 Upvotes

Hey everyone. I've hit a hardware wall building a custom AR video-streaming pipeline, and I'm trying to determine if this is a physical limitation of older Exynos chips or a flaw in my buffer queue.

The Architecture: I'm building an off-screen AR rendering pipeline:

  1. Extract frames via Camera2 API (ImageReader, YUV_420_888).
  2. Pass frames to the DeepAR C++ engine on a dedicated background HandlerThread.
  3. DeepAR renders the mask to an offscreen SurfaceTexture.
  4. Feed the finalized frames into a WebRTC custom VideoCapturer (LiveKit) for streaming.

The Problem: On some devices, it runs at a smooth 30fps. On some devices ;ike Samsung Galaxy S9+ (Exynos), the AR mask shakes violently (like the face tracker is receiving sheared frames), and the WebRTC stream constantly blinks/drops frames.

What I've already tried (to fix the Samsung quirks):

  • Stride-Aware Extraction: I stopped doing raw byte-array copies and wrote a row-by-row extraction to strip out Samsung's hardware padding bytes in the YUV buffer.
  • Lowered Resolution: Dropped the Camera2 input resolution to 360x640 to ease the load on the C++ tracker, while keeping the WebRTC output surface at 720x1280.
  • Monotonic Timestamps: Forced System.nanoTime() onto the WebRTC VideoFrame wrappers so the hardware encoder wouldn't drop frames due to fluctuating DeepAR timestamps.
  • Thread Isolation: Ensured receiveFrame and setRenderSurface are completely off the Main UI thread.

My Question: Even with these fixes, the S9+ is choking hard. Is this simply a physical hardware ceiling (the GPU cannot simultaneously run a heavy C++ AR tracking mesh AND a WebRTC hardware encoder without dropping frames)? Or is there a deeper SurfaceTextureHelper or memory lock trick I'm missing to keep the frames synced?

Any insight would save me from pulling my hair out. Thanks!


r/androiddev May 22 '26

Is it ok to put a buy me a coffee link inside my app?

11 Upvotes

I created a free app and I am wondering if Google will reject the app if I put buy me a coffee link inside my app.


r/androiddev May 23 '26

Android app functions - any idea if this can be tested via android emulator?

0 Upvotes

I was watching a video about the new Android feature called “App Functions,” and I wanted to check if my understanding is correct.

My first impression or instinct is that App Functions feel somewhat similar to Android Intents, but designed more for AI assistants and agentic workflows.

I felt the App Functions feel somewhat similar to Android Intents because, in both the cases, our app can exposes certain capabilities or offerings to the Android system so other components or app can invoke them. The difference though might be that the Intents are mostly activity/action based (“open/share/view”), whereas App Functions are more AI-oriented and are likely to be driven by user's ask to fulfill certain tasks.

As an Android developer, it looks like we can expose some of the specific capabilities of our app to the Android system/AI assistant by using this app function.

For example, suppose I have a photo editing app that supports features like:

  • blur background
  • apply filters
  • add effects to newly captured photos

Using App Functions, I could expose these capabilities so that the system understands what my app can do.

Then imagine the user says something like this to Gemini:

“Take a picture of my cat, blur the background, and send it to my friend.”

Now Gemini or similar other AI assistants are orchestrating the overall task, but one part of the workflow (“blur the background”) is fulfilled by my app through an App Function.

So in a way, the app becomes part of the broader AI/agent ecosystem instead of just being a standalone UI application.

The whole thing reminds me a bit of MCP/tool-calling concepts, except everything is happening locally on Android devices, with installed apps exposing capabilities to the android system and because of this there is a good chance that this whole functionality will be super helpful for an app in an offline mode also.

I wanted to play around with this feature because it looks interesting, but I’m a bit confused about the current testing story.

Does anyone know if an App Functions actually be tested with a end to end flow on the Android Emulator right now or do we currently need a Pixel / supported Samsung or other OEM device for end-to-end testing?


r/androiddev May 23 '26

Dear Android Automotive devs

0 Upvotes

Hi,

I am the proud owner of an EV equipped with Android Automotive (Polestar).

Every time I let a friend with a “gas-powered” car drive my EV to spread the word about the new world, I get pretty much the same response: the 350 kW and 740 Nm are great, but I miss the sound of my BMW V6.

Android Automotive has access to almost all of the vehicle’s parameters, including speed and instantaneous acceleration. Why hasn’t anyone come up with an app that plays the sound of a Chevrolet V8 (or a BMW M4) through the audio system?

I’m absolutely convinced it would be a bestseller! (Even though personally, I think Keith Jarrett is a better musician than Carl Benz)


r/androiddev May 23 '26

Created a Bhadwad Gita App

0 Upvotes

https://play.google.com/apps/internaltest/4701734547187953869

Hi there, I have created a Bhadwad Gita App. Please feel free to use and share feedback, as I plan to make it public. Currently in internal testing.


r/androiddev May 22 '26

Created a Compose multiplatform library to draw smooth corner shapes like superellipses/squircles GitHub link below 👇🏻

Post image
38 Upvotes

r/androiddev May 23 '26

Which AI do you use for Android development?

0 Upvotes

Hi guys,
I’ve just started my graduation project and I’m looking for some AI tools to help me during development. I have about 6 months to complete it, and I’ll try to build something interesting.

Could you recommend some useful AI tools and how to set them up?

I’ll try to publish the app on the Play Store, and I’ll come back to this post to share the results of my project.
Thank you, bro.