Building for Intelligence Systems on Android

Posted by Matthew McCullough, VP, Product Management, Android Developer

It was announced today during android showAndroid is transforming from an operating system to an intelligence system, creating more opportunities for engagement with your apps. Through deep integration between hardware and software, Android devices will be able to meet anticipated user needs, so your app can focus on delivering that experience at the right time. As a part of this, we are announcement of Gemini Intelligence, a set of new features that bring the best of Gemini to our most advanced Android devices.

Task Automation with Gemini

With Gemini Intelligence, we are expanding the capability of Gemini automate tasks With built-in transparency and control over apps selected on behalf of the user. This creates another avenue for user engagement, driving much-needed traffic to your app without requiring code or major engineering work. By allowing Gemini to navigate complex, multi-step tasks, such as ordering a latte from a café or creating a shopping cart from a grocery list in the Notes app, Gemini handles the logistics for users, so you’re free to focus on innovation and building great features.

We know there are times when people like to browse, and others when they want to get a task done quickly. Initially launched with selected food and ridesharing partners to create grocery orders or request rides, this capability is expanding to more verticals and form factors, including foldables, watches, cars, and XR glasses.

Increase engagement with AppFunctions

For more control over how agents interact with your app, you can use Android appfunction. This empowers you to provide specific tools, such as services, data, and actions, directly to the OS and agents by combining them with natural language descriptions. The system can then discover and execute these tools in a variety of form factors, allowing users to trigger your app’s functionality through the intelligence system for richer and more customized experiences with task automation. We’ve started testing these early-stage APIs in private previews with apps like Kakao Talk Enabling users to “send messages” or “initiate voice calls” through this new framework. AppFunctions has already enabled local execution of use cases for 25 apps across device manufacturers. You can experiment with the API locally and register your interest to join AppFunctions already early access program For full integration opportunities.

Wherever you are on this intelligence journey, we’re providing multiple integration paths to meet you, whether it’s with seamless, “no-code changes” app automation or using the AppFunction API, to give you more control in an MCP-like fashion.

Enhanced user experience with widgets

We’re improving the user experience by expanding widget support to new form factors cars. This creates new opportunities for you to connect with users on over 250M Android Auto compatible vehicles.

jetpack look Makes it easy to create high-quality widgets, and it’s now getting powerful new capabilities thanks to a new built-in framework remotecompose.

• New rich, premium interactions: Built to be highly adaptive and battery efficient, RemoteCompose allows Glance to deliver richer, more premium interactions. You can soon take advantage of new capabilities including snapscroll, expressive buttons, and particle effects to create more attractive widgets.
• Built-in backward compatibility: These expressive RemoteCompose features are supported out-of-the-box on Android 16 and above. By using Jetpack Glance as your API, you maintain full backwards compatibility. Your widgets will automatically take advantage of these premium UI features on newer devices, gracefully upgrading to support older OS versions.

Additionally, RemoteCompose is the engine behind Create My Widget, a feature where users can ask Gemini to create fully adaptive custom widgets that can be seamlessly resized and optimized for the user’s home screen or Wear OS watch.

Adaptive construction beyond the phone

From foldables, tablets, compatible cars, and XR headsets to new googlebooksCanvas for Android apps has expanded across screens and form factors. Here are some updates to help you build adaptive builds:

• Jetpack Navigation 3: our latest jetpack navigation 3 Provides deep adaptive support by adding scene decorators to the Scene API. View decorators can be used to modify the view calculated by your app’s view strategy. For example, they can be used to add common UI elements like the top app bar and navigation bars/rails that you want to add to the view instead of at the nav entry level. NavDisplay now includes built-in functionality Makes nav entries a shared element So now you can easily change between views. check us out Nav3-recipes For more information.
• Jetpack Compose: Adopting Compose into your app is the easiest way to start building adaptive UI, and we want to make sure you have the right level of architectural support. We’re working on a new set of building blocks in Compose 1.11 for responsive layouts and customization grid, flexbox, mediaquery And Style. we will love you feedback On them before removing the experimental flag.
• Design Guidance: Explore our updates Design Gallery To get inspired, our new desktop design hub or ours adaptive layout guidance To start.

For device-differentiated experiences, take advantage of the latest updates:

• Car App Library: We are streamlining growth by expanding car app libraryWhich allows you to “build once” and deliver customized, distraction-optimized media Experience for both Android Auto and Android Automotive OS. We’re enabling better in-car interactions by expanding support for Adaptive video appsSo that the video can play on the full screen when the cars are parked.

• Android XR SDK: Android XR SDK Allows you to create deeply differentiated, custom experiences for a growing spectrum of XR devices, including upcoming wired xr glasses (like XREAL’s Project Aura), while existing adaptive apps automatically surface immersive environments without any additional developmental effort. You can prepare display glass by using Jetpack Compose Glimmer Also, building a viewable UI designed for display glasses jetpack launched api To connect app experiences from the phone to the user’s field of view. Developer Preview 4 of the Android XR SDK, coming next week, introduces new interactive components like title chips and button groups that optimize input for the Glass touchpad. It streamlines your workflow with the new ProjectedTestRule API to automate testing environments.

A new era for your users on Android

shift to a intelligence system From expansion to new form factors like Googlebooks, Android is partnering with developers and app makers to create new ways for people to get more out of their device experiences.

Gemini Intelligence features will become available rapidly as they are ready, starting with the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones this summer. They’ll also be available on your Android devices, including your watch, car, glasses, and laptop later this year.

Stay tuned for more news about app development in this new era at Google I/O Next week.