As an Android developer, one of the first challenges you face when building an app is choosing the right layout for your UI. Android offers a variety of layouts to organize UI elements on the screen, each with its own strengths, limitations, and best practices. Understanding these layouts is key to creating efficient, responsive, and…
As an Android developer, you‘ve likely encountered scenarios where your app needs to perform background processing – such as downloading files, uploading data to a server, synchronizing content, or executing long-running tasks. While Android offers various options for background work, choosing the right solution and implementing it correctly can be challenging. This is where Google‘s…
Logging is an often overlooked but utterly essential aspect of professional Android development. Strategically placed log statements are invaluable for debugging tricky issues, tracing program flow, and monitoring application state. Yet many developers settle for Android‘s basic Log utility, missing out on the power and flexibility of more advanced solutions. Enter Timber – a robust,…
Build speed is the silent killer of Android developer productivity. A 2020 survey of over 19,000 developers found that slow build times were the number one pain point for mobile devs, with 39% reporting that their builds took over 10 minutes. Slow builds wreak havoc on the development process at every stage: Slow compilation during…
As an Android developer, you‘ve likely heard about the power of RxJava for simplifying complex asynchronous operations. But getting started with RxJava can be intimidating, especially wrapping your head around its core concepts. In this in-depth guide, we‘ll break down the four main constructs of RxJava that you need to know – Observable, Observer, Scheduler,…
Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. AR apps place virtual objects in the real world, viewable through your smartphone camera. Popular AR apps include Pokémon GO, Google Maps AR navigation, Snapchat lenses, and furniture placement apps like IKEA Place. As an Android developer, you can start…
Augmented reality allows you to overlay digital content onto the real world, creating immersive and interactive experiences. One powerful AR capability is image tracking – the ability to recognize specific 2D images in the environment and use them as markers to position virtual content. ARCore, Google‘s AR SDK for Android, provides an Augmented Images API…
Building a feature-rich, scalable Android app doesn‘t have to be complicated or time-consuming, thanks to powerful tools like Firebase and Kotlin. Firebase is a comprehensive app development platform that provides a wide range of backend services, while Kotlin is a modern, concise programming language that improves productivity for Android developers. In this in-depth guide, we‘ll…
Introduction As a full-stack Android developer, one of the most powerful tools in your toolbox is data binding. Android data binding allows you to connect UI components in your XML layouts directly to data sources in your app, such as properties in your model classes or fields in your database. By establishing a link between…
The Android clipboard is an essential but often overlooked part of the app experience. As a full-stack Android developer, you need a solid grasp of how the clipboard works, how to integrate it into your app‘s workflows, and how to use it securely. A well-designed clipboard integration can greatly enhance your app‘s usability and efficiency,…
As an Android developer, there are few things more frustrating than staring at your screen waiting for your code to compile. With every new feature you add, build times seem to grow longer and longer, slowly eating into your productivity. But it doesn‘t have to be this way! By modularizing your app, you can dramatically…
As an Android developer with over a decade of experience building complex applications, I‘ve found that one of the most critical aspects of creating a smooth and engaging user experience is effectively managing the visibility of views. Knowing when views appear and disappear on the screen allows you to optimize performance, track user engagement, and…