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Android Developers Backstage

Android Developersandroidbackstage.blogspot.com
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
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Episodes

Back it up, bring it back: No data left behind

It can be a draw when setting up a new device. Some info transfers, while some don’t. Learn how developers can ensure the best user experience when people backup and restore an Android device. Hosts Tor and Chet are joined by Graham and Piyush on the Android Consumer Experience team and Alon on the Android Studio team to discuss Android backup and restore. Chapters: 0:00 - Introduction & the user pain point 1:38 - Why backup fails: Developer challenges 4:00 - Evolution of backup testing: Fro...

Jul 10, 202549 min

Bot to the Future: Two Years Later

Join Tor and Siva Velusamy and Sandhya Mohan from the Android Studio team to learn about the latest updates to Studio Bot (Gemini in Android Studio) that dropped at Google I/O 2025 including Agent Mode. Building on their conversation from two years ago about the Studio Bot, they explore Gemini’s role in every stage of development, from design to building, testing, and maintenance, the future of coding companions, and more. Studio Bot podcast episode → https://goo.gle/3ZM0Wwx...

Jun 13, 202546 min

​​Kotlin Multiplatform: Have your code and eat it too

Software Engineers Dustin Lam and Yigit Boyar join host Tor Norbye to chat all about Kotlin Multiplatform. Resources: Tor’s Bluesky → https://goo.gle/4iLXEAg Yigit’s Bluesky → https://goo.gle/4dmsYVj

May 07, 202558 min

Linting on the Side of Caution: Safety & Security

What is app safety for Android? What is the Android team working on to ensure developers and users alike enjoy safe and reliable apps? Watch along as Tor Norbye, Chet Haase, Romain Guy, Theresa Khuu, Naheed Vora take a deep dive backstage and discuss what’s new in the Android safety space. Resources: Enhanced Tools for Secure & Efficient Development → https://goo.gle/42lo3i8 Watch more Android Developers Backstage → https://goo.gle/adb-podcast Subscribe to Android Developers → https://goo.gl...

Apr 10, 202551 min

Episode 213: Compose runtime and performance

In this episode, Tor and Romain chat with Leland and Chuck from the Compose team about performance -- recent optimizations, upcoming optimizations, and challenges. Leland: @intelligibabble.bsky.social Chuck: @chuckjaz.bsky.social Tor: @tornorbye.bsky.social Romain: @romainguy , @romainguy.dev , romainguy@androiddev.social Catch videos on YouTube → https://goo.gle/adb-podcast Subscribe to Android Developers → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs #Featured #Compose #AndroidDevelopersBackstage...

Mar 04, 202557 min

Episode 212: Happy birthday, Android Studio!

In this episode Chet, Romain and Tor chat with Xav and Jamal from the Android Studio team to talk about the history of Android’s IDE. Chapters: Intro (00:00) Topic of the day - Android Studio releases (00:59) What was before Android studio? (2:33) Eclipse (7:22) Jamal joins Android (13:56) Android studio 1.0 (16:40) Android studio 1.0 - launch (21:56) Android studio 3.0 (25:17) Differences after the Kotlin announcement (28:02) Studio 2.1 big complaints (31:32) Code names in Android (33:23) Favor...

Jan 24, 20251 hr 1 min

Episode 211: Rules about performance tools

In this episode Chet, Romain and Tor chat with Shai Barack about how the Android platform team studies performance and understands system health - and what is system health anyway? We talk about measuring performance, deciding trade-offs, and our favorite tools such as Perfetto, Compiler Explorer, and Android Studio's Memory Profiler. Chapters: Intro (00:00) System health (0:27) Efforts to make apps more efficient (3:35) Telemetry data (5:59) Trade offs between long battery life and good perform...

Nov 26, 20241 hr 10 min

Episode 210: Studio Jewelry

In this episode Chet, Romain and Tor chat with Sebastiano about how the Android Studio team builds UIs. We talk about how Compose for Desktop is used in parts of Android Studio and how the Compose Markdown renderer available in the Jewel library makes Studio Bot tick. Chapters: Intro (00:00) Android Dev UX team (00:39) What kind of libraries and languages are used to build Android studio? (1:52) Swing (2:53) Reactive and declarative programming models (8:25) SKIA for Kotlin (10:01) Jetpack Compo...

Oct 24, 202451 min

Episode 209: Compose animations

In this episode Chet, Romain and Tor chat with Doris Liu from the Compose team about animations in Compose -- covering everything from the basic primitives up to the recently added Shared Element Transitions. Chapters: Intro (00:00) Animation capabilities of Compose (1:06) Different types of animation specs (3:43) Layers of functionality, transitions (7:49) TargetBasedAnimation (9:48) Vectors & velocity of color change (12:43) Second layer parallel to animation spec (16:39) Animation interru...

Sep 12, 20241 hr

Episode 208: Micro optimizations

In this episode Tor and Romain find themselves without a guest and decide to chat about micro optimizations and writing custom tools. Tor and Romain Chapters: Intro (00:00) Micro optimizations (00:32) Kotlin explorer (3:25) Avoiding object allocations (6:49) Code Inefficiencies (8:10) Compilers (12:13) Understand assembly with AI (18:39) Layout opt (21:20) Programmers writing tools (21:52) char.isBlank (25:35) Lint checks (27:59) Companion objects (29:40) Java assertion mechanism (32:00) Hash ma...

Jul 18, 202451 min

Episode 207: AI development assistance

In this episode we talk with Kathy Korevec from the AIDA team at Google about AI assisted developer tools, such as Android Studio -- which is using Gemini AI models provided by AIDA. Romain, Kathy, and Tor Kathy: twitter.com/simpsoka Romain: @romainguy , threads.net/@romainguy , romainguy@androiddev.social Tor: threads.net/@tor.norbye and tornorbye@androiddev.social Check out → https://goo.gle/3wK4EM4 Catch videos on YouTube → https://goo.gle/adb-podcast Subscribe to Android Developers → https:/...

Jun 20, 202452 min

Episode 206: Make it faster

In this episode we cover ADB -- not "Android Developers Backstage", but "Android Debug Bridge", the technology powering device connections. Romain and Tor talk with Fabien Sanglard from the Android Studio team on his work to improve the debug stack -- including the new USB speed detection feature recently unveiled at Google I/O. Chapters: Intro (00:00) You may know Fabien from… (00:50) Applying relevant knowledge to Android Studio (3:28) Communicating with remote devices and debugging (12:18) Ac...

May 22, 20241 hr 1 min

Episode 205: Time for Playtime

In this episode, Tor, Romain, and Chet talk with Aurash Mahbod from the Play Games team at Google -- covering trends in mobile games, challenges for Android games developers, console games, and more! Chapters: Intro (00:00) What’s Aurash working on currently? (02:40) How much is Play store providing users with content based on previous interests? (05:29) Longstanding games vs new games (08:34) Mobile gaming vs console (10:07) Are there stats on what type of games people are playing? (18:07) Diff...

Mar 26, 202447 min

Episode 204: Fan’otations

In this episode, Tor, Romain, and Chet talk about one of Tor’s favorite topics: Lint! Specifically, we talk about Lint checks and the annotations that use them to enable better, more robust, and more self-documenting APIs. Lint: It’s not just for pockets anymore. Chapters: Intro (00:00) Lint checks for annotations (01:50) Lint checks in Android (05:38) Logic checks (07:34) Color representations (10:01) How does lint know the type of integer? (14:40) Kotlin annotations (17:19) Unsigned (20:10) Ha...

Feb 21, 202453 min

Episode 203: (W)rap

In this episode, Tor, Romain, and Chet talk about some of the many things that happened this year in the world of Android development, including new devices and form factors, tool improvements, AndroidX features and libraries, and Jetpack Compose releases. And any tech podcast would be remiss without mentioning AI/ML, so we talk about that too. Tor, Romain and Chet Chapters: Intro (00:00) Google engineers vs Android (00:57) Big changes of 2023 intro (3:03) AI (3:38) Programming with AI (5:08) Wr...

Dec 21, 202358 min

Episode 202: AndroidX, Gradle and Metalava

In this episode, Tor and Romain chat with Aurimas Liutikas from the AndroidX team. Topics include performance tuning the AndroidX Gradle builds using configuration caching, local caching and remote caching, as well as tracking API compatibility using the Metalava tool. Aurimas, Romain and Tor Romain: @romainguy , threads.net/@romainguy , romainguy@androiddev.social Tor: threads.net/@tor.norbye and tornorbye@androiddev.social Aurimas: androiddev.social/@Aurimas and www.liutikas.net/blog-posts Cat...

Nov 01, 202354 min

Episode 201: Firebase in Android Studio

In this episode, Tor and Romain chat with Greg Baker and Joe Baker-Malone about exciting new Android Studio features made possible by Firebase integration. Physical device streaming allows you to connect remotely to physical devices hosted in Google’s secure data centers and use them for all your development needs. We also explore other time saving features like the ability to go from a crash report directly to the correct line of code, even across git branches. Tor, Romain, Joe, Greg Links: And...

Sep 21, 202345 min

Episode 200: WebGPU

In this episode, Chet and Romain speak with Ken Russell and Corentin Wallez from the WebGPU team. WebGPU is a new API that brings modern GPU rendering and compute functionality to web and other platforms (including Android!). We talk about the genesis and capabilities of WebGPU, WGSL (WebGPU’s new shading language), the state of WebGL (the predecessor API for web GPU rendering), and lots of other fun related graphics topics. Ken, Romain, and Chet (not pictured: Corentin, who is on the monitor be...

Aug 15, 202350 min

Episode 199: Compose performance

This time, Romain, Tor, and Chet talk with Leland Richardson, George Mount, and Chuck Jazdzewski from the Jetpack Compose team about performance. The team has been looking at performance issues recently and discusses what they’ve found, what gotchas lie in wait for library developers, what tools and compilers can magically handle for you... and what they can’t. Tune in to learn about why we worry about autoboxing (and why you probably shouldn’t). Foreground: Romain, Tor, George, and Chuck Backgr...

Jul 18, 20231 hr 2 min

Episode 198: Location location location, revisited

Since our original episode on location nearly nine years ago, a lot has happened in the location support for Android. In this episode, Wyatt Riley and Roy Want answer all of Tor's questions about how it works and cover recent developments like indoor location, elevation, and some tips for developers. Wyatt, Roy and Tor. Links: Getting started guide Precise indoor location Wi-Fi Alliance(WFA) : Wi-Fi Location(TM) demonstrated at a recent WFA member event Android Developer resources for Wi-Fi RTT ...

Jun 26, 202344 min

Episode 197: Studio Bot

You saw it at Google I/O - now you can hear about it in the comfort of your own headphones! Tor, Romain, and Chet talk with Siva Velusamy and Sandhya Mohan from the Android Studio team about the just-launched Studio Bot. This new AI-powered assistant enables conversational queries in the IDE to help with coding, commenting, confusion, or if you just need a friend. Chet, Tor, Romain, Sandhy, and Siva in the Sunnyvale studio Studio Bot: https://goo.gle/3BBEKZI Subscribe to Android Developers YouTu...

May 17, 202346 min

Episode 196: Android Studio, behind the scenes

Raluca Sauciuc joins Tor and Romain to talk about what goes on behind the scenes in Android Studio. Raluca takes us through the tools and workflows used by the Android Studio team to improve performance and memory usage, and avoid future regressions. She also explains how the team adopts new versions of the IntelliJ IDE and platform, and how they can deal with massive code merges. Raluca, Romain, and Tor Romain: @romainguy and romainguy@androiddev.social Tor: @tornorbye and tornorbye@androiddev....

Mar 22, 202349 min

Episode 195: Mainlining

Chet and Romain talk to Jeff Hamilton and Anton Hansson from the Mainline team about "modular system components", and the new SDK extension framework which lets developers access them. Anton Hansson top right, and Jeff Hamilton bottom left, with Romain and Chet Blog post: https://goo.gle/3S1c3g4 AndroidX convenience constants, e.g. T_EXTENSION_INT: https://goo.gle/3lEJwRx Subscribe to Android Developers → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs...

Feb 15, 202345 min

Episode 194: Subtext

This time, Tor, Romain, and Chet were joined by Siyamed Sinir and Sean McQuillan from the Android Text team to talk about, well, text. Which, it turns out, is a very deep, complicated, and constantly evolving technology. The conversation covered everything from the fundamentals of the text stack on Android to the capabilities and implementation of text in Jetpack Compose to internationalization to fonts to emojis to performance to.... you get the idea. There was a lot of stuff to talk about. And...

Jan 17, 202353 min

Episode 193: Kotlin

In this episode, James Ward joins Chet, Tor, and Romain to talk about Kotlin. We talked about Kotlin Multiplatform (both KMP and KMM) and what’s coming for Kotlin in 2023, especially the new K2 frontend. James, Tor, Romain, and Chet. Links: Kotlin Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile (KMM) Jetpack Multiplatform Libraries Compose Multiplatform by JetBrains Romain: @romainguy and romainguy@androiddev.social Tor: @tornorbye and tornorbye@androiddev.social Chet: @chethaase and chet...

Dec 22, 202246 min

Episode 192: The Path Forward

This time, Romain and Chet ditched Tor so that they could geek out about graphics, talking about paths, Bézier curves, morphing, and more. Romain and Chet alone in the recording Studio. Links: V9: Vector 9-patches Pathway: Path data querying Android Path Shape Shifter Bézier Primer The Beauty of Bézier Curves Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy...

Nov 21, 202258 min

Episode 191: Compose Lazy Layouts

We recorded episode 191 from the studio in the London office, where Rebecca Franks from the developer relations team joined Chet as a guest host. We talked with Andrei Shikov, Matvei Malkov, and Andrey Kulikov from the Jetpack Compose engineering team about layouts, especially the lazy ones, which are the Compose equivalent of RecyclerView. Rebecca, Chet, Andrei, Andrey, and Matvei, in the London recording studio. Links: Layouts in Compose Compose Custom layouts ADB 167: Jetpack Compose Layout C...

Nov 11, 202252 min

Episode 190: Performance Review

In this episode, Tor and Chet learn some more about performance from Carmen. Carmen works on the Android Platform Performance team and is an expert on everything related to performance. This is the perfect episode for you if you ever wanted to learn more about R8, perfetto, baseline profiles, custom performance tracing, power metrics, etc. Tor, Carmen, and Chet Links: Perfetto Android’s guide to app performance Baseline profiles Benchmarking with Microbenchmark and Macrobenchmark Jetpack Tracing...

Nov 04, 202253 min

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 Jetp...

Sep 22, 202250 min

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: @rom...

Sep 01, 202252 min
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