Posted by Terence Zhang – Developer Relations Engineer, Google; in collaboration with Tina Ho – Partner Engineering, TPM and Kun Wang – Partner Engineering, Partner Engineer
With the first Android 15 developer preview released now, a new Android release will be coming soon that will bring new features and improvements under the hood to billions of users around the world. As Android developers, you are important players in this evolution; by staying on top of it targetSDK upgrade cycleensure that your users have the best possible experience.
The way Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger, approached Android 14 provides a blueprint for both developer success and user satisfaction. Meta improved their speed towards targetSDK adoption by a factor of 4and to understand more about how they built it, we spoke to the team at Meta, with an eye toward insights that all developers could build into their testing programs.
Meta's journey on A14: a blueprint for faster adoption
When Android 11 launched, some Meta apps encountered challenges with existing features, such as Chat Heads, as well as new requirements, such as extensive storage integration. Solving these issues has been complicated by slow adoption of developer tools and a decentralized app strategy. This experience motivated Meta to create an internal Android OS Readiness Program that focuses on prioritizing early and thorough testing throughout the Android release period and accelerating targetSDK adoption of their apps.
The program was officially launched last year. By compiling apps for every Android 14 beta and conducting thorough automated and smoke testing to proactively identify potential issues, Meta was able to seamlessly adopt new Android 14 features such as Foreground Service types and send timely feedback and bug reports to the Android teamwhich contributes to improvements in the operating system.
Meta also accelerated their targetSDK adoption for Android 14, updating Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram within one to two months of the AOSP release, compared to seven to nine months for Android 12 (a speed increase of more than 4x!). Meta's newly created readiness program made this feat possible by working in each app to adopt the latest Android changes while maintaining compatibility. For example, by automating and simplifying their SDK release process, Meta was able to reduce rollout time from three weeks to less than three hours, improving collaboration between individual app teams by providing immediate access to the latest SDKs and rapid testing of new ones Enable OS functions. . The centralized approach also saw Threads quickly adopt Android 14 support, despite the fast-growing new app being supported by a minimal team.
Reaping the benefits: the impact on users
Meta's early targetSDK adoption strategy is also delivering significant benefits to users. Here's how:
- Improved reliability and compatibility: Early adoption of Android previews and betas prevented surprises at the operating system's launch, ensuring a smooth day-one experience for users upgrading to the latest Android version. For example, with partial media rights, Meta's extensive experiment with consent flows ensured that “users felt informed about the change and had control over their privacy settings” while maximizing the app's media sharing functionality.
- Robust experimentation with new release features: The early adoption of Android releases gave Meta plenty of time to collaborate with the privacy, design, and content strategy teams, allowing them to carefully integrate the new Android features delivered with each release. This improved collaboration on other features, allowing Meta to be rolled out Ultra HDR image experience on Instagram within 3 months of platform release in an 'Android first' way is a great example of this, surprising users with brighter and richer colors with higher dynamic range in their Instagram posts and stories.
Embrace the latest Android versions
Meta's journey highlights the compelling reasons for Android developers to adopt a similar forward-thinking mindset when working with the Android betas:
- Test your apps early: Anticipate changes to the Android operating system and ensure your apps are ready for the latest Target SDK as they become available. This creates a seamless transition for users updating to the latest Android version.
- Use the latest tools to optimize the user experience: Test your apps thoroughly during each beta release to identify and resolve potential issues. Check the Android Studio Upgrade Assistant to highlight important changes in each targetSDKVersion and integrate the compatibility framework tool in your testing process to help discover potential app issues in the new operating system version.
- Collaborate with Google: Provide your valuable feedback and bug reports using the Google issue tracker to directly contribute to the improvement of the Android ecosystem.
We encourage you to take full advantage of the Android Developer Previews & Betas program, starting with the recently released program Android 15 developer preview 1.
The team behind the success
Thank you to the entire Meta team for their collaboration in Android 14 and in writing this blog! We would especially like to thank the following people at Meta for their outstanding contributions to creating a culture of early adoption:
- Tushar Varshney – Partner Engineering, Partner Engineer
- Allen Bae – Partner Technology, EM
- Abel Del Pino – Facebook, SWE
- Matias Hanco – Facebook, SWE
- Summer Kitahara – Instagram, SWE
- Tom Rozanski – Messenger, SWE
- Ashish Gupta – WhatsApp, SWE
- Daniel Hill – Mobile Infrastructure, SWE
- Jason Tang – Facebook, SW
- Jane Li – Meta Quest, SWE