Android Team Outlines Major Changes To Improve App Security And Performance On Google Play
Google has announced some major changes to Android’s app development guidelines which will become official in the year 2018 and 2019 affecting all Android apps published on the Google Play store. These updates will focus on the performance and security improvements and ensure a positive experience in discovering and installing the games and apps from Google Play for app users.
Edward Cunningham, a product manager for Android, has explained about all the major changes in the Android developers blog. One fine thing about these changes is that they will not instantly come into effect providing enough time to the Android developer community to update their applications. These changes are going to make the apps more performant and secure.
Target API Level For New Apps From August 2018
API behavior changes improve the privacy and security protection of Android, helping developers protect their apps from malware attack. Below are some of those changes from recent platform versions:
- For Android 5.0, implicit intents for bindService() is no longer supported
- Runtime permissions for Android 6.0
- For 7.0, User-added CAs not allowed by default for secure connections.
- For 8.0, applications cannot access user accounts without exact user approval
Most of these changes only apply to the applications explicitly declaring their support for latest API behaviors, through the targetSdkVersion manifest attribute. Likewise, recent releases comprise user experience enhancements that stop applications from unexpectedly overusing resources like memory and battery.
For providing users with the best-possible Android experience, the Google Play Console will need that applications target a recent API level. In August 2018, latest apps will need to target API level 26 or higher. Followed by November in the same year, updates will be required for the existing apps for targeting API level 26 or higher. Each year from 2019 onwards, the targetSdkVersion requirement will progress.
Those applications that are not receiving updates remain unaffected. Developers are free to use a minSdkVersion of their choice, so developer’s ability to create applications for older versions remains unchanged.
The upcoming Android versions will also limit applications that do not target the latest API level and harmfully impact security or performance. It will proactively decrease fragmentation in the application ecosystem and make sure that applications are secure while providing plenty of notice and a long window to developers for planning ahead.
Android released Oreo (version 8.0) this year, the best performing and most secure version of this operating system yet, and also introduced Project Treble for helping the latest releases reach devices quicker. Below are the three major changes with more details.
Requirement of 64-bit support in 2019
64-bit platform support was earlier introduced in Android 5.0. Now, about 40% of Android devices have 64-bit support, whilst still supporting 32-bit compatibility. For applications using native libraries, 64-bit code usually offers notably better performance, with new instructions and added registers.
In expectation of upcoming Android devices supporting 64-bit code only, the Play Console will need that new apps and updates could run on devices without 32-bit support. Apps including a 32-bit library ought to have an alternative of 64-bit, either within the same Android Package Kit (APK) or as one of the different APKs published. Applications not including native code are unchanged. This change will kick in August 2019.
Security metadata in early 2018
In the coming year, Android team will be adding a little amount of security metadata on the primary part of each Android Package Kit (APK) for verifying that it has been officially issued by Google Play. Usually, when users buy a physical product, they will find a badge or an official label which marks the authenticity of the product.
Besides enhancing the integrity of Google Play’s mobile application ecosystem, this metadata will bring latest distribution opportunities for developers in the coming time and help more users keep their application up to date.
Looking ahead
The efforts being taken by the Android team to improve the security and performance of apps on Google Play is a very welcome move. As a top Android app development company, we always thrive to follow the best development standards and our team is already in action to adopt these important changes to deliver high quality and secure mobile apps to our enterprise and startup customers.