Back in September 2020, I published a series of articles about the shiny new DataStore Jetpack library. DataStore impressed me at the time. However, there have been some changes since the 1.0.0-alpha01 release that we looked at back then. At the time of writing the latest version is 1.0.0-alpha08 and there have been some breaking…
Tag: androiddev
SlidingPaneLayout
There is no hiding from the fact that foldable devices are here. They pose some new challenges when it comes to app development. One of these is the fact that a foldable device’s form factor changes depending on the folded status. Android supports different form factors by design, so this is quite easy to deal…
RenderEffect – Desaturate
At the time of writing, March 2021, the initial developer preview of Android 12 has recently arrived. Android 12 will have a design system refresh named Material NEXT, if the many rumours are true. While the details of what this actually means are vague, there are likely to be similarities to other mobile platforms. One…
RenderEffect – Blur
At the time of writing, March 2021, the initial developer preview of Android 12 has recently arrived. Android 12 will have a design system refresh named Material NEXT, if the many rumours are true. While the details of what this actually means are vague, there are likely to be similarities to other mobile platforms. One…
Activity Result Contract – Outside The Activity
In the previous article, we looked at how the new Activity Result Contract pattern. It can keep our code much easier to understand. It can also reduce boilerplate which is always a good thing. This is fine when we need to, for example, request permissions in our Activity. But often we want to avoind putting…
Activity Result Contract – The Basics
As regular readers of Styling Android will know, I generally publish sample code projects along with each series of articles. Whenever the code requires runtime permissions my heart sinks because I know that I must add a chunk of boilerplate. This not only means extra work for me, but it can also make the sample…
AnimatedIcons: Visibility V3
There is a nice micro-animation library at useanimations.com which contains some useful icon animations. These are all free to use and downloadable at Lottie animations. For those that already use Lottie they can use these animations as-is. It may not be possible to use them in apps which don’t use Lottie, or if there’s no designer that…
Broken Material Theme
When is a Material theme not a Material theme? That may sound like the first line of a joke, but it is actually a real problem I faced recently. It caused me much noggin scratching until I chanced upon the cause. And you’ll have to wait until the end of the article for the punch…
Currency Converter: Improvements
In the previous series, we looked at the overall design of a personal project that I put together. The app obtains the balance from my Transferwise Borderless account (in USD) plus the current exchange rates. It displays this in an App Widget which the user can place on the home screen. While the app works,…
Currency Converter: UI
At the end of 2020, I published a post on displaying currency conversion rates on a LaMetric Time smart clock. That solution only worked when I was working in my home office because that’s where the LaMetric Time lives. So I decided to build something similar on Android for other times. The app I produced…