Posted by the Android staff
Deezer is a worldwide music streaming platform that gives customers entry to over 110 million tracks. Deezer goals to make its software simply accessible, letting customers take heed to their audio when, the place, and the way they need. With the rising reputation of Put on OS units and massive screens and foldables, the Deezer staff noticed a possibility to provide its customers extra methods to stream by enhancing its multi-device help.
Growing good watch help
Over the previous few years, customers more and more requested Deezer to make its app accessible on Put on OS. Throughout this time, the Deezer staff had additionally seen speedy progress within the wearable market.
“The Put on OS market was rising because of the Fitbit acquisition by Google, the Pixel watch announcement, and the change to Put on OS on Galaxy watches,” stated Hugo Vignaux, a senior product supervisor at Deezer. “It was excellent timing as a result of Google raised the chance with us to put money into Put on OS by becoming a member of the Media Expertise Program in 2022.”
Deezer’s builders initially targeted on offering prompt, quick access to customers’ personalised playlists from the appliance. To do that, engineers streamlined the app’s Put on OS UI, making it simpler for customers to manage the app from their wrist. Additionally they carried out a function that allowed customers to obtain their favourite Deezer playlists straight to their smartwatches, making offline playback attainable with out requiring a cellphone or an web connection.
The Deezer staff relied on Google’s Horologist and its Media Toolkit throughout improvement. Horologist and its libraries guided the staff and ensured updates to the UI adhered to Put on greatest practices. It additionally made rolling out options like audio and bluetooth administration a lot simpler.
“The participant view provided by the Media Toolkit was a supply of inspiration and assured that the app’s code high quality was as much as par,” stated Hugo. “It additionally allowed us to deal with unit testing and resiliency somewhat than growing new options from scratch.”
Extra help for big screens and foldables
Earlier than updating the app, Deezer’s UX wasn’t absolutely optimized for big screens and foldables. With this newest replace, Deezer builders created particular layouts for multitasking on massive screens, like tablets and laptops, and used resizable emulators to optimize the app’s resizing capabilities for every display screen on foldables.
“Supporting massive screens means we are able to higher match a number of home windows on a display screen,” stated Geoffrey Métais, engineering supervisor at Deezer. “This permits customers to simply change between apps, which is sweet as a result of Deezer doesn’t require a person’s full consideration for them to utilize its UI.”
On tablets, Deezer builders cut up pages that had been displayed vertically to be displayed horizontally. Builders additionally carried out a navigation rail and turned some lists into grids. These easy quality-of-life updates improved UX by giving customers a neater strategy to click on by means of the app.
Making these modifications was simple for builders because of the Jetpack WindowManager library. “The WindowManager library made it easy to adapt our UI to completely different display screen sizes,” stated Geoffrey. “It leverages Jetpack Compose’s modularity to adapt to any display screen measurement. And Compose code stays easy and constant regardless of addressing a wide range of completely different configurations.”
Updates to massive screens and foldables and Put on OS had been all created utilizing Jetpack Compose and Compose for Put on OS, respectively. With Jetpack Compose, Deezer builders had been in a position to effectively create and implement a design system that targeted on technical points throughout the new app. The Deezer staff attributes their elevated productiveness with Compose to Composable capabilities, which lets builders reuse code segments, and Android Studio, which helps builders iterate on options sooner.
“The mixture of a correct Design System with Jetpack Compose’s modularity and reactive paradigms is a really good and environment friendly answer to enhance usability with out shedding improvement productiveness,” stated Geoffrey.
The influence of elevated multi-device help
Growing multi-device help was simple for Deezer builders because of the instruments and assets provided by Google. The updates the Deezer staff made throughout screens improved the app’s UI, making it simpler for customers to navigate the app and take heed to audio on their very own phrases.
Since updating for Put on OS and different Android units, the Deezer staff noticed a 4X improve in person engagement and obtained optimistic suggestions from its neighborhood.
“Growing for WearOS and throughout units was nice because of the assistance of the Google staff and the provision of libraries and APIs that helped us ship some nice options, akin to Horologist and its Media Toolkit. All these technical belongings had been very properly documented and the Google staff’s dedication was large,” stated Hugo.
Get began
Be taught how one can begin growing for Put on OS and different Android units at the moment.
