Posted by Patrick Fuentes, Developer Relations Engineer, Google ChromeOS
Individuals’s urge for food for apps on bigger screens is rising quick. In Q1 2022 alone, there have been 270 million energetic Android customers throughout Chromebooks, tablets, and foldables. So if you wish to develop attain, engagement, and loyalty, taking your app past cellular will unlock a world of alternative.
In case your app is accessible in Google Play, there’s a great probability customers are already participating with it on ChromeOS. And for those who’re simply beginning to consider bigger screens, tailoring your app to ChromeOS — which runs a full Android framework — is a superb place to begin. What’s extra is that optimizing for ChromeOS is similar to optimizing for different larger-screen units, so any work you do for one will scale to the opposite.
At Android Dev Summit 2022, I shared a number of ChromeOS-specific nuances to bear in mind when tailoring your app to bigger screens. Let’s discover the highest 5 issues devs ought to take into account, in addition to workarounds to frequent challenges.
1) Finessing enter compatibility
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2) Making a fit-for-larger-screen UI
Individuals freely resize apps on ChromeOS, so it’s vital to consider how your app seems and feels in quite a lot of facet ratios — together with panorama orientations. Though ChromeOS provides automated windowing compatibility help for made-for-mobile experiences, apps that particularly optimize for bigger screens are inclined to drive extra engagement.
The additional display screen actual property on Chromebooks, tablets, and foldables offers each you and your customers extra room to play, discover, and create. So why not take advantage of it? You’ll be able to implement a responsive UI for bigger screens with toolkits akin to Jetpack Compose and create adaptive experiences by sticking to design finest practices.
3) Implementing binary compatibility
In the event you’ve solely run your app on Android telephones, you may solely be aware of ARM units. However Chromebooks and plenty of different desktops usually use x86 architectures, which makes binary help important. Though Gradle builds for all non-deprecated ABIs by default, you’ll nonetheless have to particularly account for x86 help in case your app or one in every of your libraries contains C++ code.
Because of binary translation, many Android apps will run on x86 ChromeOS units even when a suitable model isn’t accessible. However this could hinder app efficiency and harm battery life, so it’s finest to present x86 help explicitly each time you may.
4) Giving apps an intensive take a look at run
The surefire means of guaranteeing an incredible consumer expertise? Run rigorous checks to verify your apps and video games work as anticipated on the units you’re optimizing for. While you’re constructing for ChromeOS, testing your apps on Chromebooks or one other larger-screen gadget is right. However you’ve got nonetheless acquired choices if a bodily gadget isn’t accessible.
As an illustration, you may nonetheless take a look at a keyboard or mouse on an Android handset by plugging them into the USB-C port. And with the new desktop emulator in Android Studio, you may take your app for a spin in a larger-screen setting and take a look at desktop options akin to window resizing.
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5) Sprucing apps for publishing
Typically, even apps examined on Chromebooks — and listed in Google Play — aren’t truly accessible to ChromeOS customers. This normally occurs as a result of there’s an entry within the app’s manifest declaring it requires options that aren’t accessible on the unsupported gadget.
Let’s say you specify your app requires “android.{hardware}.digital camera.” That entry refers to a rear-facing digital camera — so any units with solely a user-facing digital camera can be thought of unsupported. If any digital camera will work in your app, you need to use “android.{hardware}.digital camera.any” as an alternative. And if a {hardware} function isn’t a should in your app, it’s finest to specify in your manifest that it’s not required by utilizing “required=false.”
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Join with thousands and thousands of larger-screen customers
As individuals’s love for desktops, tablets, and foldables continues to develop, constructing for these kind elements is changing into increasingly more vital. Try different talks from Android Dev Summit 2022 in addition to assets on ChromeOS.dev and developer.android.com for extra inspiration and how-tos as you optimize for bigger screens. And don’t neglect to join the ChromeOS e-newsletter to maintain up with the most recent.
