What’s new within the Jetpack Compose August ’23 launch

Posted by Ben Trengrove, Android Developer Relations Engineer

At present, as a part of the Compose August ‘23 Invoice of Supplies, we’re releasing model 1.5 of Jetpack Compose, Android’s fashionable, native UI toolkit that’s utilized by apps corresponding to Play Retailer, Dropbox, and Airbnb. This launch largely focuses on efficiency enhancements, as main components of our modifier refactor we started within the October ‘22 launch are actually merged.

After we first launched Compose 1.0 in 2021, we had been centered on getting the API floor proper to supply a strong basis to construct on. We wished a strong and expressive API that was straightforward to make use of and secure in order that builders may confidently use it in manufacturing. As we proceed to enhance the API, efficiency is our high precedence, and within the August ‘23 launch, we have now landed many efficiency enhancements.

Modifiers see massive efficiency enhancements, as much as 80% enchancment to composition time, on this launch. One of the best half is that, due to our work getting the API floor proper within the first launch, most apps will see these advantages simply by upgrading to the August ‘23 launch.

We’ve got a set of benchmarks which might be used to watch for regressions and to tell our investments in enhancing efficiency. After the preliminary 1.0 launch of Compose, we started specializing in the place we may make enhancements. The benchmarks confirmed that we had been spending extra time than anticipated materializing modifiers. Modifiers make up the overwhelming majority of a composition tree and, as such, had been the biggest contributor to preliminary composition time in Compose. Refactoring modifiers to a extra environment friendly design started beneath the hood within the October ‘22 launch.

The October ‘22 launch included new APIs and efficiency enhancements in our lowest stage module, Compose UI. Modifiers construct on high of one another so we began migrating our low stage modifiers in Compose Basis within the subsequent launch, March ‘23. This included graphicsLayer, low stage focus modifiers, padding, and offset. These low stage modifiers are utilized by different extremely utilized modifiers corresponding to Clickable, and are additionally utilized by many framework Composables corresponding to Textual content. Migrating modifiers within the March ‘23 launch introduced efficiency enhancements to these elements, however the actual good points would come once we may migrate the upper stage modifiers and composables themselves to the brand new modifier system.

Within the August ‘23 launch, we have now begun migrating the Clickable modifier to the brand new modifier system, bringing substantial enhancements to composition time, in some instances as much as 80%. That is particularly related in lazy lists that include clickable parts corresponding to buttons. Modifier.indication, utilized by Clickable, continues to be within the technique of being migrated, so we anticipate additional good points to return in future releases.

As a part of this work, we recognized a use case for composed modifiers that wasn’t lined within the authentic refactor and added a new API to create Modifier.Node parts that devour CompositionLocal cases.

We are actually engaged on documentation to information you thru migrating your personal modifiers to the brand new Modifier.Node API. To get began straight away, you’ll be able to reference the samples in our repository.

Study extra concerning the rationale behind the modifications within the Compose Modifiers deep dive speak from Android Dev Summit ‘22.

This launch contains numerous enhancements in reminiscence utilization. We’ve got taken a tough take a look at allocations occurring throughout completely different Compose APIs and have decreased the whole allocations in numerous areas, particularly within the graphics stack and vector useful resource loading. This not solely reduces the reminiscence footprint of Compose, but in addition immediately improves efficiency, as we spend much less time allocating reminiscence and scale back rubbish assortment.

As well as, we mounted a reminiscence leak when utilizing ComposeView, which can profit all apps however particularly people who use multi-activity structure or massive quantities of View/Compose interop.

BasicText has moved to a brand new rendering system backed by the modifier work, which has introduced a median of acquire of 22% to preliminary composition time and as much as a 70% acquire in a single benchmark of complicated layouts involving textual content.

Quite a few Textual content APIs have additionally been stabilized, together with:

We’ve got additionally shipped new options and enhancements in our core APIs in addition to stabilizing some APIs:

• LazyStaggeredGrid is now secure.
• Added asComposePaint API to switch toComposePaint because the returned object wraps the unique android.graphics.Paint.
• Added IntermediateMeasurePolicy to help lookahead in SubcomposeLayout.
• Added onInterceptKeyBeforeSoftKeyboard modifier to intercept key occasions earlier than the delicate keyboard.

We’re grateful for all the bug experiences and have requests submitted to our difficulty tracker — they assist us to enhance Compose and construct the APIs you want. Proceed offering your suggestions, and assist us make Compose higher!

Questioning what’s subsequent? Try our roadmap to see the options we’re presently excited about and dealing on. We will’t wait to see what you construct subsequent!

Completely happy composing!