What is the AOSP?

AOSP is the Android Open Spurce Project Architecture Source Code is hosted here: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/manifest Google uses repo (basically a git wrapper written in python) to clone the source code. You can find the instructions here:  https://source.android.com/setup/build/downloading Further Reading What is Ninja? What is kapt? Anatomy of a Gradle file

How to use Snackbars

A Snackbar is a replacement for Toasts in Android. Dependency implementation ‘com.google.android.material:material:1.4.0’ Layout A snackbar must be tied to a coordinator layout. If you use fragments the standard layout is FrameLayout which can be directly swapped with: <androidx.coordinatorlayout.widget.CoordinatorLayout Snackbar val snackbar = Snackbar.make( binding.root, “No internet connection! Please enable WiFi or Mobile Data”, Snackbar.LENGTH_INDEFINITE )…

Localization of Android Apps

If you want to add another language for your app do the following Create a new folder e.g. app/src/main/res/values-de Add strings.xml into this folder Translate the content The cool thing about translation in android is that you can do it incrementally: when there is no translation for a string resource in a locale Android will…

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Passing data between AndroidActivities

Sending data private void openVideoActivity(String video) { Intent newActivity = new Intent(this, PlayerActivity.class); newActivity.putExtra(“videoId”, video); startActivity(newActivity); } Retrieving data final String videoID = getIntent().getExtras().getString(“videoID”);   In Kotlin it looks like this: val intent = Intent(this, NewActivity::class.java).apply { putExtra(“EXTRA_MESSAGE”, “Test 123”) } startActivity(intent) Retrieving val message = intent.getStringExtra(“EXTRA_MESSAGE”) Further Reading Passing data between fragments using SafeArgs…

Features and Permissions in Android

Features and Permissions A permission is something an app is allowed to do 🙂 E.g. using the camera, reading location or accessing your contacts. <uses-permission android:name=”android.permission.CAMERA” /> <uses-feature android:name=”android.hardware.camera” android:required=”true” /> Internet Access If your app uses e.g. web-APIs you need internet access. This can be achieved by adding android.permission.INTERNET to your manifest. In this…

Review Microsoft Lens

From time to time You need to take photos of documents, whiteboards or business cards. Microsoft Office Lens speeds up the process by enhancing the image in an automatic fashion. Recommended by my colleague Jens Dittmar this little helper improved my workday a lot. Let’s see it in action first: Documents Let’s say You have…