Get a glimpse of Wear 2.0�s upcoming standalone apps

Kacey Fahey, Marketing Programs Manager, Google Play




The upcoming Android Wear 2.0 experience will introduce standalone apps, expanding your potential reach to both Android and iOS audiences with Wear devices. Users will be able to search, install, and use apps without ever leaving their device. See how other developers are enhancing their user experience with standalone apps for messaging, travel & local, and health & fitness.

Glide




Having a watch app further simplifies video messaging with Glide.
Using the Wear Complications
API, Glide is now able to live broadcast directly from the watch face. By
tapping contact shortcuts from the watch face, you can now launch directly into
a conversation. This experience brings speed and intimacy to the world of
messaging, making wrist-based communication more accessible and effortless.




Foursquare




Travelers around the world use Foursquare's
Android Wear app to discover hidden gems and be in the know about the best
places to eat, drink and explore. With their upcoming 2.0 app, the team has a
clean new canvas for rich notifications giving users an immersive experience
with Foursquare content.




"The standalone nature of the Android Wear 2.0 app will offer a big boost in
search performance and app responsiveness so you spend less time staring at the
screen and more time exploring the world around you," said Kyle Fowler,
Software Engineer at Foursquare.




Lifesum





Lifesum
helps users make better food choices, improve their exercise, and reach health
goals. The upcoming 2.0 experience complements the existing Lifesum mobile app
and as a standalone app, it will allow users to more easily track water and
meals throughout the day.


"It's all about increasing access and being there for the user in a quick
and simple way. We believe a simplified way of tracking meals and water will
make it easier for our users on their journey of becoming healthier and
happier," said Joakim Hammer, Android Developer at Lifesum




Check out g.co/wearpreview for the latest builds and documentation about the recently released Android Wear Developer Preview 4.

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Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview 4: Authentication, In-App Billing, and more

Posted by Hoi Lam, Developer
Advocate

A key part of Android Wear 2.0 is letting
watch apps work as standalone apps, so users can respond to messages, track
their fitness, and use their favorite apps, even when their phone isn't around.
Developer Preview 4 includes a number of new APIs that will help you build more
powerful standalone apps.

Seamless authentication

To make authentication a seamless experience for both Android phone and iPhone
users, we have created new APIs for href="https://developer.android.com/wear/preview/features/auth-wear.html?utm_campaign=android wear_launch_developerpreview_121316&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">OAuth
and added support for one-click Google Sign-in. With the OAuth API for
Android Wear, users can tap a button on the watch that opens an authentication
screen on the phone. Your watch app can then authenticate with your server side
APIs directly. With Google Sign-In, it's even easier. All the user needs to do
is select which account they want to authenticate with and they are done.

In-app billing

In addition to paid apps, we have added href="https://developer.android.com/training/in-app-billing/index.html?utm_campaign=android wear_launch_developerpreview_121316&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">in-app
billing support, to give you another way to monetize your Android Wear app
or watch face. Users can authorize purchases quickly and easily on the watch
through a 4-digit Google Account PIN. Whether it's new levels in a game or new
styles on a watch face, if you can build it, users can buy it.

Cross-device promotion

What if your watch app doesn't work standalone? Or what if it offers a better
user experience when both the watch and phone apps are installed? We've been
listening carefully to your feedback, and we've added href="https://developer.android.com/wear/preview/features/standalone-apps.html?utm_campaign=android wear_launch_developerpreview_121316&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog#detecting-your-app">two
new APIs (PlayStoreAvailability and RemoteIntent)
to help you navigate users to the Play Store on a paired device so they can
more easily install your app. Developers can also open custom URLs on the phone
from the watch via the new RemoteIntent API; no phone app or data
layer is required.

class="prettyprint">// Check Play Store is available
int playStoreAvailabilityOnPhone =
PlayStoreAvailability.getPlayStoreAvailabilityOnPhone(getApplicationContext());

if (playStoreAvailabilityOnPhone == PlayStoreAvailability.PLAY_STORE_ON_PHONE_AVAILABLE) {
// To launch a web URL, setData to Uri.parse("https://g.co/wearpreview")
Intent intent =
new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW)
.addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_BROWSABLE)
.setData(Uri.parse("market://details?id=com.google.android.wearable.app"));
// mResultReceiver is optional; it can be null.
RemoteIntent.startRemoteActivity(this, intent, mResultReceiver);
}

Swipe-to-dismiss is back

Many of you have given us the feedback that the swipe-to-dismiss gesture from
Android Wear 1.0 is an intuitive time-saver. We agree, and have reverted back to
the previous behavior with this developer preview release. To support
swipe-to-dismiss in this release, we've made the following platform and API
changes:

• Activities now automatically support swipe-to-dismiss.
  Swiping an activity from left to right will result in it being dismissed and the
  app will navigate down the back stack.
  
• New Fragment and View support. Developers can wrap the
  containing views of a Fragment or Views in general in the new
  SwipeDismissFrameLayout to implement custom actions such as going
  down the back stack when the user swipes rather than exiting the activity.
  
• Hardware button now maps to "power" instead of "back" which
  means it can no longer be intercepted by apps.

Additional details are available under the href="https://developer.android.com/wear/preview/behavior-changes.html?utm_campaign=android wear_launch_developerpreview_121316&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">behavior
changes section of the Android Wear Preview site.

Compatibility with Android Wear 1.0 apps

Android Wear apps packaged using the legacy embedded app mechanism can now be
delivered to Android Wear 2.0 watches. When a user installs a phone app that
also contains an embedded Android Wear app, the user will be prompted to install
the embedded app via a notification. If they choose not to install the embedded
app at that moment, they can find it in the Play Store on Android Wear under a
special section called "Apps you've used".

Despite support for the existing mechanism, there are significant benefits for
apps that transition to the href="https://developer.android.com/wear/preview/features/app-distribution.html?utm_campaign=android_discussion_wearpreview_092916&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog#publish">multi-APK
delivery mechanism. Multi-APK allows the app to be searchable in the Play
Store on Android Wear, to be eligible for merchandising on the homepage, and to
be remotely installed from the web to the watch. As a result, we strongly
recommend that developers move to multi-APK.

More additions in Developer Preview 4

• href="https://developer.android.com/wear/preview/features/ui-nav-actions.html?utm_campaign=android wear_launch_developerpreview_121316&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">Action
  and Navigation Drawers: An enhancement to peeking behavior
  allows the user to take action without scrolling all the way to the top or
  bottom of a list. Developers can further fine-tune drawer peeking behavior
  through new APIs, such as setShouldPeekOnScrollDown for the action
  drawer.
  
• href="https://developer.android.com/wear/preview/features/wearable-recycler-view.html?utm_campaign=android wear_launch_developerpreview_121316&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">WearableRecyclerView:
  The curved layout is now opt-in, and with this, the WearableRecyclerView is now
  a drop-in replacement for RecyclerView.
  
• href="https://developer.android.com/wear/preview/features/complications.html?utm_campaign=android wear_launch_developerpreview_121316&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog#using_fields_for_complication_data">Burn-in
  protection icon for complications: Complication data providers can now
  provide icons for use on screens susceptible to burn-in. These burn-in-safe
  icons are normally the outline of the icon in interactive mode. Previously,
  watch faces may have chosen not to display the icon at all in ambient mode to
  prevent screen burn-in.

Feedback welcome!

Thanks for all your terrific feedback on Android Wear 2.0. Check out href="http://g.co/wearpreview">g.co/wearpreview for the latest builds and
documentation, keep the feedback coming by href="http://g.co/wearpreviewbug">filing bugs or posting in our href="https://plus.google.com/communities/113381227473021565406">Android Wear
Developers community, and stay tuned for Android Wear Developer Preview 5!

Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview 2

Posted by Hoi Lam, Android Wear
Developer Advocate

At Google I/O 2016, we launched the Android
Wear 2.0 Developer Preview, which gives developers early access to the next
major release of Android Wear. Since I/O, feedback from the developer community
has helped us identify bugs and shape our product direction. Thank you!

Today, we are releasing the second developer preview with new functionalities
and bug fixes. Prior to the consumer release, we plan to release additional
updates, so please send us your
feedback early and often. Please keep in mind that this preview is a work in
progress, and is not yet intended for daily use.

What�s new?

• Platform API 24 - We have incremented the Android Platform
  API version number to 24 to match Nougat. You can now update your Android Wear
  2.0 Preview project�s compileSdkVersion to API 24, and we recommend
  that you also update targetSdkVersion to API 24.
  
• Wearable Drawers Enhancements - We launched the href="https://developer.android.com/wear/preview/features/ui-nav-actions.html?utm_campaign=android wear_launch_preview2_071216&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">wearable
  drawers as part of the Android Wear 2.0 Preview 1, along with UX guidelines
  on how to best integrate the href="https://www.google.com/design/spec-wear/components/navigation-drawer.html">navigation
  drawer and href="https://www.google.com/design/spec-wear/components/action-drawer.html">action
  drawer in your Android Wear app. In Preview 2, we have added additional
  support for wearable drawer peeking, to make it easier for users to access these
  drawers as they scroll. Other UI improvements include automatic peek view and
  navigation drawer closure and showing the first action in
  WearableActionDrawer�s peek view. For developers that want to make
  custom wearable drawers, we�ve added peek_view and
  drawer_content attributes to WearableDrawerView. And
  finally, navigation drawer contents can now be updated by calling href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/ArrayAdapter.html?utm_campaign=android wear_launch_preview2_071216&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog#notifyDataSetChanged()">notifyDataSetChanged.
  
• Wrist Gestures: Since last year, users have been able to
  scroll through the notification stream via href="https://support.google.com/androidwear/answer/6312406?hl=en">wrist
  gestures. We have now opened this system to developers to use within their
  applications. This helps improve single hand usage, for when your users need
  their other hand to hold onto their shopping or their kids. See the code sample
  below to get started with gestures in your app:

 public class MainActivity extends Activity {  
   ...    
   @Override /* KeyEvent.Callback */  
   public boolean onKeyDown(int keyCode, KeyEvent event) {  
     switch (keyCode) {  
       case KeyEvent.KEYCODE_NAVIGATE_NEXT:  
         Log.d(TAG, "Next");  
         break;  
       case KeyEvent.KEYCODE_NAVIGATE_PREVIOUS:  
         Log.d(TAG, "Previous");  
         break;  
     }  
     // If you did not handle, then let it be handled by the next possible element as deemed by  
     // Activity.  
     return super.onKeyDown(keyCode, event);  
   }  
 }  

Get started and give us feedback!

The Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview includes an updated SDK with tools and
system images for testing on the official Android emulator, the href="https://store.google.com/product/lg_watch_urbane_2nd_edition_lte">LG Watch
Urbane 2nd Edition LTE, and the href="https://store.google.com/product/huawei_watch">Huawei Watch.

To get started, follow these steps:

1. Take a video tour
   of the Android Wear 2.0 developer preview
   
2. Update to Android Studio v2.1.1 or later
   
3. Visit the Android Wear 2.0 Developer
   Preview site for downloads and documentation
   
4. Get the emulator system images through the SDK Manager or href="https://developer.android.com/wear/preview/downloads.html?utm_campaign=android wear_launch_preview2_071216&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">download the
   device system images from the developer preview downloads page
   
5. Test your app with your supported device or emulator
   
6. Give us feedback

We will update this developer preview over the next few months based on your
feedback. The sooner we hear from you, the more we can include in the final
release, so don't be shy!