Google Launches Android XR, Its New AI-Powered Extended Reality Platform

Android XR is Google’s new operating system aimed at powering devices like headsets and glasses and making possible new experiences, a.k.a. apps, running on them. Android XR will integrate Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, to enable understanding user intent, defining a plan, guiding through tasks, and more.

How Meta Ported Million Lines of Android Code from Java to Kotlin

In order to maximize the benefits brought by Kotlin in terms of productivity and safety, Meta engineers have been hard at work to translate their 10 million line Android codebase from Java into Kotlin. One year into this process, they have ported approximately half of their codebase and developed a specific tool, Kotlinator, to automate the process as much as possible.

Flutter 3.27 Promotes New Rendering Engine Impeller, Improves iOS and Material Widgets, and More

Flutter 3.27, brings a wealth of changes, including better adherence to Apple’s UI Guidelines thanks to a number of improved Cupertino widgets, new features for CarouselView, list rows and columns, ModalRoutes transitions, and so on. Furthermore, the new release makes the Impeller rendering engine the default, with improved performance, instrumentation support, concurrency support, and more.

Improving Threads' iOS Performance at Meta

An app’s performance is key to make users want to use it, say Meta engineers Dave LaMacchia and Jason Patterson. This includes making it lightning-fast, battery-efficient, and reliable across a range of devices and connectivity conditions. In a recent article, they recounted their experience with the Threads app.

Android Studio Ladybug Update Adds Gemini Support, New Debugging Features, and More

In its recent update to Android Studio Ladybug (2024.2.2), Google has added new Gemini Code Transforms to modify, refactor, or create code, debugging and testing tools, and developer experience improvements. Additionally, the IDE adopts the latest IntelliJ 2024.2 platform release.