Android Developers Backstage

Bring your own model - Android Developers Backstage

10 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode Tor and Chet chat with Raluca Saucic and Eugene Yakavets about the new "Bring Your Own Model" feature in Android Studio which allows u...

From natural language to UI tests: A deep dive into Journeys for Android Studio

14 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hosts Tor and Chet are joined by Adarsh Fernando, a Product Manager, and Ray Buse, a Software Engineer, to discuss Journeys for Android Studio. Powere...

Android developer verification

30 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

To protect users from malware and scams, Android has announced a new layer of security: developer verification. While this is nothing new for Google P...

Autofill in Compose

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of Android Back Stage, Hosts Tor, and Chet are joined by Melba and Ralston, Software Engineers on the Compose Team, to talk about Auto...

Back it up, bring it back: No data left behind

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It can be a draw when setting up a new device. Some info transfers, while some don't. Learn how developers can ensure the best user experience when pe...

Bot to the Future: Two Years Later

13 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Join Tor and Siva Velusamy and Sandhya Mohan from the Android Studio team to learn about the latest updates to Studio Bot (Gemini in Android Studio) t...

​​Kotlin Multiplatform: Have your code and eat it too

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Software Engineers Dustin Lam and Yigit Boyar join host Tor Norbye to chat all about Kotlin Multiplatform.  Resources: Tor's Bluesky → https://goo...

Linting on the Side of Caution: Safety & Security

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What is app safety for Android? What is the Android team working on to ensure developers and users alike enjoy safe and reliable apps? Watch along as ...

Episode 213: Compose runtime and performance

04 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Tor and Romain chat with Leland and Chuck from the Compose team about performance -- recent optimizations, upcoming optimizati...

Episode 212: Happy birthday, Android Studio!

24 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode Chet, Romain and Tor chat with Xav and Jamal from the Android Studio team to talk about the history of Android's IDE.   Chapters: Int...

Episode 211: Rules about performance tools

26 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode Chet, Romain and Tor chat with Shai Barack about how the Android platform team studies performance and understands system health - and...

Episode 210: Studio Jewelry

24 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode Chet, Romain and Tor chat with Sebastiano about how the Android Studio team builds UIs. We talk about how Compose for Desktop is used ...

Episode 209: Compose animations

12 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode Chet, Romain and Tor chat with Doris Liu from the Compose team about animations in Compose -- covering everything from the basic primi...

Episode 208: Micro optimizations

18 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode Tor and Romain find themselves without a guest and decide to chat about micro optimizations and writing custom tools. Tor and Romain ...

Episode 207: AI development assistance

20 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode we talk with Kathy Korevec from the AIDA team at Google about AI assisted developer tools, such as Android Studio -- which is using Ge...

Episode 206: Make it faster

22 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode we cover ADB -- not "Android Developers Backstage", but "Android Debug Bridge", the technology powering device connections. Romain and...

Episode 205: Time for Playtime

26 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Tor, Romain, and Chet talk with Aurash Mahbod from the Play Games team at Google -- covering trends in mobile games, challenges for A...

Episode 204: Fan'otations

21 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Tor, Romain, and Chet talk about one of Tor's favorite topics: Lint! Specifically, we talk about Lint checks and the annotations that...

Episode 203: (W)rap

21 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Tor, Romain, and Chet talk about some of the many things that happened this year in the world of Android development, including new d...

Episode 202: AndroidX, Gradle and Metalava

01 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Tor and Romain chat with Aurimas Liutikas from the AndroidX team. Topics include performance tuning the AndroidX Gradle builds using ...

Episode 201: Firebase in Android Studio

21 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Tor and Romain chat with Greg Baker and Joe Baker-Malone about exciting new Android Studio features made possible by Firebase integra...

Episode 200: WebGPU

15 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Chet and Romain speak with Ken Russell and Corentin Wallez from the WebGPU team. WebGPU is a new API that brings modern GPU rendering...

Episode 199: Compose performance

18 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This time, Romain, Tor, and Chet talk with Leland Richardson, George Mount, and Chuck Jazdzewski from the Jetpack Compose team about performance. The ...

Episode 198: Location location location, revisited

26 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Since our original episode on location nearly nine years ago, a lot has happened in the location support for Android. In this episode, Wyatt Riley and...

Episode 197: Studio Bot

17 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

You saw it at Google I/O - now you can hear about it in the comfort of your own headphones! Tor, Romain, and Chet talk with Siva Velusamy and Sandhya ...

Episode 196: Android Studio, behind the scenes

22 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Raluca Sauciuc joins Tor and Romain to talk about what goes on behind the scenes in Android Studio. Raluca takes us through the tools and workflows us...

Episode 195: Mainlining

15 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Chet and Romain talk to Jeff Hamilton and Anton Hansson from the Mainline team about "modular system components", and the new SDK extension framework ...

Episode 194: Subtext

17 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This time, Tor, Romain, and Chet were joined by Siyamed Sinir and Sean McQuillan from the Android Text team to talk about, well, text. Which, it turns...

Episode 193: Kotlin

22 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, James Ward joins Chet, Tor, and Romain to talk about Kotlin. We talked about Kotlin Multiplatform (both KMP and KMM) and what's comin...

Episode 192: The Path Forward

21 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This time, Romain and Chet ditched Tor so that they could geek out about graphics, talking about paths, Bézier curves, morphing, and more. Romain an...

Episode 191: Compose Lazy Layouts

11 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We recorded episode 191 from the studio in the London office, where Rebecca Franks from the developer relations team joined Chet as a guest host. We t...

Episode 190: Performance Review

04 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Tor and Chet learn some more about performance from Carmen. Carmen works on the Android Platform Performance team and is an expert on...

Episode 189: Video Conference

22 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode (the first in-studio-with-guests recording since early 2020!), Tor and Chet spoke with Marc Bächinger, Toni Heidenreich, and Andrew L...

Episode 188: Android 13

01 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It's our first episode back in the studio, and in a new, shiny studio too! In this episode, we talk about some of our favorite new features and change...

Episode 187: System UI: A Retrospective

25 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

"Our job isn't to remove complexity, but to manage it"- Glen Murphy (as remembered by Dan) In this episode, we talk with Dan Sandler and Adam Cohen fr...

Episode 186: Live Edit

08 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we talk with Alan and Esteban from Android Studio about the new "Live Edit" feature recently launched at Google I/O in the Electric E...

Episode 185: Play Store

03 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode we chat with Jon and Andrew from the Play team about the Play Store app. The Play Store recently went through a major refactoring of t...

Episode 184: Skia and AGSL - Shaders of Things to Come

05 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode we chat with Derek and Brian from the Skia team about Skia, pixel shaders, and the new "AGSL" API that lets you provide pixel shaders ...

Episode 183: Baseline Profiles

25 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode we chat with Rahul and Leland from the Android toolkit team about "baseline profiles", a new mechanism which lets applications ship wi...

Episode 182: Large screens are a big deal

01 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Clara (Android Toolkit), Florina (Android Developer Relations), and Daniel (Android Product Management) join your usual hosts to talk...

Episode 181: Architecture → Fewer bugs at the end

11 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we chat with Yigit Boyar (again!) from the Android Toolkit Team and Manuel Vivo from the Developer Relations team about application a...

Episode 180: Kotlin Magic Platform

16 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we chat with Yigit Boyar from the Android Toolkit Team about Kotlin multi platform, while Romain provides light background music on h...

Episode 179: Flibberty Widget

30 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Chet and Romain talked with Nicole McWilliams and Petr Čermák from the London engineering office about their work on App Widgets an...

Episode 178: Hosts 3, Guests 0

15 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Chet, Romain and Tor sit down to chat about the Android DevSummit, and in particular all the new features arriving in Android Studio,...

Episode 177: Honor every photon

18 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Bart Wronski takes Tor, Romain, and Chet through the camera pipeline that powers the Pixel phones. We talked about how cameras captur...

Episode 176: Android 12 - S stands for System UI

27 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Chet, Romain and Tor have a chat with Selim, Vadim and Lucas from the Android system UI team, discussing many of the new features in ...

Episode 175: Lottie

14 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Chet, Romain and Tor have a chat with Gabriel Peal from Tonal, well known for his contributions to the Android community on projects ...

Episode 174: Compose tooling

09 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Tor and Nick are joined by Chris Sinco, Diego Perez and Nicolas Roard to discuss the features added to Android Studio for Jetpack Com...

Episode 173: More benchmarking

26 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Chet, Romain and Tor talk with Chris Craik and Rahul Ravikumar from the toolkit performance team. We talk about the recently released...

Episode 172: Privacy features in Android 12

09 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Chet, Romain and Tor talk with Sara N Marandi, Fred Chung and Erik Wolsheimer about the new privacy features in Android 12, such as t...

Episode 171: Compose Testing

02 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Nick and Romain are joined by Filip Pavlis, Jelle Fresen & Jose Alcérreca to talk about Testing in Compose. They discuss how Compose...

Episode 170: Jetpack Compose Graphics & Animation

20 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode Nick and Chet are joined by Dois Liu and Nader Jawad to discuss Compose's Animation and Graphics systems. They cover their goals to ma...

Episode 169: Testing

05 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Romain and Tor are joined by Adarsh Fernando, Arif Sukoco and Yahan Zhou from the Android Studio team, covering the recent improvemen...

Episode 168: Material Composition

28 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In our ongoing mini-series on Jetpack Compose, Nick and Romain talk to Clara Bayarri and Matvei Malkov about Compose's support for Material Design. Th...

Episode 167: Jetpack Compose Layout

14 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this second episode of our mini-series on Jetpack Compose (AD/BC) Nick and Romain are joined by Anastasia Soboleva, George Mount and Mihai Popa to ...

Episode 166: Security Deposit

08 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Chad and Jeff from the Android Security team join Tor and Romain to talk about… security. Chad and Jeff explain what the platform ...

Episode 165: Material Witnesses

02 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Chet and Romain welcome Hunter and Nick from the Material Design team. Material Design was originally introduced when Android 5.0 cam...

Episode 164: Jetpack Compose Compilation

27 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This episode is the first in the new mini-series "ADBC" on Jetpack Compose, hosted by Nick Butcher, in which we will dive deep into different topics i...

Episode 163: Novel Graphics

24 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we talk with Nat Duca and Sumir Kataria from the Android graphics team about the graphics stack -- covering shaders, GPUs, Vulkan, Op...

Episode 162: Kotlin Symbol Processing

28 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Cowardly abandoned by Chet and Romain, Tor faces three guests alone. Jeffrey van Gogh, Ting-Yuan Huang, and Yigit Boyar join Tor to talk about Kotlin...

Episode 161: DataStories

21 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This time, Tor, Chet, and Romain talked with Rohit Sathyanarayana and Florina Muntenescu about the DataStore library. DataStore is the replacement fo...

Episode 160: ART History

13 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Romain, Chet and Tor sit down with Brian Carlstrom and Nicolas Geoffray to discuss their work on ART (the Android Runtime). Brian an...

Episode 159: Interview with Chris Lacy

24 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Chet and Romain host Chris Lacy, a long time independent Android developer. In this episode, Chris explains how he decides what apps to build, how he...

Episode 158: Jetpack Compose... C'est bêta !

15 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Chet, Nick, Clara, Leland, Tor, Adam, and Romain. So many guests! This time, Tor, Romain, and Chet chatted with a few people on the Jetpa...

Episode 157: Audio feedback

03 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What does a podcast look like? We don't know, so here's a picture of the podcast's website We want to hear from you! In this episode, Tor,...

Episode 156: Android Runtime Classic (Dalvik)

20 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It's history time! Or even [pre-]ART History time! We didn't take a picture this time. Please imagine what we looked like. This time, T...

Episode 155: WindowManagerManagers

03 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Top row: Chet, Romain, Rob. Bottom row: Wale, Tor. In this episode, we chat with Wale Ogunwale and Rob Carr from the Android Framework ...

Episode 154: It's a Wrap!

23 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This episode is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend and colleague, Carl Quinn. Our last episode of the year arrives just in time for the h...

Episode 153: Ok, Ok, Ok

09 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Romain, Tor, and Chet talked with Jesse Wilson from Square. Jesse has worked on several popular open-source libraries, including OkHttp, Okio, and [Ok...

Episode 152: Image Loading with Coil

12 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Chet, Colin, Romain, and Tor This week, Tor, Romain and Chet are joined by a special guest: Colin White from Instacart. Colin is the author...

Episode 151: Paging3

28 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Chet, Dustin, Chris, and Romain. (Tor not pictured. Because he wasn't there) Romain and Chet talked with Dustin Lam and Chris Craik from the...

Episode 150: Aaptly Named

14 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Top row: Tor and Romain Bottom row: Ryan and Chet In this episode, Chet, Romain and Tor talk with Ryan Mitchell from the Android Framework T...

Episode 149: ADB over WiFi on ADB

30 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Top row: Chet, Joshua and Romain. Bottom row: Renaud and Tor In this episode, Chet, Romain and Tor talk with Renaud Paquay and Joshua Duong ...

ADB 148: [Constraint|Motion][Layout|Editor]

16 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sean McQuillan and I talked with Nicolas Roard and John Hoford about MotionEditor, which went stable recently in Android Studio 4.0. But a...

Episode 147: Jetpack Compose Alpha

27 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The real star of the show: Jetpack Compose This week, after a long series of developer previews, we are celebrating the release of Jetpac...

Episode 146: The Game Changer

19 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dan (played by an icon), Greg, and a tiny Romain in the upper right This time, Romain was hosting all on his own for this conversation abo...

Episode 145: Grab that Dagger by the Hilt

21 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Eric, Dany, and Romain. Chet not represented to hide the confused look he had on his face during the entire recording. We're injecting dep...

Episode 144: Compilers

14 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Mads, Chet and Tor In this episode, Chet and Tor talk with Mads Ager from the Android Studio compilers team. We cover a number of subject...

Episode 143: Shhhh! Private!

30 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Tor, Romain, Sara, Philip, and a little tiny Chet top-right In this episode, Tor, Chet, and Romain talk with Sara N-Marandi and Philip Mo...

Episode 142: Machine Learning Learning

23 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Hoi and Matej in the top row, Chet and Tor below In this episode, Chet and Tor talk with Hoi Lam and Matej Pfajfar about machine learnin...

Episode 141: Discussing Conversations

16 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Romain, Tor's large head and bad framing, Chet's little tiny picture top-right, Julia, and Stefan It's all about people! In this episode, ...

Episode 140: Bubbles!

02 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Artur, Chet, Mady, Romain and Tor In this episode, Romain, Chet and Tor talked with Mady Melor  and Artur Tsurkan from the System UI team...

Episode 139: AndroidX. Jetpack. AndroidX. Jetpack. Whatever.

18 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Romain, Chet, Alan, Nick, and a little tiny Tor in the upper-right corner In this episode, Romain, Chet and Tor talked with Nick Anthony an...

Episode 138: Animated IME — Oh, my!

30 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Chet, Romain, Jorim, Adrian and Taran. Oh and Tor hiding the upper  right. In this episode, Tor, Chet and Romain are joined by Jorim, ...

Episode 137: Accessibility

22 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Chet, Qasid, Romain, Sally, Tor, and a very mysterious guest in a very dark room in the lower-right. In this episode, Romain, Chet and To...

Episode 136: Remoting

16 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Tor, Chet, and Romain, remembering the way things used to be, back when there was a recording studio instead of closets at home. In this...

Episode 135: Audio Podcast

09 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Tor, Don, Chet, and Phil, on a video conference on Tor's machine. VCs are critical to mitigating (but not actually solving) latency issues wit...

Episode 134: All Work No Play

20 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rahul (Work), Sumir (Manager), and Chet In this episode, Chet talks with Sumir Kataria and Rahul Ravikumar from the Android Toolkit team a...

Episode 133: Power Play

06 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Kweku, Makoto, Amith, Chet, Romain, and Tor In this episode, Chet talked with Amith Yamasani, Makoto Onuki, and Kweku Adams from the framew...

Episode 132: Storing data with Store

05 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Mike, Romain, Yigit, and Chet In this episode, Chet and Romain talk with Yigit Boyar, from the Jetpack team, and Mike Nakhimovich from Dropb...

Episode 131: Jetpack Compose and Declarative UIs

23 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Adam, Romain, Tor, and Chet, on location in the fancy and totally upscale ADB recording studio In this episode, Tor, Romain, and Chet talk ...

Episode 130: First Law of Motion...Layout

09 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Tor, Nicolas, John, Romain and Chet in the Android Studio In this episode, Tor, Romain and Chet chit chat with Nicolas Roard and John Hofo...

Episode 129: Display, Input and Haptics

09 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Michael, Chet and Romain in the cozy London recording studio. In this episode, Chet and Romain travel all the way to London to have a c...

Episode 128: Play with App Bundles

10 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We forgot to take a picture of ourselves when we recorded this. Please use your imagination. In this episode, Chet and Florina Muntenescu...

Episode 127: Gradle to Crave

22 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Tor, Jerome, Chris and Xavier in the recording studio. In this episode, Tor chats with Jerome Dochez, Chris Warrington and Xavier Ducroh...

Episode 126: Gesture Nav

11 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Allen, Chris, Adam, part of Tor, Dan (taking the photo), and Chet. All of them are also in the monitor, but backwards. Oh, and note the gym ...

Episode 125: ADB Live at the Android Dev Summit

30 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Chet, Tor, Romain, Cyril and Zarah, laughing at something stupid funny that Chet said. Amongst the many talks and announcements at the An...

Episode 124: UX

28 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Chet, Glen, Rod, and Tor. Il n'y a pas de Romain.  In this episode, Chet and Tor talk with Rod Graves and Glen Murphy from the Android ...

Episode 123: Redacted

21 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly. Links: Best Practices for Unique Identifers Chet: @che...

Episode 122: Talk Talk

03 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Chet and Romain, featuring a complete lack of Tor. In this episode, Chet and Romain talk about talking, speak about speaking, monologue m...