Google pushes developers to adapt Android apps for Chromebooks

The number of people using Android apps on Chromebooks is up 50% year over year, according to a blog post from Chrome OS product managers Fahd Imtiaz and Sanj Nathwani this week. The executives cited internal Google data recorded from 2020 to 2021.

In 2021, as some smartphones upgraded to Android 12, Google worked on updating Chromebooks to support Android 11, while trying to boost security and performance by bringing Android to Chrome OS in a virtual machine, rather than a container. The company has also improved its overall usability, using runtime enhancements to improve resizing and scaling of Android apps on Chromebooks, as well as app rendering.

As the developer-focused blog noted, Chromebooks on Chrome OS 93 or newer (latest is Chrome OS 96) automatically run Android apps designed for mobile devices in a window set to stay in a “phone orientation or tablet”. And, yes, you can disable this feature.

Additionally, Imtiaz and Nathwani pointed out that Android’s Nearby Sharing feature coming to Chrome 96 for Android 11 and Android 9 apps was another way to try to incentivize developers to adapt their apps to devices with larger screens.

Google wants this to be the priority of developers

In May, Google reported that usage of the 10-year-old operating system (OS) had grown 92% over the past year, which would have been “five times the PC market rate.” At the time, Patrick Fuentes, Chrome OS developer relations engineering manager, said it made Chrome OS “the second most popular and fastest growing desktop operating system.” .

It’s clear that the operating system is banking on Android apps to help continue that growth. In fact, this week’s blog asserted that “there is no doubt that scaling to larger screens will be a priority for developers in 2022.”

The blog highlighted ways to build new apps that would take advantage of Android on the Chromebook, such as Jetpack Compose 1.0, a UI toolkit, and Android Studio Chipmunk, a layout validation tool. , aiming to make it easier to create responsive layouts that work across different types of devices, from phones to desktop computers.

Google also highlighted Chrome OS’s support for the Unity game engine to make Android games as advanced as RPGs.

“With Unity 2021, 2020, and 2019 LTS, you can support x86- and x86_64-based Chrome OS devices using your IDE to reduce duplicate code and streamline publishing,” the blog post says.

In the future, changes to Chrome OS may eventually make Android’s presence on Chromebooks more seamless. A Chromium pledge Gerrit spotted earlier this month says Google is working to make Chromebooks less slow to boot up by temporarily throttling the Android runtime for Chrome Virtual Machine when connecting, when it could gobble up at 300% CPU resources for a few. minutes.

And looking further, Android 12L is currently in developer preview. As detailed in October, the OS is marketed as optimized for larger screens than those found on smartphones, so the Chromebook angle is inherent.