11 Weeks of Android: Android 11 Compatibility

Posted by Dirk Dougherty, Android Developer Relations

This blog post is part of a weekly series for #11WeeksOfAndroid . Each week we’re diving into a key area of Android so you don’t miss anything. This week, we spotlighted Android 11 Compatibility ; here’s a look at what you should know.

The big news

With Beta 2 now in the hands of users and developers , Android 11 is moving quickly toward the final release later in Q3. For developers, now is the time to make sure your apps are ready! With that in mind, this week we highlighted some resources that can help you get started with app compatibility testing and use some of the new tools in Android 11. Here’s a quick rundown of topics that we covered.
Platform stability

In Android 11 we added a new release milestone called Platform Stability to clearly signal to developers that all APIs and system behaviors are complete. This week, with Beta 2, Android 11 reached Platform Stability, so it’s a great time to do your final compatibility testing and updates. The Beta 2 and Platform Stability blog post goes into more detail on what this milestone means for developers, and you can also read about it in the Android 11 timeline .

App compatibility

As we talked about in our Beta 2 post this week, Android 11 compatibility means that your app is validated to run properly on Android 11 with all of the functionality and features that users expect. To get started, all you need is your app and a device or emulator running Android 11.

When making sure an app is compatible, the goal is to test your app and make the minimum changes to maintain your app’s functionality on Android 11, then publish the compatible version to users by the Android 11 final release. In most cases you should be able to do this without changing your targetSdkVersion or compiling against the new APIs.

It isn’t just for apps and games either - if you develop SDKs, libraries, tools, or even frameworks, now is the time to test those against Android 11 and release a compatible version. App and game developers using your products could be blocked until they can get your Android 11 compatible versions.

For more details on app compatibility, take a look at the migration guide and the list of behavior changes that could affect your apps.
Tools for testing your apps

We highlighted some new tools for you to use as you get started with compatibility testing. Our blog post “ Testing app compatibility in Android 11 ” went into the details.

First is the compatibility framework , a new feature that helps with managing the platform changes that can affect apps. It provides standard metadata for changes, standard gating based on targetSdkVersion, and standard log output to help you identify a change affecting your app. You can toggle behavioral changes in a debuggable app, either through Developer options in...