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Announcing Android add-ons for Docs and Sheets







We know many of you consider your mobile device as your primary tool to consume business information, but what if you could use it to get more work done, from anywhere?

We’re excited to introduce Android add-ons for Docs and Sheets, a new way for you to do just that—whether it’s readying a contract you have for e-signature from your phone, or pulling in CRM data on your tablet for some quick analysis while waiting for your morning coffee, Android add-ons can help you accomplish more.





Get more done with your favorite third-party apps, no matter where you are


We’ve worked with eight integration partners who have created seamless integrations for Docs and Sheets. Here’s a preview of just a few of them:




  • DocuSign - Trigger or complete a signing process from Docs or Sheets, and save the executed document to Drive. Read more here.






DocuSign lets you easily create signature envelopes right from Google Docs



  • ProsperWorks - Import your CRM data to create and update advanced dashboards, reports and graphs on Sheets, right from your device. Read more here.

  • AppSheet - Create powerful mobile apps directly from your data in Sheets instantly — no coding required. Read more here.

  • Scanbot - Scan your business documents using built-in OCR, and insert their contents into Docs as editable text. Read more here.






You can find these add-ons and many more, including PandaDoc, ZohoCRM, Teacher Aide, EasyBib and Classroom in our Google Play collection as well as directly from the add-on menus in Docs or Sheets.






Try them out today, and see how much more you can do.






Calling all developers: try our developer preview today!



As you can see from above, Android add-ons offer a great opportunity to build
innovative integrations and reach Docs and Sheets users around the world.
They’re basically Android apps that connect with href="http://developers.google.com/apps-script?utm_campaign=android_discussion_googledocs_072816&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">Google Apps Script projects
on the server-side, allowing them to access and manipulate data from Google Docs
or Sheets using standard Apps Script techniques. Check out href="https://developers.google.com/apps-script/add-ons/mobile?utm_campaign=android_discussion_googledocs_072816&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">our
documentation which includes href="https://developers.google.com/apps-script/add-ons/mobile/mobile-style?utm_campaign=android_discussion_googledocs_072816&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">UI
guidelines as well as href="https://developers.google.com/apps-script/add-ons/mobile/?utm_campaign=android_discussion_googledocs_072816&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog#see_what_you_can_make">sample
code to get you started. We’ve also made it easy for you to publish your
apps with the Apps Script editor.



Android add-ons are available today as a developer preview. We look forward to
seeing what you build!

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Protecting Android with more Linux kernel defenses


Posted by Jeff Vander Stoep, Android Security team



Android relies heavily on the Linux kernel for enforcement of its security
model. To better protect the kernel, we’ve enabled a number of mechanisms within
Android. At a high level these protections are grouped into two
categories—memory protections and attack surface reduction.


Memory protections



One of the major security features provided by the kernel is memory protection
for userspace processes in the form of address space separation. Unlike
userspace processes, the kernel’s various tasks live within one address space
and a vulnerability anywhere in the kernel can potentially impact unrelated
portions of the system’s memory. Kernel memory protections are designed to
maintain the integrity of the kernel in spite of vulnerabilities.


Mark memory as read-only/no-execute



This feature segments kernel memory into logical sections and sets restrictive
page access permissions on each section. Code is marked as read only + execute.
Data sections are marked as no-execute and further segmented into read-only and
read-write sections. This feature is enabled with config option
CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA. It was put together by Kees Cook and is based on a subset
of Grsecurity’s KERNEXEC feature by Brad
Spengler and Qualcomm’s CONFIG_STRICT_MEMORY_RWX feature by Larry Bassel and
Laura Abbott. CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA landed in the upstream kernel for arm/arm64
and has been backported to Android’s 3.18+ arm/href="https://android-review.googlesource.com/#/c/174947/">arm64 common
kernel.


Restrict kernel access to userspace



This feature improves protection of the kernel by preventing it from directly
accessing userspace memory. This can make a number of attacks more difficult
because attackers have significantly less control over kernel memory
that is executable, particularly with CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA enabled. Similar
features were already in existence, the earliest being Grsecurity’s UDEREF. This
feature is enabled with config option CONFIG_CPU_SW_DOMAIN_PAN and was
implemented by Russell King for ARMv7 and backported to href="https://android-review.googlesource.com/#/q/topic:sw_PAN">Android’s
4.1 kernel by Kees Cook.


Improve protection against stack buffer overflows



Much like its predecessor, stack-protector, stack-protector-strong protects
against stack
buffer overflows
, but additionally provides coverage for href="https://outflux.net/blog/archives/2014/01/27/fstack-protector-strong/">more
array types, as the original only protected character arrays.
Stack-protector-strong was implemented by Han Shen and href="https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2012-06/msg00974.html">added to the gcc
4.9 compiler.


Attack surface reduction



Attack surface reduction attempts to expose fewer entry points to the kernel
without breaking legitimate functionality. Reducing attack surface can include
removing code, removing access to entry points, or selectively exposing
features.


Remove default access to debug features



The kernel’s perf system provides infrastructure for performance measurement and
can be used for analyzing both the kernel and userspace applications. Perf is a
valuable tool for developers, but adds unnecessary attack surface for the vast
majority of Android users. In Android Nougat, access to perf will be blocked by
default. Developers may still access perf by enabling developer settings and
using adb to set a property: “adb shell setprop security.perf_harden 0”.



The patchset for blocking access to perf may be broken down into kernel and
userspace sections. The href="https://android-review.googlesource.com/#/c/234573/">kernel patch is
by Ben Hutchings and is
derived from Grsecurity’s CONFIG_GRKERNSEC_PERF_HARDEN by Brad Spengler. The
userspace changes were href="https://android-review.googlesource.com/#/q/topic:perf_harden">contributed
by Daniel Micay. Thanks to href="https://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2016ams/sessions/perf-from-profiling-to-kernel-exploiting/">Wish
Wu and others for responsibly disclosing security vulnerabilities in perf.


Restrict app access to ioctl commands



Much of Android security model is described and enforced by SELinux. The ioctl()
syscall represented a major gap in the granularity of enforcement via SELinux.
Ioctl command
whitelisting with SELinux
was added as a means to provide per-command
control over the ioctl syscall by SELinux.



Most of the kernel vulnerabilities reported on Android occur in drivers and are
reached using the ioctl syscall, for example href="https://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-03-01.html#elevation_of_privilege_vulnerability_in_mediatek_wi-fi_kernel_driver">CVE-2016-0820.
Some ioctl commands are needed by third-party applications, however most are not
and access can be restricted without breaking legitimate functionality. In
Android Nougat, only a small whitelist of socket ioctl commands are available to
applications. For select devices, applications’ access to GPU ioctls has been
similarly restricted.


Require seccomp-bpf



Seccomp provides an additional sandboxing mechanism allowing a process to
restrict the syscalls and syscall arguments available using a configurable
filter. Restricting the availability of syscalls can dramatically cut down on
the exposed attack surface of the kernel. Since seccomp was first introduced on
Nexus devices in Lollipop, its availability across the Android ecosystem has
steadily improved. With Android Nougat, seccomp support is a requirement for all
devices. On Android Nougat we are using seccomp on the mediaextractor and
mediacodec processes as part of the href="http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2016/05/hardening-media-stack.html">media
hardening effort.


Ongoing efforts



There are other projects underway aimed at protecting the kernel:


  • The href="http://kernsec.org/wiki/index.php/Kernel_Self_Protection_Project">Kernel
    Self Protection Project is developing runtime and compiler defenses for the
    upstream kernel.
  • Further sandbox tightening and attack surface reduction with SELinux is
    ongoing in AOSP.
  • href="https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-guide/chromium-os-sandboxing#h.l7ou90opzirq">Minijail
    provides a convenient mechanism for applying many containment and sandboxing
    features offered by the kernel, including seccomp filters and namespaces.
  • Projects like href="https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/kasan.txt">kasan and href="https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/kcov.txt">kcov help fuzzers
    discover the root cause of crashes and to intelligently construct test cases
    that increase code coverage—ultimately resulting in a more efficient bug hunting
    process.


Due to these efforts and others, we expect the security of the kernel to
continue improving. As always, we appreciate feedback on our work and welcome
suggestions for how we can improve Android. Contact us at href="mailto:security@android.com">security@android.com.



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Android Developer Story: Culture Alley reaches millions of English learners on Google Play

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team



href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Culture%20Alley&hl=en_GB">Culture
Alley developed the app href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.CultureAlley.japanese.english&hl=en_GB&e=-EnableAppDetailsPageRedesign">Hello
English to help Indians learn English through gamification, supporting over
15 dialects. More than 13 million people now use Hello English in India and
around the world.



Hear Nishant Patni, Founder & CEO and Pranshu Bhandari, Co-Founder, explain how
they optimized the app to address challenges faced by emerging markets. Learn
how they used various Google Play tools to address varying levels of
connectivity and device capabilities, and improve user retention.




href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Google_Inc_The_Building_for_Billions_Playbook_for?id=cJEjDAAAQBAJ&e=-EnableAppDetailsPageRedesign">Learn
more best practices about building for billions and href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfwHq8w9GBc&list=PLWz5rJ2EKKc_ElGrEtiEXc83m1SeYu3-Q&index=11">watch
the ‘10 tips to build an app for billions of users’ video to get more tips.
Also, get the
Playbook for Developers app
and stay up-to-date with more features and best
practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

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Introducing new app categories -- From Art to Autos to Dating -- to help users better find your apps

Posted by By Sarah Karam, Google Play Apps Business Development




With more than 1 billion active users in 190 countries around the world, Google
Play continues to be an important distribution platform for you to build a
global audience. To help you get your apps in front of more users, it’s
important to make them more quickly and easily discoverable in Google Play.
That’s why we rolled out major features, such as href="https://adwords.googleblog.com/2015/07/launching-search-ads-on-play.html">Search
Ads, href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/promotion_3001ed4_indie_corner?hl=en&e=-EnableAppDetailsPageRedesign">Indie
Corner, href="https://developer.android.com/distribute/users/experiments.html">store
listing experiments, and more, over the past year.



To improve the overall search experience, we’re introducing new app categories
and renaming a few existing ones, making them more comprehensive and relevant to
what users are looking for today.



The new categories include:


  • Art & Design
  • Auto & Vehicles
  • Beauty
  • Dating
  • Events
  • Food & Drink
  • House & Home
  • Parenting


In addition, the “Transportation” category will be renamed “Maps & Navigation,”
and the “Media & Video” category will be renamed “Video Players & Editors.”



To select a new category for your app or game


  1. Sign in to your Google Play
    Developer Console
    .
  2. Select an app.
  3. On the left menu, click Store Listing.
  4. Under "Categorization," select an application type and category.
  5. Near the top of the page, click Save draft (new apps) or Submit update
    (existing apps).


Newly added categories will be available on Google Play within 60 days. If you
choose a newly added category for an app before the category is available for
users, your current app category may change. See additional details and view our
full list of categories in the href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/113475">Help
Center.

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Improvements for smaller app downloads on Google Play


Posted by Anthony Morris, SWE Google Play and Andrew Hayden, software engineer



Google Play continues to grow rapidly, as Android users installed over 65
billion apps in the last year from the Google Play Store. We’re also seeing
developers move to update their apps more frequently to push great new content,
patch security vulnerabilities, and iterate quickly on user feedback.



However, many users are sensitive to the amount of data they use, especially if
they are not on Wi-Fi. Google Play is investing in improvements to reduce the
data that needs to be transferred for app installs and updates, while making
data cost more transparent to users.



Read on to understand the updates and learn some tips for ways to optimize the
size of your APK.


New Delta algorithm to reduce the size of app updates



For approximately 98% of app updates from the Play Store, only changes
(deltas) to APK files are downloaded and merged with the existing
files, reducing the size of updates. Google Play has used delta algorithms since 2012, and we recently rolled out an additional delta algorithm, href="http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/">bsdiff href="http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/">(created by Colin Percivalid="fnref1">1href="http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/">), that our experimentation shows
can reduce delta size by up to 50% or more compared to the previous algorithm
for some APKs. Bsdiff is
specifically targeted to produce more efficient deltas of native libraries by
taking advantage of the specific ways in which compiled native code changes
between versions. To be most effective, native libraries should be stored
uncompressed (compression interferes with delta algorithms).



An example from Chrome:

















Patch Description Previous patch size Bsdiff Size
M46 to M47 major update 22.8 MB 12.9 MB
M47 minor update 15.3 MB 3.6 MB



Apps that don’t have uncompressed native libraries can see a 5% decrease in size
on average, compared to the previous delta algorithm.


Applying the delta algorithm to APK Expansion Files to further
reduce update size



APK Expansion Files allow you to include additional large files up to 2GB in
size (e.g. high resolution graphics or media files) with your app, which is
especially popular with games. We have recently expanded our delta and
compression algorithms to apply to these APK Expansion Files in addition to
APKs, reducing the download size of initial installs by 12%, and updates by 65%
on average. APK Expansion file patches use the href="http://xdelta.org/">xdelta algorithm.


Clearer size information in the Play Store



Alongside the improvements to reduce download size, we also made information
displayed about data used and download sizes in the Play Store clearer. You can
now see actual download sizes, not the APK file size, in the Play Store. If you
already have an app, you will only see the update size. These changes are
rolling out now.







  1. Colin Percival, Naive differences of executable code,
    http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/, 2003. 





Example 1: Showing new “Download size” of APK




Example 2: Showing new “Update size” of APK


Tips to reduce your download sizes


1. Optimize for the right size measurements: Users care about download size (i.e. how many bytes are transferred when installing/updating an app), and they care about disk size (i.e. how much space the app takes up on disk). It’s important to note that neither of these are the same as the original APK file size nor necessarily correlated.




Chrome example:


























Compressed Native Library Uncompressed Native Library
APK Size 39MB 52MB (+25%)
Download size (install) 29MB 29MB (no change)
Download size (update) 29MB 21MB (-29%)
Disk size 71MB 52MB (-26%)



Chrome found that initial download size remained the same by not compressing the native library in their APK, while the APK size increased, because Google Play already performs compression for downloads. They also found that the update size decreased, as deltas are more effective with uncompressed files, and disk size decreased as you no longer need an compressed copy of the native library. However, please note, native libraries should only be uncompressed when the minimum SDK version for an APK is 23 (Marshmallow) or later.


2. Reduce your APK size: Remove unnecessary data from the APK like unused resources and code.


3. Optimize parts of your APK to make them smaller: Using more efficient file formats, for example by using WebP instead of JPEG, or by using Proguard to remove unused code.


href="https://medium.com/google-developers/smallerapk-part-1-anatomy-of-an-apk-da83c25e7003#.jgy8wuni9">Read
more about reducing APK sizes and watch the I/O 2016 session href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xctGIB81D2w">‘Putting Your App on a
Diet’ to learn from
Wojtek Kaliciński, about how to reduce the size of your APK
.

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Connecting your App to a Wi-Fi Device

Posted by Rich Hyndman, Android Developer Advocate




With the growth of the Internet of Things, connecting Android applications to
Wi-Fi enabled devices is becoming more and more common. Whether you’re building
an app for a remote viewfinder, to set up a connected light bulb, or to control
a quadcopter, if it’s Wi-Fi based you will need to connect to a hotspot that may
not have Internet connectivity.



From Lollipop onwards the OS became a little more intelligent, allowing multiple
network connections and not routing data to networks that don’t have Internet
connectivity. That’s very useful for users as they don’t lose connectivity when
they’re near Wi-Fis with captive portals. Data routing APIs were added for
developers, so you can ensure that only the appropriate app traffic is routed
over the Wi-Fi connection to the external device.



To make the APIs easier to understand, it is good to know that there are 3 sets
of networks available to developers:


  • WiFiManager#startScan returns a list of available Wi-Fi networks. They are
    primarily identified by SSID.
  • WiFiManager#getConfiguredNetworks returns a list of the Wi-Fi networks
    configured on the device, also indexed by SSID, but they are not necessarily
    currently available.
  • ConnectivityManager#getAllNetworks returns a list of networks that are being
    interacted with by the phone. This is necessary as from Lollipop onwards a
    device may be connected to multiple networks at once, Wi-Fi, LTE, Bluetooth,
    etc… The current state of each is available by calling href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/ConnectivityManager.html#getNetworkInfo(android.net.Network)">ConnectivityManager#getNetworkInfo
    and is identified by a network ID.


In all versions of Android you start by scanning for available Wi-Fi networks
with href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/WifiManager.html#startScan()">WiFiManager#startScan,
iterate through the href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/ScanResult.html">ScanResults
looking for the SSID of your external Wi-Fi device. Once you’ve found it you can
check if it is already a configured network using href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/WifiManager.html#getConfiguredNetworks()">WifiManager#getConfiguredNetworks
and iterating through the href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/WifiConfiguration.html">WifiConfigurations
returned, matching on SSID. It’s worth noting that the SSIDs of the configured
networks are enclosed in double quotes, whilst the SSIDs returned in href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/ScanResult.html">ScanResults
are not.



If your network is configured you can obtain the network ID from the
WifiConfiguration object. Otherwise you can configure it using href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/WifiManager.html#addNetwork(android.net.wifi.WifiConfiguration)">WifiManager#addNetwork
and keep track of the network id that is returned.



To connect to the Wi-Fi network, register a BroadcastReceiver that listens for
href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/WifiManager.html#NETWORK_STATE_CHANGED_ACTION">WifiManager.NETWORK_STATE_CHANGED_ACTION
and then call href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/WifiManager.html#enableNetwork(int,%20boolean)">WifiManager.enableNetwork
(int netId, boolean disableOthers), passing in your network ID. The
enableNetwork call disables all the other Wi-Fi access points for the next scan,
locates the one you’ve requested and connects to it. When you receive the
network broadcasts you can check with href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/WifiManager.html#getConnectionInfo()">WifiManager#getConnectionInfo
that you’re successfully connected to the correct network. But, on Lollipop and
above, if that network doesn’t have internet connectivity network, requests will
not be routed to it.



Routing network requests



To direct all the network requests from your app to an external Wi-Fi device,
call href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/ConnectivityManager.html#setProcessDefaultNetwork(android.net.Network)">ConnectivityManager#setProcessDefaultNetwork
on Lollipop devices, and on Marshmallow call href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/ConnectivityManager.html#bindProcessToNetwork(android.net.Network)">ConnectivityManager#bindProcessToNetwork
instead, which is a direct API replacement. Note that these calls require
android.permission.INTERNET; otherwise they will just return false.



Alternatively, if you’d like to route some of your app traffic to the Wi-Fi
device and some to the Internet over the mobile network:


  • For HTTP requests you can use href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/Network.html#openConnection(java.net.URL)">Network#openConnection(java.net.URL),
    directly routing your request to this network.
  • For low-level socket communication, open a socket and call href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/Network.html#bindSocket(java.net.Socket)">Network#bindSocket(java.net.Socket),
    or alternatively use href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/Network.html#getSocketFactory()">Network#getSocketFactory.


Now you can keep your users connected whilst they benefit from your innovative
Wi-Fi enabled products.

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Android Developer Story: StoryToys finds success in the ‘Family’ section on Google Play


Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team



Based in Dublin, Ireland, href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=8762313232916265908">StoryToys
is a leading publisher of interactive books and games for children. Like most
kids’ app developers, they faced the challenges of engaging with the right
audiences to get their content discovered. Since the launch of the Family
section on Google Play, StoryToys has experienced an uplift of 270% in revenue
and an increase of 1300% in downloads.



Hear Emmet O’Neill, Chief Product Officer, and Gavin Barrett, Commercial
Director, discuss how the Family section creates a trusted and creative space
for families to find new content. Also hear how beta testing, localized pricing
and more, has allowed StoryToy’s flagship app, href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.storytoys.myveryhungrycaterpillar.free.android.googleplay">My
Very Hungry Caterpillar, to significantly increase engagement and revenue.




href="https://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/families/about.html">Learn
more about Google Play for Families and href="http://g.co/play/playbook-androiddevblogposts-evergreen">get the Playbook
for Developers app to stay up-to-date with more features and best practices
that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

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