Weekly Digest
Nov 17 - Nov 23, 2025
21 articles that week
Fully Optimized: Wrapping up Performance Spotlight Week
Ben Weiss and Sara Hamilton from Google wrap up Performance Spotlight Week with a roadmap to faster Android apps. Reddit cut ANR errors by 30% with one configuration change.
Raising the bar on battery performance: excessive partial wake locks
Google Play is about to start penalizing apps that drain your users' batteries. Starting March 2026, excessive wake lock usage could get your app buried in search results or flagged with a warning label.
Android Developers Blog: Leveling Guide for your Performance Journey
Google's Android team just dropped a performance framework that meets you where you are. Whether you're a solo dev or leading a performance team, there's a clear path forward.
Behind the Global Launch: Decoding the Android Engineering Strategy for Our New App
Karthi from Mercari's Android team reveals why they ditched cross-platform frameworks for their global marketplace launch. The decision wasn't about native vs. hybrid ideology, it was about leveraging 10M+ downloads worth of battle-tested infrastructure.
How Reddit used the R8 optimizer for high impact performance
Ben Weiss from Google shares how Reddit achieved 40% faster cold startup and boosted Play Store ratings in under 2 weeks. The secret? Finally enabling R8 optimizer's full potential.
Releasing React Native Apps on Meta Horizon Store
React Native just unlocked a new platform: Meta's Horizon Store for VR apps. Callstack shows how to take your existing mobile codebase into virtual reality with minimal friction.
Orchestrating our UI test suite with Maestro
Doist's Android team faced a brutal reality: their UI test suite was so flaky that only 50% of runs passed on the first try. PRs sat idle for hours waiting for reruns.
Android Engineering Strategy for Global App Launch
Karthi from Mercari's Android team reveals why they ditched cross-platform frameworks for their global marketplace launch. The decision wasn't about native vs. hybrid ideology, it was about leveraging 10M+ downloads worth of battle-tested infrastructure.
Building an AI-Powered Note-Taking App in React Native: Part 3 (Local RAG)
Jakub Mroz from Software Mansion just shipped a fully local RAG pipeline in React Native. No cloud APIs, no data leaks, just on-device AI that actually works.
Modernizing ExoPlayer with Media3’s Compose UI
For years, video playback was the one piece of Android UI that refused to go fully declarative. That changed when Google shipped Media3's Compose UI module.
Deeper Performance Considerations
Ben Weiss, Breana Tate, and Jossi Wolf from Google just dropped a performance goldmine: Trello cut startup time by 25%, and Meta saw improvements up to 40%. All from one optimization technique most teams haven't implemented yet.
Android VPAT journey
Slack's Android team tackled a VPAT accessibility audit and found critical gaps that affected screen reader users. Here's what they fixed and why it matters for your mobile app.
Going Universal: From a brownfield React Native and Next.js stack to one Expo app
Gunnar Torfi shares how a single developer maintained 40+ mobile screens AND a full web app by merging them into one universal codebase. No big rewrite required.
Cash Android Moves to Metro
Egor Andreevich just shipped a DI framework migration across 1,500 modules serving tens of millions of users. The build speed improvements? Nearly 60% faster incremental builds.
Rich and Dynamic User Interfaces With Flutter and Generative UI
Abdallah W Shaban from Google's Flutter team just dropped GenUI SDK—a way to let AI generate entire interactive UIs on the fly, not just text responses. Think magazine-style layouts that adapt to each user, built by Gemini in real-time.
Use R8 To Shrink, Optimize, and Speed Up Apps
Ben Weiss from Google reveals the single most impactful, low-effort change you can make to Android app performance. Reddit saw 40% faster cold startup and Disney+ cut ANRs by 25% with one configuration tweak.
Building an Integrated React Native Brownfield App Using Expo: Step-by-Step Android Guide
Dawid Matyjasik from Software Mansion proves you don't need to rebuild your entire native app to adopt React Native. His integrated brownfield approach lets you modernize production apps one feature at a time, without the risk of a full rewrite.
Enhancing HDR on Instagram for iOS With Dolby Vision
Chris Ellsworth, Cosmin Stejerean, and Hassene Tmar from Meta reveal how Instagram became the first Meta app to support Dolby Vision. The catch? Their initial A/B test showed people watched LESS video with the enhancement.
Enhancing HDR on Instagram for iOS with Dolby Vision
Chris Ellsworth, Cosmin Stejerean, and Hassene Tmar from Meta reveal how Instagram became the first Meta app to support Dolby Vision. The catch? Their initial A/B test showed people watched LESS video with the enhancement.
Android Developers Blog: Get your app on the fast track with Android Performance Spotlight Week!
Google is dedicating an entire week to helping Android developers ship faster apps. If performance has been on your backlog, this is your moment.
Embedded Swift Improvements Coming in Swift 6.3
Swift is coming to microcontrollers, and the latest 6.3 release is making it production-ready. Embedded Swift now handles everything from memory-mapped I/O to proper debugging on resource-constrained hardware.