As shown in Google IO 2016 about Instant App, how to enable it in our application? And at which place or how to identify the screen for which Instant app should be enabled?
On top of this how difficult it would be for an application without deep links to convert it to one?
Android Instant Apps is now open to all developers and the documentation is here
For App Links and enabling Instant Apps, watch this video from Google I/O (disclosure: I am co-presenting).
Basically, an Instant App takes your installable app and divide it into feature modules, each one has their own APKs and are accessible by URLs . To do that you'll have to make them addressable by using the Android App Links.
As of today (2016 / 05 / 19), the instant app feature is not publicably available.
You can visit an explanation page, click the "I am interested" link, and fill in the form. If your product is selected, they will help add the feature.
So far, the alternative is wait until its "polished" enough for market uses, and added to Android Studio, or Maven or any other repository, along with its documentation.
In terms of implementation it will depend on how modular your code is. Each instant app module has a limit of 4mb in size. You'll have to build some server side infrastructure if you want to persist the instant app session when the user downloads the full app.
Related
I want to develop an android app that supports dynamic delivery feature. Although this feature was announced last year, it's still on beta and I couldn't find any real app that uses this technology. Does anybody know any real android app on Play Store that has an on-demand module?
There are lots of news about app bundle, but it's limited to CPU architecture, the display density, and the languages.
Previously developers used to to build multiple APKs to target different API versions & device types.
But with Android App Bundle I just upload the single artifact with all of our application resources and the tooling takes care of what needs to be built and delivered to the app user base. I was able to reduce app size by nearly between 60% to 70%.
Nowadays many famous apps like Airbnb , LinkedIn, Twitter use dynamic app delivery for its users.
Have a look at this amazing post on Dynamic App Delivery by Joe Birch
Android developer guide on Dynamic App Delivery
How to use App Bundles to reduce the size of the app
Google Samples Android Dynamic Feature Modules
There are some apps using dynamic features, including some big names you'd recognize, but I'm not sure they have been publicly announced yet. I'd keep an eye on the press around Google I/O 2019 if you are curious, it's only a month away.
It seems Netflix app has a dynamic-feature module. Its customer service feature is a dynamic module that is not installed by default. By clicking on the "Help" button, it will download and install the customer service module.
I've heard that Facebook has a dynamic module but I didn't check that myself. I will update this answer if I found any other apps that have dynamic modules.
Adobe Acrobat also supports that: https://developer.android.com/stories/apps/adobe-app-bundle
Last time I've heard about running android app without installing it.
Like "demo app" or something like that.
What doest it mean?
Generally you have to go to Google Play in order to install the app and run it.
It isn't via a browser, because you can supposedly use the android app functions
Instant Apps are the next step in app evolution, a universal Android solution that brings the speed and power of a native app with the ease and immediacy of a web app. They look and operate just like one of the apps that are installed on your phone, but you don’t need to download anything.
Android Instant Apps allow you to use native Android apps in a form that doesn’t even require installing. Which means the users get to experience interactive and smooth interfaces with the tap of a finger.
Note: Android Instant Apps only work on Android devices running on Android 5.0 (API level 21) or higher.
For further info about instant apps you can refer to following link
https://developer.android.com/topic/instant-apps/overview.html#apps-features
An instant app is a portion of your app that will be executed in response to an Url. This was introduced by Google year.
Google play store will download the code necessary to execute the task it is supposed to and it will dispose of the code after the user is done.
You would create an Instant apps if you mean to provide specific feature of your app that does not require the user to download the full app. Ex: watch a video on vimeo by clicking a link on social media
This apps are built using the same process you would use to develop a regular android app but instead of developing all of the features in the same module you divide the features in different modules.
This modules should be very small and have a size limit of 4MB.
Instant apps are currently limited to a few countries, so if you are thinking of developing one and putting in production check the link below for this information and others documents on how to get started.
https://developer.android.com/topic/instant-apps/overview.html
It's Instant App.
Here you have Google documentation
According to this doc : https://developer.android.com/topic/instant-apps/overview.html#features
In case I want to make a modular app with installable feature, can I use instant app to imitate the behavior of a module ? I want a base app with very basic features and installable modules to fit perfectly the needs of users. It could be a plus if modules can be found on the play store too.
Thanks if you have more info about it or if Google have another way to archieve this :)
As per my understanding, Instant Apps is basically the main installable-app broken down to lite-modularized apps that are accessed via URLs and loaded automatically without the need to go to the Play Store to install the entire app. For more understanding please also have a look at
Overview of Android Instant Apps and Introduction to Android Instant Apps (Google I/O '17)
I am searching for an instant app. Please suggest me an app which i can review to study regarding instant app also if possible please suggest a good tutorial as well.
Thanks
You can check this FragmentedPodcast Episode talking about Instant Apps Fragmented Podcast Episode 90 also find more about it in the show notes.
Here are the Google Samples Repository for Instant Apps.
This article gives you an overview on how to prepare your existing app to support AIA feature (how to reduce the size of your app, what are the restricted and unsupported features, what libraries are compatible with AIA, etc.):
https://developer.android.com/topic/instant-apps/prepare.html
For steps on how to convert your non-AIA project into one that includes the instant app check out these:
list of steps for conversion -
https://developer.android.com/topic/instant-apps/getting-started/index.html
great practice tutorial -
https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/android-instant-apps/index.html#0
example with Jet app -
https://medium.com/jet-stories/make-your-app-instant-33855ab5d02b
And as hsm59 mentioned, there are also helpful Google sample apps for reference: https://developer.android.com/topic/instant-apps/samples.html
You can test some existing instant apps with these example URLs by opening the link via Gmail, Hangouts, etc:
https://www.yummly.com/recipes
https://www.skyscanner.net/flights-from/lond/cheap-flights-from-london.html
https://www.buzzfeed.com/tasty
Or you can search for “buzzfeed tasty” in your browser, and you’ll see a “Buzzfeed app - instant" in the search results, this link will launch the Buzzfeed instant app.
As from Google I/O 2016 key note, Google has Introduced Android Instant Apps
This is pretty clear from the description that it is going to be possible to download a part of application (that is stream?) when it will be out for the developers to try it.
Couple of posts like This one quotes about Instant Apps :
While this is different from Google's efforts to do app streaming inside search, it's in the same spirit — and gives Google similar access to previously walled-off data inside apps.
I am wondering how it is different from app streaming if the app is going to be installed partially with Android Instant Apps?
Any additional information about this new leap in android development will be helpful.
A module of the app gets downloaded inside a sandbox. As the user navigates to the boundaries of the app more app modules will be downloaded. You as a developer will need to determine when to prompt the user to download the full app. Note that the app state inside the sandbox will not automatically be transferred over when the user downloads the full app. Furthermore, whilst the instant app module(s) will be cached inside the sandbox there is no guaranteed persistence.
Android Instant Apps enables native Android applications to run in response to launching a URL, without installing the app. Instant apps can use many Android APIs and you use Android Studio to build them.
How do they work? When Google Play receives a request for a URL that matches an instant app, it sends the necessary code files to the Android device that sent the request. The device then runs the app.
Note: Android Instant Apps only work on Android devices running on Android 5.0 (API level 21) or higher.
Reference Android Instant Apps