Droidcon Boston '19: Optimizing Android Apps for Chromebooks

The Chromebook represents an extraordinary opportunity for Android app distribution, but it also poses significant development and testing challenges for Android developers. In this talk, we'll explore how to connect a Chromebook to a development system for debugging and testing. Then we'll move on to display management, including how to detect and adapt to a Chromebook's larger screen with its true multi-window environment and variations in screen size, pixel density, and orientation. Specific recommendations will be offered for making an app feel like it's native to a Chromebook's visual environment. We'll then talk about file management, which works somewhat differently on Chromebooks compared to conventional Android devices. We'll look at how the Chromebook's local file system is shared with the container that manages Android apps, and how to work with Google Drive through the Storage Access Framework API. And finally, we'll explore the Chromebook's USB ports and what they offer for both file transfer and audio output.