Adaptive apps

Goodbye Mobile Only, Hello Adaptive: Three essential updates from 2025 for building adaptive apps

Seharakram60 — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 17:00:00 +0000

Posted by Fahd Imtiaz – Product Manager, Android Developer

Goodbye Mobile Only, Hello Adaptive: Three essential updates from 2025 for building adaptive apps

In 2025 the Android ecosystem has grown far beyond the phone. Today, developers have the opportunity to reach over 500 million active devices, including foldables, tablets, XR, Chromebooks, and compatible cars.

These aren’t just additional screens; they represent a higher-value audience. We’ve seen that users who own both a phone and a tablet spend 9x more on apps and in-app purchases than those with just a phone. For foldable users, that average spend jumps to roughly 14x more*.

This engagement signals a necessary shift in development: goodbye mobile apps, hello adaptive apps.

To help you build for that future, we spent this year releasing tools that make adaptive the default way to build. Here are three key updates from 2025 designed to help you build these experiences.

Standardizing adaptive behavior with Android 16

To support this shift, Android 16 introduced significant changes to how apps can restrict orientation and resizability. On displays of at least 600dp, manifest and runtime restrictions are ignored, meaning apps can no longer lock themselves to a specific orientation or size. Instead, they fill the entire display window, ensuring your UI scales seamlessly across portrait and landscape modes.

Because this means your app context will change more frequently, it’s important to verify that you are preserving UI state during configuration changes. While Android 16 offers a temporary opt-out to help you manage this transition, Android 17 (SDK37) will make this behavior mandatory. To ensure your app behaves as expected under these new conditions, use the resizable emulator in Android Studio to test your adaptive layouts today.

Supporting screens beyond the tablet with Jetpack WindowManager 1.5.0

As devices evolve, our existing definitions of “large” need to evolve with them. In October, we released Jetpack WindowManager 1.5.0 to better support the growing number of very large screens and desktop environments.

On these surfaces, the standard “Expanded” layout, which usually fits two panes comfortably, often isn’t enough. On a 27-inch monitor, two panes can look stretched and sparse, leaving valuable screen real estate unused. To solve this, WindowManager 1.5.0 introduced two new width window size classes: Large (1200dp to 1600dp) and Extra-large (1600dp+).

These new breakpoints signal when to switch to high-density interfaces. Instead of stretching a typical list-detail view, you can take advantage of the width to show three or even four panes simultaneously. Imagine an email client that comfortably displays your folders, the inbox list, the open message, and a calendar sidebar, all in a single view. Support for these window size classes was added to Compose Material 3 adaptive in the 1.2 release.

Rethinking user journeys with Jetpack Navigation 3

Building a UI that morphs from a single phone screen to a multi-pane tablet layout used to require complex state management. This often meant forcing a navigation graph designed for single destinations to handle simultaneous views. First announced at I/O 2025, Jetpack Navigation 3 is now stable, introducing a new approach to handling user journeys in adaptive apps.

Built for Compose, Nav3 moves away from the monolithic graph structure. Instead, it provides decoupled building blocks that give you full control over your back stack and state. This solves the single source of truth challenge common in split-pane layouts. Because Nav3 uses the Scenes API, you can display multiple panes simultaneously without managing conflicting back stacks, simplifying the transition between compact and expanded views.

A foundation for an adaptive future

This year delivered the tools you need, from optimizing for expansive layouts to the granular controls of WindowManager and Navigation 3. And, Android 16 began the shift toward truly flexible UI, with updates coming next year to deliver excellent adaptive experiences across all form factors. To learn more about adaptive development principles and get started, head over to d.android.com/adaptive-apps.

The tools are ready, and the users are waiting. We can’t wait to see what you build!

*Source: internal Google data

The post Goodbye Mobile Only, Hello Adaptive: Three essential updates from 2025 for building adaptive apps appeared first on InShot Pro.

Unfold new possibilities with Compose Adaptive Layouts 1.2 beta

Seharakram60 — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 18:05:00 +0000

Posted by Fahd Imtiaz – Senior Product Manager and Miguel Montemayor – Developer Relations Engineer

With new form factors like the Pixel 10 Pro Fold joining the Android ecosystem, adaptive app development is essential for creating high-quality user experiences across phones, tablets, and foldables. Users expect your app’s UI to seamlessly adapt to these different sizes and postures.

To help you build these dynamic experiences more efficiently, we are announcing that the Compose Adaptive Layouts Library 1.2 is officially entering beta. This release provides powerful new tools to create polished, responsive UIs for this expanding device ecosystem.

Powerful new tools for a bigger canvas

The Compose Adaptive Layouts library is our foundational toolkit for building UIs that adapt across different window sizes. This new beta release is packed with powerful features to help you create sophisticated layouts with less code. Key additions include:

Powerful new layout strategies: The beta introduces new layout strategies like reflow and levitate, designed to help you build dynamic layouts that look great on both the outer and inner displays of a device like the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, Galaxy Z Fold7 and Z Flip7.

New Window Size Classes: The release adds built-in support for the new Large and Extra-Large window size classes. These new breakpoints are essential for designing and triggering rich, multi-pane UI changes on expansive screens like tablets and large foldables.

Two new pane adaptation strategies: reflow (left) and levitate (right)

For a full list of changes, check out the official release documentation. Explore our guides on canonical layouts and building a supporting pane layout.

Engage more users on every screen

Embracing an adaptive mindset is more than a best practice, it’s a strategy for growth. The goal isn’t just to make your app work on a larger screen, but to make it shine by becoming more intuitive for users. Instead of simply stretching a single-column layout, think about how you can use the extra space to create more efficient and immersive experiences.

This is the core principle behind dynamic layout strategies like reflow, a powerful new feature in the Compose Adaptive Layouts 1.2 beta designed to help you build these UIs. For example, a great starting point is adopting a multi-pane layout. By showing a list and its corresponding detail view side-by-side, you reduce taps and allow users to accomplish tasks more quickly.

This kind of thoughtful adaptive development is what truly boosts engagement. And, as we highlighted during the latest episode of #TheAndroidShow, this is why we see that users who use an app on both their phone and a larger screen are almost three times more engaged. Building adaptively doesn’t just make your current users happier; it creates a more valuable and compelling experience that builds lasting loyalty and helps you reach new users.

The expanding Android ecosystem, from foldables to desktops

This shift toward adaptive design extends across the entire Android ecosystem. From the new Pixel 10 Pro Fold to the latest Samsung Galaxy foldables, developers have the opportunity to engage a large and growing user base on over 500 million large-screen devices.

This is also why we’re continuing to invest in forward-looking experiences like Connected Displays, currently available to try in developer preview. This feature opens up new surfaces and interaction models for apps to run on, enabling true desktop-class features and multi-instance workflows. We’ve previously shared details on how you can get started with the Connected Displays developer preview and see how it’s shaping the future of multi-device experiences.

Putting adaptive principles into practice

For developers who want to get their apps ready for this adaptive future, here are a few key best practices to keep in mind:

Take inventory: The first step is to see where you are today. Test your app on a large screen device or with the resizable emulator in Android Studio to identify areas for improvement, like stretched UIs or usability issues.

Support optimized layouts: Use libraries like Compose Adaptive Layouts to build UI that adapts to different window sizes and device postures. Your app should work well in both portrait and landscape, without restricting orientation.

Think beyond touch: A great adaptive experience means supporting all input methods. This goes beyond basic functionality to include thoughtful details that users expect, like hover states for mouse cursors, context menus on right-click, and support for keyboard shortcuts.

Your app’s potential is no longer confined to a single screen. Explore the large screen design gallery and app quality guidelines today to envision where your app can go. Get inspired and find design patterns, official guidance, and sample apps you need to build for every fold, flip, and screen at developer.android.com/adaptive-apps.

The post Unfold new possibilities with Compose Adaptive Layouts 1.2 beta appeared first on InShot Pro.