Posted by Robbie McLachlan, Developer Marketing

How do you tackle the planet’s biggest sustainability and environmental challenges? For 10 new founders we’re spotlighting in #WeArePlay, it starts with coding. Their apps and games are helping to build a healthier planet by developing career paths for aspiring environmentalists, preserving indigenous knowledge, and turning nature education into an adventure for all.

Here are a few of our favourites:

Ariane, Flávia, Andréia, and Mayla’s game BoRa turns a simple park visit into an immersive, gamified adventure.

Passionate about nature, co-founders Mayla, Flávia, Andréia, and Ariane met while researching environmental education. They wanted to foster more meaningful connections between people and Brazil’s national parks. Their app, BoRa – Iguaçu National Park, transforms a visit into an immersive experience using interactive storytelling, gamified trails, and accessibility features like sign language, helping everyone connect more deeply with the natural world.

Louis and Justin’s app, CyberTracker, turns the ancient knowledge of indigenous trackers into vital scientific data for modern conservation.

Louis knew that animal tracking was a science, but the expert knowledge of many indigenous trackers couldn’t be recorded because they were unable to read or write. He partnered with Justin to create CyberTracker to solve this. Their app uses a simple icon-based interface, enabling non-literate trackers to record vital biodiversity data. This innovation preserves invaluable knowledge and supports conservation efforts worldwide.

Bharati and Saurabh’s app, Earth5R, turns a passion for the planet into real-world experience and careers in the green economy.

After a life-changing cycling trip around the world, Saurabh was inspired by sustainable practices he saw in different communities. He and his wife, Bharati, brought those lessons home to Mumbai and launched Earth5R. Their app provides environmental education and career development, connecting people to internships and hands-on projects. By providing the skills and experience needed for the green economy, they’re building the next generation of environmental leaders.

Discover more #WeArePlay stories from founders across the globe.

Posted by Robbie McLachlan, Developer Marketing

They saw a problem and built the answer. Meet 20 #WeArePlay founders from across the U.S. who started their entrepreneurial journey with a question like: what if reading was no longer a barrier for anyone? What if an app could connect neighbors to fight local hunger? What if fitness or self-care could feel as engaging as playing a game?

These new stories showcase how innovation often starts with finding the answer to a personal problem. Here are just a few of our favorites:

Cliff’s app Speechify makes the written word accessible to all

Growing up with dyslexia, Cliff always wished he could enjoy books but found reading them challenging. After moving to the U.S., the then college student turned that personal challenge into a solution for millions. His app, Speechify, empowers people by turning any text—from PDFs to web pages—into audio. By making the written word accessible to all, Cliff’s innovation gives students, professionals, and auditory learners a new kind of independence.

Jenny’s game Run Legends turns everyday fitness into a social adventure

As a teen, Jenny funded her computer science studies by teaching herself to code and publishing over 100 games. A passionate cross-country runner, she wanted to combine her love for gaming and fitness to make exercise feel more like an adventure. The result is Run Legends, a multiplayer RPG where players battle monsters by moving in real life. Jenny’s on a mission to blend all types of exercise with playful storytelling, turning everyday fitness into a fun, social, and heroic quest.

Nino and Stephanie’s app Finch makes self-care a rewarding daily habit

As engineers, Nino and Stephanie knew the power of technology but found the world of self-care apps overwhelming. Inspired by their own mental health journeys and a gamified app Stephanie built in college, they created Finch. The app introduces a fresh take on the virtual pet: by completing small, positive actions for yourself, like journaling or practicing breathing exercises, you care for your digital companion. With over 10 million downloads, Finch has helped people around the world build healthier habits. With seasonal events every month and growing personalization, the app continues to evolve to make self-care more fun and rewarding.

John’s app The HungreeApp connects communities to fight hunger

John began coding as a nine-year-old in Nigeria, sometimes with just a pen and paper. After moving to the U.S., he was struck by how much food from events was wasted while people nearby went hungry. That spark led him to create The HungreeApp, a platform that connects communities with free, surplus food from businesses and restaurants. John’s ingenuity turns waste into opportunity, creating a more connected and resourceful nation, one meal at a time.

Anthony’s game studio Tech Tree Games turns a passion for idle games into cosmic adventures for aspiring tycoons

While working as a chemical engineer, Anthony dreamed of creating an idle game like the ones he loved to play, leading him to teach himself how to code from scratch. This passion project turned into his studio Tech Tree Games and the hit title Idle Planet Miner, where players grow a space mining empire filled with mystical planets and alluring gems. After releasing a 2.0 update with enhanced visuals for the game, Anthony is back in prototyping mode with new titles in the pipeline.

Discover more #WeArePlay stories from the US and stories from across the globe.

Posted by Robbie McLachlan – Developer Marketing

In our latest #WeArePlay film, which celebrates the people behind apps and games on Google Play, we meet Bill and Silver – the duo behind Amanotes. Their game company has reached over 3 billion downloads with their mission ‘everyone can music’. Their titles, including the global hit Magic Tiles 3, turn playing musical instruments into a fun, easy, and interactive experience, with no musical background needed. Discover how Amanotes blends creativity and technology to bring joy and connection to billions of players around the world.

What inspired you to create Amanotes?

Bill: It all began with a question I’d pursued for over 20 years – how can technology make music even more beautiful? I grew up in a musical family, surrounded by instruments, but I also loved building things with tech. Amanotes became the space where I could bring those two passions together.

Silver: Honestly, I wasn’t planning to start a company. I had just finished studying entrepreneurship and was looking to join a startup, not launch one. I dropped a message in an online group saying I wanted to find a team to work with, and Bill reached out. We met for coffee, talked for about an hour, and by the end, we just said, why not give it a shot? That one meeting turned into ten years of building Amanotes.

Do you remember the first time you realized your game was more than just a game and that it could change someone’s life?

Silver: There’s one moment I’ll never forget. A woman in the U.S. left a review saying she used to be a pianist, but after an accident, she lost use of some of her fingers and couldn’t play anymore. Then she found Magic Tiles. She said the game gave her that feeling of playing again—even without full movement. That’s when it hit me. We weren’t just building a game. We were helping people reconnect with something they thought they’d lost.

How has Google Play helped your journey?

Silver: Google Play has been a huge part of our story. It was actually the first platform we ever published on. The audience was global from day one, which gave us the reach we needed to grow fast. We made great use of tools such as Firebase for A/B testing. We also relied on the Play Console for analytics and set custom pricing by country. Without Google Play, Amanotes wouldn’t be where it is today.

What’s next for Amanotes?

Silver: Music will always be the soul of what we do, but now we’re building games with more depth. We want to go beyond just tapping to songs. We’re adding stories, challenges, and richer gameplay on top of the music. We’ve got a whole lineup of new games in the works. Each one is a chance to push the boundaries of what music games can be.

Discover other inspiring app and game founders featured in #WeArePlay.

Posted by Sandhya Mohan – Product Manager, and Jose Alcérreca – Developer Relations Engineer

Software development is undergoing a significant evolution, moving beyond reactive assistants to intelligent agents. These agents don’t just offer suggestions; they can create execution plans, utilize external tools, and make complex, multi-file changes. This results in a more capable AI that can iteratively solve challenging problems, fundamentally changing how developers work.

At Google I/O 2025, we offered a glimpse into our work on agentic AI in Android Studio, the integrated development environment (IDE) focused on Android development. We showcased that by combining agentic AI with the built-in portfolio of tools inside of Android Studio, the IDE is able to assist you in developing Android apps in ways that were never possible before. We are now incredibly excited to announce the next frontier in Android development with the availability of ‘Agent Mode’ for Gemini in Android Studio.

These features are available in the latest Android Studio Narwhal Feature Drop Canary release, and will be rolled out to business tier subscribers in the coming days. As with all new Android Studio features, we invite developers to provide feedback to direct our development efforts and ensure we are creating the tools you need to build better apps, faster.

Agent Mode

Gemini in Android Studio’s Agent Mode is a new experimental capability designed to handle complex development tasks that go beyond what you can experience by just chatting with Gemini.

With Agent Mode, you can describe a complex goal in natural language — from generating unit tests to complex refactors — and the agent formulates an execution plan that can span multiple files in your project and executes under your direction. Agent Mode uses a range of IDE tools for reading and modifying code, building the project, searching the codebase and more to help Gemini complete complex tasks from start to finish with minimal oversight from you.

To use Agent Mode, click Gemini in the sidebar, then select the Agent tab, and describe a task you’d like the agent to perform. Some examples of tasks you can try in Agent Mode include:

• Build my project and fix any errors
• Extract any hardcoded strings used across my project and migrate to strings.xml
• Add support for dark mode to my application
• Given an attached screenshot, implement a new screen in my application using Material 3

The agent then suggests edits and iteratively fixes bugs to complete tasks. You can review, accept, or reject the proposed changes along the way, and ask the agent to iterate on your feedback.

While powerful, you are firmly in control, with the ability to review, refine and guide the agent’s output at every step. When the agent proposes code changes, you can choose to accept or reject them.

Additionally, you can enable “Auto-approve” if you are feeling lucky — especially useful when you want to iterate on ideas as rapidly as possible.

You can delegate routine, time-consuming work to the agent, freeing up your time for more creative, high-value work. Try out Agent Mode in the latest preview version of Android Studio – we look forward to seeing what you build! We are investing in building more agentic experiences for Gemini in Android Studio to make your development even more intuitive, so you can expect to see more agentic functionality over the next several releases.

Supercharge Agent Mode with your Gemini API key

The default Gemini model has a generous no-cost daily quota with a limited context window. However, you can now add your own Gemini API key to expand Agent Mode’s context window to a massive 1 million tokens with Gemini 2.5 Pro.

A larger context window lets you send more instructions, code and attachments to Gemini, leading to even higher quality responses. This is especially useful when working with agents, as the larger context provides Gemini 2.5 Pro with the ability to reason about complex or long-running tasks.

To enable this feature, get a Gemini API key by navigating to Google AI Studio. Sign in and get a key by clicking on the “Get API key” button. Then, back in Android Studio, navigate to the settings by going to File (Android Studio on macOS) > Settings > Tools > Gemini to enter your Gemini API key. Relaunch Gemini in Android Studio and get even better responses from Agent Mode.

Be sure to safeguard your Gemini API key, as additional charges apply for Gemini API usage associated with a personal API key. You can monitor your Gemini API key usage by navigating to AI Studio and selecting Get API key > Usage & Billing.

Note that business tier subscribers already get access to Gemini 2.5 Pro and the expanded context window automatically with their Gemini Code Assist license, so these developers will not see an API key option.

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Gemini in Android Studio’s Agent Mode can now interact with external tools via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). This feature provides a standardized way for Agent Mode to use tools and extend knowledge and capabilities with the external environment.

There are many tools you can connect to the MCP Host in Android Studio. For example you could integrate with the Github MCP Server to create pull requests directly from Android Studio. Here are some additional use cases to consider.

In this initial release of MCP support in the IDE you will configure your MCP servers through a mcp.json file placed in the configuration directory of Studio, using the following format:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "memory": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@modelcontextprotocol/server-memory"
      ]
    },
    "sequential-thinking": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@modelcontextprotocol/server-sequential-thinking"
      ]
    },
    "github": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "-i",
        "--rm",
        "-e",
        "GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN",
        "ghcr.io/github/github-mcp-server"
      ],
      "env": {
        "GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "<YOUR_TOKEN>"
      }
    }
  }  
}