Surface Duo Blog
Build great Android experiences, from AI to foldable and large-screens.
Latest posts
Dual-screen gaming on Microsoft Surface Duo
Today's post was contributed by Gameloft, publishers of Asphalt 9: Legends, Modern Combat 5, and Dungeon Hunter 5. Hello Android developers! It was great that we had a chance to work with Surface Duo and adapt three of our most popular games: Asphalt 9: Legends, Modern Combat 5 and Dungeon Hunter 5, for this awesome device. Surface Duo and Surface Duo 2 have two screens, which allows users to view images or watch videos on one screen while doing their tasks on the other screen. It enhances the user experience with all of that extra wide space, especially while playing games. Double screens – double fu...
Foldable SDK update with Jetpack Window Manager
Hello Android developers, Jetpack WindowManager version 1.0.0 was released yesterday. We are thrilled about this announcement and wanted to share with you this exciting news and our latest library updates that are based on Jetpack Window Manager. Thus, these dual-screen libraries for Android developers are more foldable aware than ever! The changes in the latest release are: Version information for each library (to use in your gradle files): This blog post explains how to migrate from the previous versions and describes the other new featur...
Jetpack Compose WindowState preview
Hello Jetpack Compose developers! This week, we’d like to announce the release of WindowState, a new utility library that’s part of our Compose SDK. Our goal was to provide easy access to all the window information provided by the Jetpack Window Manager library and to simplify the logic required to enhance your apps for large screens and foldables. Library overview The main features of the library are the WindowState data class, which contains three categories of information, and the helper function. Figure 1. Constructor for the WindowState data class and function signature for rememberW...
Jetpack Window Manager release candidate
Hello Android developers! Google recently updated a number of dual-screen and foldable packages –Window Manager, SlidingPaneLayout, Navigation, and Preference – to release candidate. These components can be used to create unique user experiences on the Microsoft Surface Duo and other foldable devices. Jetpack Window Manager The WindowInfoTracker class provides an API for your app to respond each time the layout changes and is affected by a hinge or fold. There are a number of examples in the Window Manager samples repo which use the library as shown here: Sliding Pane Layout ...
Happy Two Year
Hello developers! Welcome to 2022 – a great year to be developing for two screens! To kick off the new year we’re going to do a quick recap of all the two screen enhanced components – across developer platforms – that can help you get started quickly with dual-screen and foldable support, while also providing great single-screen experiences on phones or larger-screen devices. Two screen native controls Among our rich library of dual-screen controls, the FoldableLayout component provides an easy way for Kotlin and Java developers to build an adaptive user interface without having to write a lot of...
2021 dual-screen year in review
Hello Android developers! 2021 was a big year for dual-screen devices with the release of Microsoft Surface Duo 2. It has also been a busy year for developers with Jetpack Window Manager – Google’s common API for foldable device info – graduating from alpha to beta and then release candidate, the SlidingPaneLayout control was enhanced for foldables, and we also expanded our platform support to Jetpack Compose and Flutter. With the year quickly coming to a close, this week we’re going to revisit some of the most popular content from the Surface Duo developer blog. Popular blog posts Through...
Happy holidays
Hello Android developers! As the weather cools down (or heats up, depending on your hemisphere), it’s time to take a break and ease into the new year. If you’re using down time to learn a new skill or get some personal projects underway, we have plenty of content to keep you entertained! Here’s some suggestions for Microsoft Surface Duo developers to watch online (and be sure to read to the end for a few game suggestions to play). Twitch livestreams Each week the Surface Duo developer experience team discuss our blog topics in detail on Twitch at twitch.tv/SurfaceDuoDev. Developers can joi...
Dual-screen reference app
Hello Android developers! We’re excited to announce the release of our latest sample application, Dual Screen Experience Example, both as open-source code on GitHub and also available for download from Google Play. What is the sample about? The sample application provides developers and designers with the possibility to explore the dual screen form factor value for productivity on the go. As a user you are going to play the role of a travelling salesperson that is searching to supply super cool guitars to a couple of guitar stores in Redmond. Each store is marked on the map using an ...
Microsoft Surface Duo at droidcon
Hello Android developers! The Surface Duo Developer Experience team presented at our first in-person events this year, at droidcon in Berlin and London. droidcon Berlin We presented our brand-new Surface Duo 2 in Berlin. People loved the device and the possibilities that it offers. We delivered a talk and a workshop. The talk was focused on showing attendees what foldable devices are, the distinct types (single screen foldables and dual-screen foldables) and the postures these devices can have. The second part of the talk, covered the different components that developers currently ...