Surface Duo Blog
Build great Android experiences, from AI to foldable and large-screens.
Latest posts
Gaming on dual-screens, from a Flutter perspective
So, you’ve built a game and it works great on all those single screen devices out there but what about these new foldables or the dual-screen Microsoft Surface Duo? Does your game work on it? It should, in single screen mode, but what happens when the user spans your game across two screens? Does that work? Should it work the same or is there a better way for your game to lay itself out when spanned across two screens? These are the questions I hope to help you answer in this article. To help with this post, I built a game using Flutter and the amazing Flame game development engine. If you are interested i...
Building dual-screen web experiences with React
Hello web developers! Responsive design has always been the cornerstone of web development, rather than designing for a single use case, we focus on creating applications that can adjust to the needs of the platform they are running on. Microsoft Surface Duo is no exception to this and in past blog posts we’ve explored how we can use the CSS and JavaScript primitives to create experiences using standard web technologies. With the web being as complex a platform as it is, many developers prefer to use frameworks and libraries to help them build rich, complex responsive web applications. In this post, w...
Microsoft Surface Duo coming to new markets in 2021
Hello Android developers, Last month, Microsoft announced that early in 2021 the Surface Duo will be offered in Canada, United Kingdom, France, and Germany! We are excited to get Surface Duo into the hands of new customers in these new markets, and also to welcome developers in those countries to our community. To celebrate, we’re making sure our app samples are localized into French and German, including TwoNote, which is shown here: Our developer documentation is also automatically translated, and is available in French and German. The Surface Duo emulator is available to downlo...
Figma Design Kit for Microsoft Surface Duo
Hello designers, We’re excited to announce the v0.1 of our Design Kit for Microsoft Surface Duo. The kit details dual-screen capabilities and shows common use cases to help inspire your mobile app design. You can easily grab design elements and modify them as needed, giving you more time to create the best experience for your users. This kit includes the following design elements: This blog post provides details of what you can expect from the Design Kit that is published on the design and prototyping collaborative tool Figma, and how to leverage these resources for designing dual-screen ...
Microsoft Surface Duo developer year in review
Hello dual-screen developers, It was over a year ago – 2nd October 2019 – that Panos introduced the Surface Duo to the world. In the months since, we have shared a number of milestones with you leading up to the product launch (and beyond): We’re incredibly excited to see the Surface Duo released, and thankful for the support we’ve seen from app developers. 2020 blog post breakdown Throughout the year, we’ve shared information to help enhance your apps for dual-screen support, no matter what developer tools and languages you prefer. Here are some of the highlights: The Surface ...
Hacky Holidays!
Hello developers, For many people around the world, this time of year is for celebration of holidays and enjoying long-standing traditions. Some folks use the time for hacking - to learn new skills or catch up on the latest technologies, and since 2020 marked the release of the Microsoft Surface Duo, we’d like to take this opportunity to share some developer highlights from throughout the year. We look forward to bringing even more fun, interesting, and exciting dual-screen developer content in the year ahead! Kotlin and Java developers To get started developing for Surface Duo, check out our dro...
Build dual-screen Cordova apps for Microsoft Surface Duo
Hello hybrid app developers, This week I’m happy to share an example plugin for use with Cordova that will help to enhance your hybrid apps for dual-screens. The plugin includes DisplayMask.jar to detect the Surface Duo and return information about the masked hinge area when the app is spanned, and exposes it in JavaScript for Cordova apps to consume. In addition to the open-source plugin code there are three Cordova sample apps available on GitHub to show how to use it. Cordova plugin The plugin example can be easily included in your app with the following command: Once added to you...
Dual-screen library update with Jetpack Window Manager
Hello Kotlin and Java developers, We’re excited to announce version 1.0.0-beta1 of our dual-screen libraries for Microsoft Surface Duo, which integrates Google’s Jetpack Window Manager support. We’ve made the underlying device interface swappable, so you can continue to use the existing Display Mask API as long as you wish and migrate to Window Manager when you’re ready. The main changes in this update are: This blog post explains how to switch between Window Manager and the Display Mask API, tips for migrating from the previous version, and discusses the other...
Microsoft Surface Duo One Dev Question video series
Hello Android developers, Twice this year we’ve released a series of short videos answering questions about Microsoft Surface Duo development. In case you missed them, check out these videos and meet the Surface Duo Developer Experience team! Here are the most popular questions and answers we received: How do you get started with Flutter development on the Surface Duo? Can you build Surface Duo apps with Jetpack Compose? What operating system powers the Surface Duo? The rest of the videos in the one dev question series are available here: ...