Surface Duo Blog
Build great Android experiences, from AI to foldable and large-screens.
Latest posts
Build a dual-screen custom layout with Jetpack Window Manager
Hello Android developers, The Microsoft Surface Duo SDK offers a variety of custom controls to help enhance your dual-screen apps, from layouts, tabs, and navigation controls for Kotlin and Java developers to the TwoPaneView for Xamarin, React Native, and Uno Platform developers. However, you might have an application-specific requirement that is not offered in our SDK, so this blog post shows how to build a simple dual-screen aware layout control. This custom control might be useful in your apps, or you can use the source code as the basis for your own dual-screen control ideas! Introduci...
Fluent UI for Microsoft Surface Duo
Hello Kotlin and Java developers, I’m pleased to present our first release of Fluent UI Android controls for Surface Duo. Fluent UI is a user experience framework to help you build attractive apps that are consistent across Android and other platforms. Read more about Fluent UI. To help developers build dual-screen apps we have enhanced many of the Fluent UI Android layouts and controls to be dual-screen aware. Fluent UI for Surface Duo There are nine Fluent UI controls that have been enhanced for dual-screen devices: You can add the controls to your app by updating your build.g...
Bringing Sketch 360 to Microsoft Surface Duo
My inspiration Back in 2018, I came up with a way of using a Microsoft Surface to create 360 panoramic sketches and the Microsoft Garage encouraged me to release it as an app, Sketch 360. I created Sketch 360 because I wanted to develop a tool to help me create these immersive sketches more quickly. Because they are sketches from a single point looking out in all directions, they take more time to draw than a typical sketch. Sketches are supposed to be quick and I wanted to make the process faster for 360 sketches. Since its initial release, the free app has been downloaded more than 41,000 times fr...
Dual-screen list-detail with navigation
Hello Kotlin and Java developers! When you’re enhancing your existing Android apps for the Microsoft Surface Duo, you may want to keep your existing single-screen behavior. In today’s blog, I’ll share an example list-detail that supports the traditional back-button behavior in a single screen, but shows the list and detail side-by-side when the app is spanned across two screens. Single screen navigation The expected list-detail user experience on a single screen is for a list view to be replaced by the detail when an item is selected. A back arrow appears in the navigation bar, and the back ges...
Working with the camera on Microsoft Surface Duo
Hi Android developers! While the Surface Duo runs Android apps just like any other Android device, there are some differences in the hardware: In this post, we will review some dual-screen-specific camera behaviors and present some different options for enhancing camera capture in your apps to work even better on the Surface Duo. The complete source code is available for a Camera sample app, shown here: Figure 1: Camera sample app Working with portrait orientation lock Many camera apps lock orientation – especially social media apps, which often lock the orientation to por...
Updated Microsoft Surface Duo emulator with posture support
Hello Surface Duo developers! I’m excited to announce our latest Surface Duo Android emulator update, now with an easier way to simulate and visualize different device postures. You can download the latest version from the Microsoft Download Center (follow these instructions). The posture updates work with the Google emulator version 30.2.* or newer, which comes with Android Studio 4.1 (currently the latest stable release). New features and fixes This emulator release includes the following updates: Hinge angle and posture buttons The posture buttons are now ...
Adapting your website to support new possibilities of dual-screen devices
Hello there, fellow web developers! In an earlier blog post, we introduced the upcoming CSS feature primitives and the API for dual-screen and foldable devices. In this blog post, we will look at how Kenneth Rohde Christiansen and myself created and adapted our existing Foldship demo to take advantage of the new capabilities provided by dual-screen devices, using these new APIs. We’re both software engineers at Intel Corporation. Deciding between a major UX overhaul or tweaks here and there When you think of a dual-screen, you may think of an extended canvas or a larger browser w...
Developing for Microsoft Surface Duo accessories
Hello Surface Duo developers, Microsoft recently announced new Surface devices and accessories, so this week we’re looking at some of the accessories that work with Surface Duo and how you can accommodate them in your apps. Microsoft Surface Pens The Surface Slim Pen and Surface Pen both work great with the Surface Duo, whether you’re drawing, note-taking, or just prefer to navigate with a pen. Microsoft OneNote provides a great experience for writing on the Surface Duo. Figure 1: Surface Slim Pen and Surface Pen To build inking support in your own apps, check out the TwoNote sample...
Adding Microsoft Surface Duo support to the Flokk application
Hello Flutter developers! During the final week of July, Microsoft held its annual hackathon. The event has had different names over the years, but the idea has remained the same; people from across the company come together to work on projects they are interested in. There are many different types of projects, some are simply a new feature for an existing product, some are more aspirational, and some are just for fun. This year, one project in particular caught my eye. James Clarke (@clarkezone) was leading a project to bring the Flokk contact application to Windows and Surface Duo. James asked me to join...