Surface Duo Blog

Pen Events on the Surface Duo

Meir Ben ItayApril 23, 2020Apr 23, 202004/23/20

The Surface family of devices is known for great touch support, including pen input, and the Microsoft Surface Duo will be no different. By default, pen events are treated the same as a finger touch or mouse move, but you can detect and handle pen input differently, with a wider range of data such as pressure and orientation. Some pens also ha

Dual-screen games with Unity for Android

Craig DunnApril 16, 2020Apr 16, 202004/16/20

Hello Android game developers! Today we've published a Unity sample that incorporates our dual-screen SDK for Android so that you can adapt games for dual-screens and the hinge. The sample code demonstrates how to access the screen and hinge APIs that we provide Android developers, but from C# in Unity. The screenshot below shows a Unity An

Introducing SurfaceDuoLayout Designer Preview for Android Studio Developers

Guy MerinApril 9, 2020Apr 9, 202004/9/20

Hello Android dual-screen developers! In the March 26th blog post, we introduced the Dual Screen Layout. Figure 1: Single-screen and dual-screen layouts using SurfaceDuoLayout When using the SurfaceDuoLayout, you can implement dual-screen behavior by either using layouts or by listening for screen change events and manipulating fr

Orientation, Spanning and Insets

Meir Ben ItayApril 2, 2020Apr 2, 202004/2/20

Hello Microsoft Surface Duo Developers! Until recently, mobile devices all had one thing in common: a single screen. While applications had to support multiple screen sizes, recently manufacturers got creative and introduced new foldable, dual-screen devices, Google added support for multi-windowing on Android. Now applications need to dyn

Introducing dual-screen layouts for Android

Craig DunnMarch 26, 2020Mar 26, 202003/26/20

Today we are releasing a preview of our first Android dual-screen layout control for Java and Kotlin developers. The new control and associated helpers will enable you to build dynamic and responsive apps that take advantage of the Microsoft Surface Duo and its two screens. We look forward to see what you create with it!

Bring your Xamarin apps to Surface Duo

Craig DunnMarch 19, 2020Mar 19, 202003/19/20

Xamarin developers can build and test dual-screen apps for the Surface Duo, using the available emulator and SDKs available via NuGet. The hinge angle and display mask can be queried to adapt your screen layouts, and there is a TwoPaneView Xamarin.Forms control that helps build responsive app designs that work on all device types.

Bring your app to Surface Duo – Step 3

Guy MerinMarch 13, 2020Mar 13, 202003/13/20

Hello Surface Duo developers! In our Feb 6th blog post, we shared 3 steps to bring your app to Microsoft Surface Duo, followed by a post on step 1 and how to test your app and step 2 highlighting incremental changes to make to your app Figure 1: Steps to bring your app to Microsoft Surface Duo 1: Steps to bring your app to Microsoft Su

Bring your app to Surface Duo – Step 2

Guy MerinMarch 5, 2020Mar 5, 202003/5/20

This blogpost details Step 2 in the journey to bring your app to Surface Duo.
These will cover App resizing, Drag and drop support, how to launch intents in the adjacent screen, Multi instance/Activities support, Widgets and Pen support

Bring your app to Surface Duo – Step 1

Hakon StrandeFebruary 27, 2020Feb 27, 202002/27/20

Hello Developers! We’re excited to post another devblog for developers considering dual screen devices as a new form factor that can enhance your application’s user experience. In this post, we’re focusing on application compatibility testing. As you know, the Microsoft Surface Duo has two screens and those screens are slightly dif

The Surface Duo SDK Preview is getting an update – Feb 20,2020

Guy MerinFebruary 20, 2020Feb 20, 202002/20/20

Hello Dual Screen developers! We are proud to be part of this growing community and excited to share with you the latest on the #SurfaceDuo SDK front in these devblogs. Don’t forget to read our previous editions for additional Dev goodies, and let us know (feedback links below) on what else you would like us to cover. For today’s