People go on about how long it takes to get through passport control in the EU for British citizens post-Brexit. But somehow it takes even longer to get back into the UK at Edinburgh Airport as a British citizen.

I remember when prices for food and drink in airports were merely ridiculous. Now they're kick-you-in-the-balls insulting.

Next week I will be in Berlin for Droidcon. I can't wait. I'm looking forward to meeting up with my fellow Android developers. This time around, I am particularly interested in automotive and Android Open Source (AOSP) development. So if these things interest you too - let's chat at the conference

I don't think I'll ever tire of that little flutter of excitement when I perform an AOSP firmware build and then watch it booting on a device. On which note, if you want to play around with AOSP, get a VIM3 board. It's an accessible entry in to playing around with AOSP on a device.

I'll be speaking at Droidcon London this year: "Dual booting for testing and curiosity with Dynamic System Updates" This will be my first conference talk. As such, I'm easing myself in by doing a lightening session. I'm both looking forward to it and very nervous.

Software engineers: when you're trying to find a solution to a problem you don't understand, it's tempting to put in the quick fix from SO or elsewhere, to make the problem go away. It's always worth digging down further to *understand* the problem, so you're aware of the consequences of your fix.

Once the free-speech lobby learn of this, they will be up in arms!* *They won't, because they're inconsistent with their arguments, and Trump is their man. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

At the weekend I was in Eindhoven, Netherlands. It was a far more pleasant place to wander than most cities. The cycling infrastructure, meaning less cars, means the background noise is quieter. And the greenery of trees and plants on residential streets dampens the worst of the hard landscaping.

I dislike the dark practice by subscription services, particularly those which renew annually, of not notifying you a few days before the renewal before they help themselves to your bank account. It's a deliberate attempt to keep up retention.

At some point, British society is going to need to have a conversation about why the Reform party keeps attracting people with spicy, unsavoury views on a whole range of topics. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

We have two excellent talks lined up for you at the March AOSP and AAOS Meetup 1. Using Vendor APEX in AOSP, from Renjith Rajagopal 2. What to expect in Android 16, from @MishaalRahman Links: full details of the meetup at https://www.meetup.com/the-aosp-and-aaos-meetup/ Information about the […]

It's insane that this is even being said, but here goes... If the US wanted Russia to prevail in Ukraine, what would they be doing differently from now? (Answer: almost nothing)

If the EU really wanted to send strong signals about what its priorities are, now would be a good time to kick out Hungary and admit Ukraine as a full member. However, unfortunately, the pragmatic position is to keep Hungary in the tent to use whatever remaining leverage it has over them.

The new US administration is shameful in the extreme. Glory to Ukraine.

On a reboot after a Windows Update where it wants to take you through the first-time setup yet again to get you to sign up for Office365, set Edge as your default browser etc - this process is a dark-pattern minefield. Shitty behaviour from Microsoft.

I don't think Meta's existing content moderation system was particularly effective, but some of the quotes in this article point towards a very worrying trend in letting vile content go unchecked: www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Car insurance companies: your details must be up to date for your policy to remain legal and valid. Also car insurance companies: that will be a £13 administration charge (plus the policy cost difference) for us to update your details, thanks.

2024 was the first full calendar year that I've had solar panels with battery storage installed on my house (installed June 2023). So, some stats. Firstly my setup; 12x 405W solar panels 9.5kWh GivEnergy battery storage South facing roof - located in Edinburgh, Scotland (Continued...)

Fundraising for charities can be difficult. And I want to give to charities working on important causes. But I sure don't appreciate the dark-patterns to dupe donors in to signing up for promotional communications. And then when they want to opt-out, making it more cumbersome than it needs to be.

My penultimate #AndroidDev tip of the year. Set up Gradle-managed virtual devices in your Gradle build files to run instrumentation tests more consistently and reliably, particularly on your build server. See developer.android.com/studio/test/... for more details.

Wednesday's #AndroidDev tip. `android:sharedUserId` in AndroidManfest.xml has been deprecated since API level 29. If your app is still using this property, then you should seek to migrate this. See developer.android.com/guide/topics... for more details.

Tuesday's #AndroidDev tip. Do you work with Kotlin's Coroutine Flow API? If so, the Flow Marbles website is a handy resource to explain a number of the default Flow operators with helpful marble diagrams: flowmarbles.com

Monday's #AndroidDev tip. Earlier this year, ViewModel was updated to add a new constructor which allows you to set your own CoroutineScope, which overrides the ViewModel-provided CoroutineScope: developer.android.com/reference/ko...

And the last #AndroidDev tip for this week. Do not use the pre-defined Kotlin CoroutineDispatchers directly in your implementation. This will make your code hard or impossible to test. Instead, dependency inject the correct CoroutineDispatcher, and this can be swapped at testing time.

Thursday's #AndroidDev tip. Get the ADB Idea plugin for Android Studio to easily perform some common ADB tasks, right from inside Android Studio: plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7380-...

Wednesday's #AndroidDev tip. Do you have a Java-only library/module and you want to supply Proguard/R8 rules which are applied downstream? Place the consumer rules in `<module-path>/src/main/resources/META-INF/com.android.tools/r8/` and it will be picked up automatically by Android modules.

Tuesday's #AndroidDev tip. In a small number of use-cases, you may want to run your app before the user has unlocked their device after a reboot. E.g. to re-schedule a user-set alarm. To do this, you need to support Direct Boot mode: developer.android.com/privacy-and-...

Monday's #AndroidDev tip. Do you need to conditionally run an instrumentation test, for example by some device property? Define a new annotation which itself is annotated with CustomFilter: developer.android.com/reference/an...

New week, new Android Automotive project.

Today marks the ten year anniversary for Android Studio! 🎉 We released version 1.0 on the morning of December 8th 2014: android-developers.googleblog.com/2014/12/andr...

The events in Syria remind us that regimes can look rock solid until suddenly they aren't anymore, and the collapse is relatively instantaneous. I really hope this is a moment of real positive change for the Syrian people, and doesn't become a bloodied-struggle power vacuum.

And this week's final #AndroidDev tip from me. FusedOrientationProviderClient from Google Play Services allows you to easily get the device's orientation relative to the top of the device from the globe. See developers.google.com/android/refe... for more details.

Today's #AndroidDev tip. To share files between apps, don't use filesystem paths with open permissions. This is bad for privacy. Instead, use developer.android.com/reference/an... Slightly cumbersome API, but better for security.

Web designers/devs: please stop performing unnecessary repeat animations on your pages, particularly ones where the user is performing a task e.g. viewing dense information or filling in a form. It is incredibly distracting.

Today's #AndroidDev tip. In the old days, with Java, making your objects Parcelable was a proper pain. With the kotlin-parcelize Gradle plugin, this is now much easier. See developer.android.com/kotlin/parce... for examples.

Tuesday's #AndroidDev tip. Under the hood, there's a lot more to permissions than you might think. See this excellent primer from AOSP here: android.googlesource.com/platform/fra... I may return to some specific topics mentioned in this document in future tips.

Fantastic news from my friends at @snappautomotive.snapp.social. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on this and having a play around.

New week, new #AndroidDev tip. Use developer.android.com/reference/ko... to get system services in a way which is idiomatically Kotlin. Be aware, just like the older methods on Context, this method can return null too.

And an #AndroidDev tip to end the week. Use ADB to dump the current state of your running Service by implementing Service.dump() See the documentation for instructions on how to use this: developer.android.com/reference/an...

Today I finished up on a project that I've been on since June 2023. It was a very interesting, challenging and awesome project working with some great people. Time for a short rest before I start on a new interesting project, again with my friends at @snappautomotive.snapp.social :)

Today's #AndroidDev tip isn't just limited to Android. If you use OkHttpClient and require multiple instances, use the newBuilder() method on OkHttpClient to construct new customised instances which share resources with the original instance, e.g. connection and thread pools.

I'm a bit late with my #AndroidDev tip today! Today's tip is to check out Baseline Profiles to speed up your app's initial launch: developer.android.com/topic/perfor... And then remember to use the Macrobenchmark library to measure your startup times: developer.android.com/topic/perfor...

Tuesday's #AndroidDev tip. Today's tip is a simple one, for all Android development. Be careful to use the right Context object, particularly when passing as a parameter or when it's long lived, otherwise you might causes leaks. developer.android.com/reference/an...

An #AndroidDev tip for Monday. If you are a privileged or system app, you can specify android:priority within <intent-filter /> for manifest-defined components, such as Activity and BroadcastReceiver. This gives your app a chance to process the Intent before other apps with lower priority.

Today's #AndroidDev tip. Android Low Memory Killer Daemon (LMKD) is a system daemon for monitoring system memory pressure and killing apps when the system memory pressure is high. Its source and a README file can be found here: cs.android.com/android/plat...

Previously I was mostly silent on social media. I felt that it was already very verbose and I was not sure I would be contributing anything useful. With the move to Bluesky and the thriving Android community here, I am experimenting with giving daily #AndroidDev tips when I can.

#AndroidDev tips If you're running as a privileged or system app and you need to run all the time, you can set the android:persistent flag in your manifest: developer.android.com/guide/topics... However, be warned, that apps with this set cannot be updated via the PackageManager.

On Android we're in a fortunate position that when we want to know how something works, we can just read the source. But AOSP is a huge codebase. cs.android.com is such a handy resource. I've used it a lot in my current project.

I guess I should do an #introduction I'm Niall - a long-term Android developer (since Android Cupcake!). I am from Edinburgh, Scotland. I am a contractor/freelancer and I'm very much enjoying working with my friends at @snappautomotive.snapp.social. Looking to go deeper in to AOSP.