Category Archives: ANDROID

How to add Deeplinks in your Android Application?

By | October 2, 2017

What are Deep Links? Let’s understand this with the help of a situation. If you happened to click a link on a webpage and suddenly it opens an application inside you phone or opens a dialog asking you to choose an application to handle this click. Yes, this is called deep linking. You can read… Read More »

Useful Android Studio Plugins

By | January 1, 2018

Here are some plugins that are really handy for developers to speed up their development. 1. ADBWIFI This plugin helps you to debug your app over Wi-Fi. Check out my previous blog post on how to do this without any plugin. 2. DTO generator This plugin is useful when you want to generate corresponding POJO… Read More »

How to Create Preferences Settings in your app using Android Built-in Settings Preference APIs

By | August 14, 2017

There is often a settings page when we make our app and most of the people end up making it using their own UI. But interestingly Android provides API specific for building preferences using your own values. Check the below UI for my settings Lets see how that is done. Using Preference Headers Preference Headers… Read More »

Steps to Speed Up/Optimize Android Studio Gradle Build Process.

By | April 21, 2018

Even with good hardware configuration for the system, we often end up with slow gradle build process in Android Studio. So here I will discuss some steps to Speed up Android Gradle build. 1. Stay Up to Date Make sure you have the latest Android Studio and have the latest build tools updated. 2. Create… Read More »

Get Battery Percentage in Android – Different Methods

By | July 20, 2017

We will see the different ways to get the battery percentage in Android. Method 1 Register a Broadcast Receiver Receive like this Method 2 Method 3 Note : Make sure you unregister the receiver when you don’t need.

How to Debug/Run Android application in Android Studio Wirelessly using Wifi.

By | July 19, 2017

Steps Enable usb debugging and Connect the device to dev system with USB cable. Type “adb tcpip 5555” in Terminal/Command prompt. (Here we are opening a port in device to connect from development system.) Disconnect the phone and check the ip address of phone from network settings Type “adb connect :5555” Now the phone will… Read More »

Do we need to call the Garbage Collector manually ( System.gc() ) in Android?

By | July 28, 2017

This is a common question. Eventhough the Android System calls garabage collector at appropriate times, this usually will not be adequate. Because the system calls GC at intervals, most of the time it wont work perfect and causing unnecessary pauses in the application. If these pauses are more than 16ms, then the user will notice… Read More »

How to write Simple Animation while setVisibility.GONE in Android?

By | June 25, 2017

Automatic animations on Layout Change If you want to animate views in a layout without writing big codes. Here is a Simple way. Find the root element of the layout and add this property to it. Adding Manual Animations Fade Out Animation Fade In Animation Move Down by height Translate animate to origin Position Adding… Read More »

How to add finger print authentication in Android.

By | June 21, 2017

Android 6.0 saw the introduction of fingerprint authentication, a new security feature that allows users to confirm their identify with a single touch. Well, after that this has become a common way of authentication for users. Advantages Very easy, fast and convenient to use for authentication Don’t need to remember No struggling with the keyboards… Read More »

How to find location in Android using GPS?

By | June 11, 2017

This example helps you to find the location in Android using the GPS. I have commented out some functionality in the code. You can uncomment it and extend it at your wish. At first we will create a utility class that will handle all GPS related Operations. GPS Utility Class This class has all utility… Read More »

Floating Button like Facebook Chat in Android

By | June 20, 2017

Floating widgets float over the screen over any app that is currently running. Here we will make a floating action button that you can drag around the screen to position and do actions on it. Add Permission For drawing over the other apps, you need “android.permission.SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW” permission. So add this entry in your manifest. Our… Read More »

Fast and Efficient way to transfer images between Activites in Android

By | July 14, 2017

We often need to transfer images between activities. Well there are many methods to transfer images. You can make the image into a Base64 String and pass it as String argument extra in a bundle between activities You can save it to a disc and read it in the other activity. Well, these methods will… Read More »

How to send Send form-urlencoded parameters in post request android volley?

By | May 8, 2017

We have to override the getBodyContentType() method in volley to enable “form-urlencoded parameters” in POST request using Volley. Here is how the code will look like. If you are not familiar with Volley, Checkout my post here on volley. It will give you a perfect picture on what Volley can do. Code – Method 1… Read More »

How to enable the default animation on a RecyclerView when an item is added or deleted?

By | May 29, 2017

You may be knowing that RecyclerView is part of the material design, so it will have the built in animations when you add an element or remove and element. In today’s article, I will show you how to how to do this in a simple way. RecyclerView will perform a relevant animation if any of… Read More »

Bottom Navigation Demo in Android

By | April 30, 2017

To get started with this, you need the latest version (version 25) of Android SDK & tools (including SDK tools, build-tools, platform-tools, support repository). Gradle Add the design support library First step is to add the design support library to your app-level build.gradle file. Example is as shown below: Layout Add the BottomNavigationView to your… Read More »

What are weak references? How it can be used to avoid memory leaks?

By | April 14, 2017

Weak reference objects, which do not prevent their referents from being made finalizable, finalized, and then reclaimed. Weak references are most often used to implement canonicalizing mappings. Suppose that the garbage collector determines at a certain point in time that an object is weakly reachable. At that time it will atomically clear all weak references… Read More »

Android Speech to Text Tutorial

By | April 22, 2017

Android comes with a built in feature for Speech to Text. This is really helpful when you want to provide navigation in your app through voice commands. When you say something in the app, your voice will be streamed to the server and the server will convert it to text and send back. You can… Read More »

What are the different Logging options available in Android?

By | May 28, 2017

Android uses a centralized logging system. However you can write your own custom log statements. Log Statements To write log statements, you use use the android.util.Log class with the following methods: Log.v() Log.d() Log.i() Log.w() Log.e() Log.wtf() They are sorted by relevance with Log.i() being the least important one. The first parameter of these methods… Read More »

How to automatically generate comments for your function in Android Studio?

By | May 27, 2017

This is a simple trick in Android Studio. First you have to write the skeleton of your function like this Now to generate the comments for this function just type “/**” on top of the function and hit “enter”. You will see the comments generated for you. Now your function will look like this Leave… Read More »

Simple Image Scaling Demo in Android

By | April 2, 2017

This article shows how you can do simple image scaling in Android. Here I have a simple class that Scales the image. The Utility class Layout The layout which shows the image for scaling. Set the above xml as layout for the Activity. Activity Please leave your comments at the end of the post.