This blog post is going to discuss creating a project from scratch in Kotlin. We will build a sample Todo List application that will not be very complicated, but covers enough to show the benefits of Kotlin. Part 1 will discuss creating a new project and configuring Kotlin. If you’re familiar with that, copy the MainActivity.kt code and skip to part 2 to begin building the app.

This tutorial assumes a basic knowledge of programming, and some familiarity with Android. If you have any questions please leave them in the comments, and I will udpate these posts with a deeper explanation.

It is tough enough maintaing your app by updating the support library version numbers every time a new version is out, let alone factoring in any other third party libraries you may use. This is especially painful if you have multiple modules, as you have to update the version in each build.gradle file. Thankfully, we can make use of the project level gradle file to make this more maintainable.

Android app shortcuts are a special feature added in Android 7.1 (API 25). Shortcuts are special actions that appear when you long press on a launcher icon, that will trigger a specified intent. With this post you will learn how to create both static and dynamic app shortcuts. The only pre-requisite is that your app is targeting API 25 or greater.

Static Shortcuts

Static app shortcuts are shortcuts that are defined via XML. This means they are created at compile time, and will be consistent as long as your app is on the user’s device. Common use cases for this would be to launch a regularly used activity in your app that is not the launcher activity.

I was recently asked if there was a way to increase/decrease the font size of a TextView by pinching on it, just as you can with many iamges. Well, it turns out that’s quite possible!

All you have to do is override the onTouchEvent() method of your view, which is exactly what I do in my latest library, which allows you to pinch your screen to zoom in and out of a TextView. Check out the sample gif below:

As a new or intermediate Android developer, getting started with Retrofit, a popular HTTP client, can seem pretty daunting. However, using this library is not as scary as it sounds. Here are four easy steps to creating your first Retrofit application!