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!

Recently, I became tired of writing the same old tedious code for every single RecyclerView and Adpater class I used, that all did the same thing, so I extrapolated all of it into a personal library.

The RecyclerViewUtils library helps make everyone’s life a little easier with a CoreViewHolder and CoreAdapter class, described below.

Android has a built in SearchView component but it doesn’t feel much like Material Design. This has even been asked on StackOverflow because developers are having trouble recreating the same MaterialSearchView that appears in many of Google’s applications. However, thanks to one of my good friends Maurício, you can now implement this great component in your own projects!