Deprecations

With each release, specific Android APIs may become obsolete or need to be refactored to provide a better developer experience or support new platform capabilities. In these cases, Android will officially deprecate the obsolete APIs and direct developers to new APIs to use instead.

Deprecation means that we’ve ended official support for the APIs, but they will continue to remain available to developers. This page highlights some of the deprecations in this release of Android. To see other deprecations, refer to the API diff report.

RenderScript

Starting with Android 12, the RenderScript APIs are deprecated. They will continue to function, but we expect that device and component manufacturers will stop providing hardware acceleration support over time. To take full advantage of GPU acceleration, we recommend migrating away from RenderScript.

Android playlists

Android playlists are deprecated. The API is no longer maintained but the current functionality remains for compatibility.

We recommend reading and saving playlists as m3u files.

Display API deprecations

Android devices are becoming available in many different form factors, such as large screens, tablets, and foldables. In order to render content appropriately for each device, your app needs to determine the screen or display size. Over time Android provided different APIs for retrieving this information. In Android 11 we introduced the WindowMetrics API and deprecated these methods:

In Android 12 we continue to recommend using WindowMetrics and are deprecating these methods:

Apps should use the WindowMetrics APIs to query the bounds of their window, or Configuration.densityDpi to query the current density.

Note that the Jetpack WindowManager library includes a WindowMetrics class that supports Android 4.0.1 (API level 14) and higher.

Examples

Here are some examples how to use WindowMetrics.

First, be sure your app can make its activities fully resizable.

An activity should rely upon WindowMetrics from an activity context for any UI-related work, particularly WindowManager.getCurrentWindowMetrics().

If your app creates a MediaProjection, the bounds must be correctly sized since the projection captures the display. If the app is fully resizable, the activity context returns the correct bounds.

Kotlin

val projectionMetrics = activityContext
        .getSystemService(WindowManager::class.java).maximumWindowMetrics

Java

WindowMetrics projectionMetrics = activityContext
        .getSystemService(WindowManager.class).getMaximumWindowMetrics();

If the app is not fully resizable, it must query the bounds from a WindowContext instance, and retrieve the WindowMetrics of the maximum display area available to the application using WindowManager.getMaximumWindowMetrics()

Kotlin

val windowContext = context.createWindowContext(mContext.display!!,
      WindowManager.LayoutParams.TYPE_APPLICATION, null)
val projectionMetrics = windowContext.getSystemService(WindowManager::class.java)
      .maximumWindowMetrics

Java

Context windowContext = mContext.createWindowContext(mContext.getDisplay(),
      WindowManager.LayoutParams.TYPE_APPLICATION, null;
WindowMetrics projectionMetrics = windowContext.getWindowManager()
      .getMaximumWindowMetrics();