What’s New in Android XR: Tooling, Engine Support, and Ecosystem Updates

Posted by Stevan Silva, Group Product Manager, and Vinny DaSilva, Developer Relations Engineer, Android XR From augmented overlays to fully immersive environments, the Android XR ecosystem is expanding rapidly, with the Samsung Galaxy XR already available today. Alongside the latest updates from Google I/O and this week's Augmented World Expo (AWE), we are rolling out new tooling, broader engine support, and ecosystem resources to help you build and scale experiences for Android XR. To get a quick look at what’s new, check out our video recap!

Ready to dive deeper? Let’s jump into the major updates that will streamline your XR development workflow. Build, Prototype, and Iterate with Developer Preview 4 Developer Preview 4 of the Android XR SDK delivers the APIs and tools you need to design and build right from your laptop.

This update includes the specific libraries required to target both immersive and augmented experiences. Check out the video below for a comprehensive breakdown of the latest in Android XR: To test all of these interactions without needing physical hardware, you can emulate and iterate on your code entirely within Android Studio . Check out our tooling deep dive to see how you can use XR emulator today: Extending your mobile apps for intelligent eyewear Building for audio and display glasses doesn't mean starting from scratch.

With the Jetpack Projected library , you can take your existing mobile app to create a complementary augmented experience. The new release includes a Device Availability API that hooks into standard Android Lifecycle states, allowing your app to natively adapt its behavior based on whether the glasses are being worn. To accelerate your development journey, use Android CLI and the display glasses skill to extend your mobile app into an augmented experience.

The skill is packed with specialized knowledge of Jetpack Compose Glimmer, enabling it to build your UI using our recommended design patterns. We’ve also updated Jetpack Compose Glimmer to optimize text legibility on optical see-through displays and provide touchpad-optimized navigation components. See how it looks in action: Developers at NAVER Papago are already exploring how to seamlessly bring their mobile experience directly to display glasses.

To learn how to leverage these tools, watch this session on extending mobile apps for AI glasses: Building global, location-based immersive experiences For developers focused on immersive experiences, Developer Preview 4 brings modern, Kotlin-first architectural upgrades across our core perception libraries. We have also introduced an early preview of the Geospatial API for wired XR glasses. By combining ARCore for Jetpack XR with Google's Visual Positioning System (VPS), you can anchor digital content to high-precision real-world locations.