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Showing posts with the label App Development

Kotlin and coffee (decaf. Caffeine makes me jittery 🤪). Working on the Jetpack Compose class today.

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 Link to the class: https://developer.android.com/courses/android-basics-compose/course

App Milestone: 2k Downloads of Random Number Generator!

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  This app was a fun one to design because I wanted to make something that would look different and stand out. Fun to see it get downloaded by so many people all over the world!  Random Number Generator Free, No ads

App Milestone: 50 downloads for Days Until!

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The free version of my Days Until app has reached its 50 downloads milestone! Days Until Free, No ads Days Until with Widget $0.99, No ads App preview video: 

App Milestone: 20 downloads for Days Until with Widget!

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No, that's not 20k, just 20, but I'm still excited! I released this app last fall as an upgrade version to my Days Until app. It takes a lot longer for paid apps to get downloads than for free apps (obviously), so given that this is one of my paid apps, I'm pretty excited it's reached this milestone!  Days Until Free, No ads Days Until with Widget $0.99, No ads App preview video: 

App Milestone: 10k downloads for Latitude and Longitude!

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I've only posted about app milestones for three months now, but this app has already come up twice! My Latitude and Longitude app has the fastest download rate of any app I've made yet. It hit its 5k milestone just two months ago, and now it's at 10k downloads!  Latitude and Longitude Free, No ads App preview video:

App Milestone: 1k downloads for Volume Button Counter!

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Another milestone was reached this month! I'll try to do these milestone posts monthly. Volume Button Counter Free, No ads App preview video:

Thanks for the Donations!

Thanks to the person from Milwaukee, WI who recently bought my donation app! To everyone who has supported my Android apps, whether through donations or other app purchases, thank you! It means a lot to know that the work I'm doing is appreciated! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amandafarrell.www.donationfordeveloper_blue

The Android team at Google put out a new FREE course as of April 2022: Android Basics with Compose

I've been working with Kotlin for a while now, but I haven't started learning to use Jetpack Compose yet. Time to get started learning a new way to make the UI for Andriod apps! I'm excited! The Android team at Google put out a new FREE course as of April 2022: Android Basics with Compose:  https://developer.android.com/courses/android-basics-compose/course

App Stats: Time Progress Bars - 2022

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Time for some app stats! Time Progress Bars app was released on the Google Play Store in October 2020. Total downloads - 3007 Active downloads - 905 2022 revenue - $31.64 My share of 2022 revenue - $25.31 Total revenue - $54.71 My share of total revenue - $34.23 Revenue is from an in-app purchase that lets users change the color scheme and an in-app donation purchase.

Video: Scorekeeper App Preview

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I receive a lot of reviews of scorekeeper asking for the ability to edit the names of players, which is a feature already available through long-pressing on the player name. Apparently, long-pressing is not something intuitive to try for some people, so they are left without the ability to change the player name. I hope this video preview helps make it easier for users to understand how the app works and how to get to additional features already available to them.

App Release: Volume Button Scorekeeper (Two Team)

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This is my first published app built with Kotlin! :) Features: Use volume buttons to keep score for two teams Can reset to any scores you choose Available in 100 languages Code on GitHub .

Scorekeeper App Stats

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My Scorekeeper download stats show a consistent spike every Saturday, and big spikes around Christmas and New Year's. I wouldn't have predicted it, but it totally makes sense that people would play more games on weekends and holidays. 

New Video - Android: Uploading an App to the Google Play Store

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A quick overview of uploading to the Google Play Store. This is as of December 2018. Some things have changed since I uploaded my first app in July 2017, but overall the process is still very similar.  Even though things will probably change a bit if you are watching this months in the future, I thought it would be worth it to make a quick video. App code on GitHub .

Your First Andriod App: Getting Started with Android Studio

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1. The first part is setting up your Android phone to get developer options. You can use the Android Studio emulator, but it's much faster to use a physical device. Go to Settings > About phone > tap Build number 7 times. Once you have developer options make sure that USB Debugging is turned on: 2. Next, download Android Studio:  https://developer.android.com/studio/ 3. Start a new project. There are template projects available or you can start with an empty project: 4. Switch to Project view: 5. Java files go in "java" folder, XML files (layout, styles, strings, etc.) go in the "res" file, and sometimes you edit the manifest and the Gradle files: After this, be prepared for downloading time as you might need to update Android Studio. If you want more help with a starter app, check out my counter app tutorial video:

Udacity Android Basics Nanodegree - Graduation Certificate!

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Thanks to Google and Udacity for the scholarship, and thanks to everyone else I got help from along the way. I've been lucky to have so many people willing to take time to answer my programming/Android questions.

New Video - Android: Getting Latitude and Longitude

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Link to video:  https://youtu.be/fouAGhpq8Ss This simple app displays the latitude and longitude coordinates of the phone using Google's location services API and the getLastLocation() function as of June 2018. The code is on GitHub: https://github.com/bluepandadev/Location2 I was following along with Udacity's location class when I came across a deprecated method. Since Udacity doesn't have an updated video for it yet, I decided I'd try making one.  Let me know if you have any suggestions on how to do this better. Link to the Udacity class, Google Location Services on Android: https://www.udacity.com/course/google-location-services-on-android--ud876-1 Here's a training doc on location from the google dev website: https://developer.android.com/training/location/ And here's the Google APIs for Android, LocationServices page on the google developer website for more information: https://developers.google.com/android/reference/com/google/android/gms/loc

New Video - Updating Formatting of Change Calculator Android App

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This video shows how I put the finishing touches on my Change Calculator Android app (which will be on Google Play for download soon!). Example of using string.xml, style.xml and color.xml files in an Android app.   Websites from the video: https://www.materialpalette.com/ https://stackoverflow.com/ Link to Change Calculator code: https://github.com/bluepandadev/ChangeCalculator Edit: link to the app on Google Play -  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amandfarrell.www.changecalculator&hl=en

Tutorial: Using SQLite with Android - Simple Scorekeeper Example

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This is a quick tour of how the SQLite database in my simple scorekeeper app is set up. Here's a link to my scorekeeper app code on GitHub if you want to follow along: https://github.com/bluepandadev/Scorekeeper If you want more information on Data Storage and Android, check out this class at Udacity: https://www.udacity.com/course/android-basics-data-storage--ud845 The scorekeeper app is on the play store (in beta still right now): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amandafarrell.www.scorekeeper&hl=en A link to the screen recording software I used:  https://obsproject.com/

Tutorial: Making an Android Counter App

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This is a 3-minutes video about how to make a simple counter app in Android Studio. I recommend using your own Android phone if you want to try it out, though you can also use the emulators that come with Android Studio if you don't mind waiting patiently while they load.