Android

When generating an Android project, Briefcase produces a Gradle project.

Icon format

Android projects use .png format icons, in round and square variants. An application must provide the icons in the following sizes, for 2 variants:

  • round:

    • 48px

    • 72px

    • 96px

    • 144px

    • 192px

  • square:

    • 48px

    • 72px

    • 96px

    • 144px

    • 192px

Splash Image format

Android projects use .png format splash screen images. A splash screen should be a square image with a transparent background. It must be specified in a range of sizes and variants, to suit different possible device sizes and device display densities:

  • normal (typical phones; up to 480 density-independent pixels):

    • 320px

    • 480px (hdpi)

    • 640px (xhdpi)

    • 1280px (xxxhdpi)

  • large (large format phones, or phone-tablet “phablet” hybrids; up to 720 density-indpendent pixels):

    • 480px

    • 720px (hdpi)

    • 960px (xhdpi)

    • 1920px (xxxhdpi)

  • xlarge (tablets; larger than 720 density-independent pixels)

    • 720px

    • 1080px (hdpi)

    • 1440px (xhdpi)

    • 2880px (xxxhdpi)

Consult the Android documentation for more details on devices, sizes, and display densities. This list of common devices with their sizes and DPI may also be helpful.

You can specify a background color for the splash screen using the splash_background_color configuration setting.

Android projects do not support installer images.

Application configuration

The following options can be added to the tool.briefcase.app.<appname>.android section of your pyproject.toml file.

version_code

In addition to a version number, Android projects require a version “code”. This code is an integer version of your version number that must increase with every new release pushed to the Play Store.

Briefcase will attempt to generate a version code by combining the version number with the build number. It does this by using each part of the main version number (padded to 3 digits if necessary) and the build number as 2 significant digits of the final version code:

  • Version 1.0, build 1 becomes 1000001 (i.e, 1, 00, 00, 01)

  • Version 1.2, build 37 becomes 1020037 (i.e., 1, 02, 00, 37)

  • Version 1.2.37, build 42 becomes 1023742 (i.e, 1, 02, 37, 42)

  • Version 2020.6, build 4 becomes 2020060004 (i.e., 2020, 06, 00, 04)

If you want to manually specify a version code by defining version_code in your application configuration. If provided, this value will override any auto-generated value.

Additional options

The following options can be provided at the command line when producing Android projects

build

-d <device> / --device <device>

The device simulator to target. Can be either a device ID, or a device name.

run

The device simulator to target. Can be either a device ID, or a device name.