Google Play services powers a broad set of SDKs on Android to help you build
your app, enhance privacy and security, engage users, and grow your business.
These SDKs are unique in that they only require a thin client library to be
included in your app, as shown in figure 1. At runtime, the client library
communicates with the bulk of the SDK's implementation and footprint in Google
Play services.
By providing shared, client-side implementations, Google Play services:
- Helps to optimize on-device resources, such as storage and memory, to improve
app quality
and your users' overall
experience.
- Receives automatic updates?independent of OS, OEM, or app updates?so your
users receive improvements and bug fixes more quickly.
- Powers SDKs that are backward compatible to Android 5.0 (API level 21) and are
available on a variety of form factors, enabling you to reach more users with
less effort.
Figure 1.
Google Play services receives regular updates that contain
improvements and bug fixes.
How Google Play services works
SDKs
Each SDK powered by Google Play services provides a lightweight client library
that contains the necessary APIs to interact with its respective service. Other
APIs allow you to resolve any issues at runtime, such as missing, disabled, or
out-of-date services. If you are using Android Studio 3.4 or higher and enable
code shrinking, the
R8
optimizer
can help
further reduce the footprint of each SDK and its impact on your app's package
size.
To access new Google Play services features or products, upgrade the SDK when a
new version is
released
to the
Google Maven
repository
.
Services
Google Play services contains on-device Google services that run in the
background on every Google-certified Android device.
Automatic updates to Google Play services are delivered independent of carrier,
OS, or OEM system image updates. In general, devices running Android 5.0 or
higher receive updates automatically, provided that these devices have Google
Play services installed and sufficient storage available. This means that users
receive improvements and bug fixes more quickly, and you can take advantage of
the latest APIs while reaching most devices in the Android ecosystem. Devices
older than Android 5.0, or devices without Google Play services installed,
aren't supported.
Next steps: set up your app
To begin using Google Play services APIs in your app, read this
setup
guide
.