See the list below to learn the basic terminology of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Here are other sources for definitions of key terms:
- Android Compatibility Definition Document (CDD) Build Parameters section
- Audio terminology
- USB basic concepts and terminology
- Automotive terminology
- Automotive Dialer terminology
- Automotive Instrument Cluster API terminology
- App Developer glossary
- Camera version terminology
- Device tree overlay (DTO) terminology
- Framework Compatibility Matrix (FCM) lifecycle terminology
- Health terminology
- HIDL terminology
- Hardware-backed Keystore terminology
- Multi-Display terminology
See Code with respect for examples of terminology to use and avoid for a more inclusive ecosystem.
Apps
- APK (.apk) file
- Android app package file with the extension
.apk
. Each Android app is compiled and packaged in a single file that includes all of the app's code (DEX files with the extension.dex
), resources, assets, and manifest file. The app package file can have any name but must use the.apk
extension, for example,myExampleAppname.apk
. For convenience, an app package file is often referred to as an APK.Related: app
- action
- A description of something that an intent sender wants done. An action
is a string value assigned to an intent. Action strings can be defined by Android or by a
third-party developer. For example,
android.intent.action.VIEW
for a web URL, orcom.example.rumbler.SHAKE_PHONE
for a custom app to vibrate the phone.Related: intent
- activity
- A single screen in an app, with supporting Java code, derived
from the
Activity
class. Most commonly, an activity is visibly represented by a full screen window that can receive and handle UI events and perform complex tasks, because of the window it uses to render its window. An activity is typically full screen, but it can also be floating or transparent. - app
- From a component perspective, an Android app consists of one
or more activities, services, listeners, and intent receivers. From a
source file perspective, an Android app consists of code,
resources, assets, and a single manifest. During compilation, these files
are packaged in a single file called an app package file (APK).
Related: APK (.apk) file, activity
- broadcast receiver
- An object based on the
BroadcastReceiver
class that listens for intents that are broadcast, rather than being sent to a single target app or activity. The system delivers a broadcast intent to all interested broadcast receivers, which handle the intents sequentially.Related: intent, intent filter
- content provider
- A data-abstraction layer that you can use to safely expose your
app's data to other apps. A content provider is built on the
ContentProvider
class, which handles content query strings of a specific format to return data in a specific format. See Content providers for more information.Related: URIs in Android
- dialog
- A floating window that acts as a lightweight
form. A dialog can have button controls only and is intended to perform a
simple action (such as button choice) and perhaps return a value. A dialog
isn't intended to persist in the history stack, contain complex layout,
or perform complex actions. Android provides a default simple dialog
with optional buttons, or you can define your own dialog layout.
The base class for dialogs is
Dialog
.Related: activity
- intent
- An message object that you can use to launch or communicate with other
apps or activities asynchronously. An intent object is an instance of the
Intent
class. It includes several criteria fields that you can supply, to determine what app or activity receives the intent and what the receiver does when handling the intent. Available criteria include the desired action, a category, a data string, the MIME type of the data, and a handling class. An app sends an intent to the Android system, rather than sending it directly to another app or activity. The app can send the intent to a single target app or it can send it as a broadcast, which can in turn be handled by multiple apps sequentially. The Android system is responsible for resolving the best-available receiver for each intent, based on the criteria supplied in the intent and the intent filters defined by other apps. For more information, see Intents and intent filters.Related: intent filter, broadcast receiver
- intent filter
- A filter object that an app declares in its manifest file, to
tell the system what types of intents each of its components is willing to
accept and with what criteria. Through an intent filter, an app
can express interest in specific data types, intent actions, URI formats,
and so on. When resolving an intent, the system evaluates all of the
available intent filters in all apps and passes the intent to the
app or activity that best matches the intent and criteria. For more
information, see Intents
and intent filters.
Related: intent, broadcast receiver
- resources
- Nonprogrammatic app components that are external to the
compiled app code, but which can be loaded from app code
using a well-known reference format. Android supports a variety of
resource types, but a typical app's resources would consist of UI
strings, UI layout components, graphics or other media files, and so on.
An app uses resources to efficiently support localization and
varied device profiles and states. For example, an app would
include a separate set of resources for each supported local or device
type, and it could include layout resources that are specific to the
current screen orientation (landscape or portrait). For more information
about resources, see App resources
overview. The resources of an app are always stored in the
res/*
subfolders of the project. - service
- An object of class
Service
that runs in the background (without any UI presence) to perform various persistent actions, such as playing music or monitoring network activity.Related: activity
- URIs in Android
- Android uses uniform resource identifier (URI) strings as the basis for requesting data in
a content provider (such as to retrieve a list of contacts) and for requesting
actions in an intent (such as opening a web page in a browser). The URI
scheme and format is specialized according to the type of use, and an
app can handle specific URI schemes and strings in any preferred way.
Some URI schemes are reserved by system components. For example,
requests for data from a content provider must use
content://
. In an intent, a URI using anhttp://
scheme are handled by the browser.
Build
- adb
- Android Debug Bridge, a command-line debugging app included with the
SDK. adb provides tools to browse the device, copy tools on the device, and
forward ports for debugging. If you're developing in Android Studio,
adb is integrated into your development environment. The acronym is written in all lower
case in plain text. When referring specifically to the command, it's written
as
adb
. See Verify that you have fastboot and adb for more information. - Android project
- A Git repository on an Android Gerrit host. See
Git source editor for more
information on how Git works.
Related: Git repository
- build fingerprint
- A unique, human-readable string containing manufacturer information issued to each build. See Build OTA packages for more information.
- Git branch - canonical
- Distinct versions for each Git repository, such as
android-11.0.0_r1
, found at cs.android.com/android/platform/superproject/+/android-11.0.0_r1. See Git Branching - Branches in a Nutshell for more information. - Git branch - local
- A temporary branch in the current Repo client to make code changes, started with the
repo start branch-name .
command. This is an active line of development. The most recent commit on a branch is referred to as the tip of that branch. - Git repository
- Sometimes referred to as a project, this is a portion of the codebase representing a
particular component or type of device, such as
frameworks/base
orplatform/packages/apps/Car/Media
.Related: Android project
- manifest file
- An XML file that describes a grouping of Git repositories per branch, the Git revisions at
which to check out those repositories, and their layout on a file system. This XML file,
typically named
default.xml
, is associated with a Repo branch and describes the Git repositories and Git branches checked out when you initialize and sync the Repo branch. This file defines the various Git repositories the Repo tool should fetch into a Repo client checkout in order to build a product (such as Android Automotive OS). See all manifests at android.googlesource.com/platform/manifest/+refs. See the default manifest included in manifest files to pull in Android platform (AOSP) files at android.googlesource.com/platform/manifest/+/refs/heads/main/default.xml. See App manifest overview for app information and repo Manifest Format for platform development. - over-the-air (OTA) update
- Android devices in the field can receive and install over-the-air (OTA) updates to the system, app software, and time zone rules. See OTA updates for more information.
- Repo branch
- A collection of Git repositories captured in a manifest file
that represents a version (build) of the Android codebase, such as
android11-gsi
oraosp-android-games-sdk
, downloaded withrepo init
andrepo sync
commands. See the manifest file description for links to all manifest files and use Android Code Search to search for their builds. - uprev
- In general, uprev updates a constituent subproject of a larger project to a newer version. An uprev changes a revision level to either the next incremented version or to the latest available version. In the case of a HIDL package, to maintain the package-level backwards-compatible extensibility, a minor-version uprev updates the new package to a higher minor version while keeping the same name and major version as the old package. In the case of the Bootloader configuration, an uprev updates the boot header version support to the latest version.
Platform
- Android Runtime (ART) and Dalvik
- Android Runtime (ART) is the managed runtime used by apps and some system services on Android. ART is the default runtime for devices running Android 5.0 (API level 21) and higher. ART and its predecessor Dalvik were originally created specifically for the Android Open Source Project. ART as the runtime executes the Dalvik Executable format and Dex bytecode specification. ART and Dalvik are compatible runtimes running Dex bytecode, so apps developed for Dalvik should work when running with ART.
- codeline
- A codeline contains the release of a software product. It consists of one or more branches from one or more repositories, all of which are often under active development at once. The codeline is the aggregation point and target for the release. For more information about codelines, see Android software management.
- DEX (.dex) file
- Compiled Android app code file. Android programs are compiled into Dalvik Executable (DEX)
files with the extension
.dex
, which are in turn zipped into a single APK file on the device. DEX files can be created by automatically translating compiled apps written in the Java programming language.
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Last updated 2024-09-23 UTC.
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