Cursor on Android: Where it struggles and how to make it useful
AI is here, and the best we can do now is take a look at it and not ignore it. I have been using Cursor with Claude for the past six months, both on personal and work projects of various sizes, and I can tell for sure that it handles some tasks with ease, while…
Fixing Android DataStore migration from a data object to a data class
I had to implement this migration for an object that was stored in DataStore using Protobuf and Kotlinx Serialisable on Android. The original object looked like this: The new object was supposed to look like this: As you can see, the sealed interface implementation of Pending changed from a data object to a data class.…
Profiling and how to optimise your app startup and kill ANRs
Very often when building an app, you get taken away in the code architecture, building different components, and getting stuff done. You want features out, and very often you don’t have time to optimise stuff. Sadly, this is the way software development has gone in recent years, especially during the IT layoffs in the recent…
Making arguments work in Compose Navigation where there was XML
Jetpack Compose Navigation goes hand in hand with Jetpack Compose. The issue comes when you are coming from XML navigation. Passing arguments between screens is very easy in XML and by extending from Java.Serializable interface, everything was working like magic. But now, you open the Pandora’s box with Jetpack Compose and here is how you…
Observations of migrating an app from XML to Jetpack Compose
Jetpack Compose is the coolest kid on the block, but it has various different drawbacks that I at least notice when we did the migration of the app I was working on. And I wanted to share them in my blog with everyone, just in case you need to do the same thing in your…
Why black-box tests could be a bad idea?
Blackbox tests are tests that are being done end-to-end. This means a UI automaton clicking on your mobile app that connects to the actual backend server – not prod, of course, but something close to staging. On Android specifically, you could use Espresso or UiAutomator to achieve those results. What are the issues with black-box…
How to tackle the R8 optimisation nightmare in a sane way?
Implementing R8 optimizations can always be a nightmare for the dev that has to do it. R8 is a compiler that works together with ProGuard to shrink, minify, and obfuscate your code. It can reduce significantly the APK size by removing classes that are not used at all. It checks the hierarchy of classes and…
Android app fails to build with SSLHandshakeException
Recently, I tried to build an Android project and it failed with the above error. It was a super nasty error to fix and I spent quite some time on it. Actually, there was only one fix that worked for me. Install a new Java environment or JDK and set it as a default Java…
Adding a custom lint rule to your Android project
We had one issue where people tend to create adapter classes inside fragments as properties and then forget to clear them out in onDestroyView. This actually creates a memory leak due to the adapter very often holding references to objects that were already destroyed. To prevent this from happening, we decided to create a custom…
Throwing anything other than IOException in the OkHttp interceptor will crash your app
One thing to note, maybe you don’t know about it, is that OkHttp interceptors work with IOException. So if you decide to implement some kind of a retry mechanism – to refresh a token when you get a forbidden response code, to retry a request, or something else, keep in mind that if you throw…
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