A/B update A seamless update scheme with two copies of the system, so an update can be installed while the phone is in use. +
AAB Android App Bundle: the publishing format Play uses to generate per-device APKs. +
AAPT2 The Android Asset Packaging Tool: it compiles and links resources and the manifest into an APK. +
AAudio The low-latency native audio API introduced in Android 8.0. +
ABI Application Binary Interface: the machine-code contract that determines whether a native library can run on a device. +
ACK Android Common Kernel: the branch of upstream Linux that Android devices are built from. +
aconfig Android's build-time feature-flag system for platform code. +
Activity A single screen with a user interface and its own lifecycle. +
Activity Result API The modern way to start another activity or request a permission and get a result. +
ActivityManager The system service that manages app processes, services, broadcasts and their lifecycle. +
ActivityTaskManager The system service that owns activities, tasks and the back stack, split out of ActivityManager in Android 10. +
Adaptive refresh rate The display changing its refresh rate to match the content and save power. +
adb Android Debug Bridge: the tool that talks to a device over USB or Wi-Fi. +
AIDL Android Interface Definition Language: the way you declare a Binder interface once and generate both sides. +
am The activity manager shell command, used to start apps and control processes. +
Android An open-source operating system for phones, tablets, watches, TVs and cars, built on the Linux kernel. +
Android 16 The platform release shipped on 10 June 2025, with API level 36. +
Android 17 The platform release shipped on 16 June 2026, with API level 37. +
Android Gradle Plugin The plugin that teaches Gradle how to build an Android app. +
Android Studio Profiler The set of tools for CPU, memory, network and energy analysis in the IDE. +
AndroidManifest.xml The file that declares an app's components, permissions, features and requirements to the system. +
AndroidX The library namespace that replaced the Android Support Library. +
ANR Application Not Responding: the dialog shown when an app fails to respond within a deadline. +
AOSP The Android Open Source Project: the public, open-source codebase that everyone can build Android from. +
AOSP Mainline The part of AOSP that ships Mainline modules. +
AOT Ahead-of-time compilation: translating code to native before it runs. +
APEX A package format for Mainline modules that can be updated without touching the system partition. +
APEX update Replacing a Mainline module's APEX with a newer version from Play. +
API level The integer that identifies a platform version for compatibility checks. +
APK The package format Android installs: a ZIP with code, resources, a manifest and a signature. +
APK signing The cryptographic signature that identifies an app's author and protects its bytes from modification. +
App Bundle See Android App Bundle (AAB). +
App Links Verified-signed links that open your app directly instead of showing a chooser. +
App sandbox The kernel-enforced isolation around every app: its own UID, files, and system calls. +
App Standby Throttling apps the user has not used recently, so they cannot run in the background. +
App startup time The time from launch intent to the first drawn frame. +
App widget A small view of your app that lives on the launcher or lock screen. +
App zygote A secondary Zygote used to isolate processes such as WebView renderers. +
AppFunction Android 17's mechanism for exposing app capabilities as tools an on-device AI agent can call. +
ApplicationExitInfo The API that tells an app why its process ended. +
AppOps The second, internal permission system that tracks fine-grained operations. +
Approximate location A coarse location grant that gives the app city-level rather than precise coordinates. +
ART Android Runtime: the managed runtime that executes DEX code, with a mix of JIT, AOT and interpretation. +
Audio HAL The vendor interface that connects AudioFlinger to the audio hardware. +
AudioFlinger The native audio server that mixes and routes audio. +
AVB Android Verified Boot 2.0: the format and tooling for signed Android boot images. +
avc: denied The kernel audit message written when SELinux blocks an access. +