Overview of Google Play services

Google Play services powers a broad set of SDKs on Android for building your app, enhancing privacy and security, engaging users, and growing your business. These SDKs only require a lightweight client library to be included in your app, as shown in figure 1. At runtime, the client library communicates with a full implementation running in the main Google Play services application.

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.
  • Provides backward compatibility to Android 6.0 (API level 23) and works across various form factors, enabling you to reach more users with less effort.

Lightweight client libraries communicate with Google Play services using IPC. Google Play services is available on phones, tablets, laptops, TVs, and watches, as well as in cars.

Figure 1. Google Play services receives regular updates that contain improvements and bug fixes.

How Google Play services works

SDKs

Each Google Play services SDK includes a lightweight client library with APIs that interact with a service that runs in the Google Play services application. These libraries also provide helpers to gracefully handle runtime issues, such as when a service is missing, disabled, or out-of-date. When you enable code shrinking, the R8 optimizer further reduces the SDK's impact on your package size by removing unused code.

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 a core set of on-device background services that run on all Google-certified Android devices.

Automatic updates to Google Play services are delivered independent of carrier, OS, or OEM system image updates. In general, devices running Android 6.0 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 6.0, 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.