3 ms·

I’m surprised, given the history of exploits, Google didn’t decide to start shipping the image decoders as an APEX system component in the Play Store, with the

I’m surprised, given the history of exploits, Google didn’t decide to start shipping the image decoders as an APEX system component in the Play Store, with the built-in ones serving as a fallback. They just might now.

tgv 3y ago
I'm always suspicious of Google's behavior. It might be a good opportunity for them to tell everyone they need the latest version of Chrome because security. Manifest 3.0 and cohorts/FLoC, you can't escape them.
pja 3y ago
Having spelunked through some Google announcements on this, it looks like they planned to do so back when Android 11 was in development (https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/02/Android-11-developer-preview.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/02/Android-11... ), but I can’t find any evidence that image decoders are included in the current Android Mainline system updates that ship via Google Play - video codecs are, but not image ones apparently. The image decoders are in android.graphics (https://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/package-summary https://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/pac... ) & that API subset is not listed in the Android Mainline system modules that are catalogued here: https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/modular-system https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/modular-system It looks as if they planned to include image decoders, but that was dropped sometime during the Android 11 development cycle, unless I’ve missed something (which is certainly possible). Edit: the final dev release announcement for Android 11 keeps the same paragraph about the native image decoder. So maybe it is there & I’m just not finding it? https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/android11-final-release.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/android11-...

tgv 3y ago

I'm always suspicious of Google's behavior. It might be a good opportunity for them to tell everyone they need the latest version of Chrome because security. Manifest 3.0 and cohorts/FLoC, you can't escape them.

pja 3y ago

Having spelunked through some Google announcements on this, it looks like they planned to do so back when Android 11 was in development (https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/02/Android-11-developer-preview.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/02/Android-11... ), but I can’t find any evidence that image decoders are included in the current Android Mainline system updates that ship via Google Play - video codecs are, but not image ones apparently. The image decoders are in android.graphics (https://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/package-summary https://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/pac... ) & that API subset is not listed in the Android Mainline system modules that are catalogued here: https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/modular-system https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/modular-system It looks as if they planned to include image decoders, but that was dropped sometime during the Android 11 development cycle, unless I’ve missed something (which is certainly possible). Edit: the final dev release announcement for Android 11 keeps the same paragraph about the native image decoder. So maybe it is there & I’m just not finding it? https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/android11-final-release.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/android11-...