App rendering differences on Chromebooks
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Because Android apps run in a window under ChromeOS, there are small
differences in how apps are rendered on Chromebooks. These differences are
outlined in the following paragraphs.
Tasks, windows, and transparency
A task
consists of a stack of activities that the user interacts with when running an
app. Tasks are presented on ChromeOS as a window with a title bar, with the
apps layered on top of each other. Each activity can then be
partially translucent, letting the lower layers show through.
In a conventional Android app, the previous task or the desktop shows through beneath the task.
In this way, there is always something visible beneath a translucent task.
This does not work in a window environment, for the following reasons:
- The visible content below a window cannot be controlled, and could therefore
be anything.
- Fully transparent pixels could "magically" swallow touch or mouse
events.
- Window elements might visually be disconnected from the caption, confusing
the user with possibly unconnected visual elements.
To mitigate this problem, Play for ChromeOS draws a semitransparent rectangle behind
each window. For this reason, apps can never be 100 percent transparent
when running under ChromeOS, even when using the Theme.Translucent.NoTitleBar
theme.
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Last updated 2025-02-10 UTC.
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