Design recommendations

Android makes it easy to develop an app that runs well on a wide range of device screen sizes and form factors. This broad compatibility works in your favor since it helps you design a single app that you can distribute widely to all of your targeted devices. However, to give your users the best possible experience on each screen configuration you need to optimize your layouts and other UI components for the different sizes and configurations you will encounter. On ChromeOS, optimizing your UI lets you take full advantage of the additional screen space available and offer new features, present new content, or enhance the experience in other ways to deepen user engagement.

Layouts for larger screens

If you developed your app for handsets and now want to improve your design on ChromeOS and other large-screen form factors, you can start by making minor adjustments to your layouts, fonts, and spacing. In some cases — such as for 7-inch tablets or a game with large canvas — these adjustments may be all you need to make your app look great. In other cases, such as for larger displays, you can redesign parts of your UI to replace a “stretched UI” with an efficient multi-pane UI, easier navigation, and additional content. Take a look at the

A good place to start is by looking at things that may be hidden to the user, and how you can pull them out and make them visible. Whether that is showing more information about an item, making menu’s visible that may be hidden behind a right-click or long-press, or showing different or deeper navigation options now that you have a larger left-side navigation area. These are big usability wins that can improve your UX and give a more desktop-like feel to your app, without a complete re-design and overhaul of the current experience.

Here are some recommendations for your app:

• Your brand will dictate the direction that you should go when thinking about these different screen sizes. Deciding the things to prioritize and surface to the user is dependent on the type of user journey’s that exist and the most commonly used features. For inspiration on how you may want to attack this, check out the blog post⁠⁠ by Spacing Methods⁠⁠ to learn about touch targets and spacing between items as screen sizes change. These recommendations also meet minimum Google products
• Report a ChromeOS bug