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Effective in 2026, to align with our trunk stable development model and ensure platform stability for the ecosystem, we will publish source code to AOSP in Q2 and Q4. For building and contributing to AOSP, use android-latest-release. The android-latest-release manifest branch will always reference the most recent release pushed to AOSP. For more information, see Changes to AOSP.
AOSP
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See the list below to learn the basic terminology of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Here
are other sources for definitions of key terms:
Android Compatibility Definition Document (CDD)
Build Parameters section
Audio terminology
USB basic concepts and terminology
Automotive terminology
Automotive Dialer terminology
Automotive Instrument Cluster API terminology
App Developer glossary
Camera version terminology
Device tree overlays (DTO) terminology
Framework Compatibility Matrix (FCM) lifecycle terminology
Health terminology
HIDL terminology
Hardware-backed Keystore terminology
Multi-Display terminology
See Code with respect
for examples of terminology to use and avoid for a more inclusive ecosystem.
All terms (filterable)
Apps terms
Build terms
Graphics terms
Platform terms
Test terms
Apps
APK (.apk) file
Android app package file with the extension .apk. Each
Android app is compiled and packaged in a single file that includes
all of the app's code (DEX files with the extension .dex), resources, assets,
and manifest file. The app package file can have any name but
must use the .apk extension, for example,
myExampleAppname.apk. For convenience, an app package
file is often called an APK.
Related: app
action
A description of something that an intent sender wants done. An action
is a string value assigned to an intent. Action strings can be defined by Android or by a
third-party developer. For example, android.intent.action.VIEW for a web URL, or
com.example.rumbler.SHAKE_PHONE for a custom app to vibrate the phone.
Related: intent
activity
A single screen in an app, with supporting Java code, derived
from the
Activity
class. Most commonly, an activity is
visibly represented by a full screen window that can receive and handle UI
events and perform complex tasks, because of the window it uses to render
its window. An activity is typically full screen, but it can also be
floating or transparent.
app
From a component perspective, an Android app consists of one
or more activities, services, listeners, and intent receivers. From a
source file perspective, an Android app consists of code,
resources, assets, and a single manifest. During compilation, these files
are packaged in a single file called an app package file (APK).
Related: APK (.apk) file, activity
broadcast receiver
An object based on the
"BroadcastReceiver
class that listens for intents that are broadcast,
rather than being sent to a single target app or activity. The system
delivers a broadcast intent to all interested broadcast receivers, which
handle the intents sequentially.
Related: intent, intent
filter
content provider
A data-abstraction layer that you can use to safely expose your
app's data to other apps. A content provider is built on the
ContentProvider
class, which handles content
query strings of a specific format to return data in a specific format.
See
Content providers for more information.
Related: URIs in Android
dialog  A floating window that acts as a lightweight
form. A dialog can have button controls only and is intended to perform a
simple action (such as button choice) and perhaps return a value. A dialog
isn't intended to persist in the history stack, contain complex layout,
or perform complex actions. Android provides a default simple dialog
with optional buttons, or you can define your own dialog layout.
The base class for dialogs is
Dialog.
Related: activity
intent
A message object that you can use to launch or communicate with other
apps or activities asynchronously. An intent object is an instance of the
Intent
class. It includes several criteria fields that you can
supply to determine what app or activity receives the intent and
what the receiver does when handling the intent. Available criteria
include the desired action, a category, a data string, the MIME type of
the data, and a handling class. An app sends
an intent to the Android system, rather than sending it directly to
another app or activity. The app can send the intent to a
single target app or it can send it as a broadcast, which can in
turn be handled by multiple apps sequentially. The Android system
is responsible for resolving the best-available receiver for each intent,
based on the criteria supplied in the intent and the intent filters
defined by other apps. For more information, see Intents
and intent filters.
Related: intent filter, broadcast receiver
intent filter
A filter object that an app declares in its manifest file, to
tell the system what types of intents each of its components is willing to
accept and with what criteria. Through an intent filter, an app
can express interest in specific data types, intent actions, URI formats,
and so on. When resolving an intent, the system evaluates all of the
available intent filters in all apps and passes the intent to the
app or activity that best matches the intent and criteria. For more
information, see Intents
and intent filters.
Related: intent, broadcast receiver
resources
Nonprogrammatic app components that are external to the
compiled app code, but which can be loaded from app code
using a well-known reference format. Android supports a variety of
resource types, but a typical app's resources would consist of UI
strings, UI layout components, graphics or other media files, and so on.
An app uses resources to efficiently support localization and
varied device profiles and states. For example, an app would
include a separate set of resources for each supported local or device
type, and it could include layout resources that are specific to the
current screen orientation (landscape or portrait). For more information
about resources, see App resources
overview. The resources of an app are always stored in the
res/* subfolders of the project.
service
An object of class Service
that runs in the background (without any UI presence) to perform various persistent
actions, such as playing music or monitoring network activity.
Related: activity
URIs in Android
Android uses uniform resource identifier (URI) strings as the basis for requesting data in
a content provider (such as to retrieve a list of contacts) and for requesting
actions in an intent (such as opening a web page in a browser). The URI
scheme and format is specialized according to the type of use, and an
app can handle specific URI schemes and strings in any preferred way.
Some URI schemes are reserved by system components. For example,
requests for data from a content provider must use
content://. In an intent, a URI using an http://
scheme are handled by the browser.
Build
adb
Android Debug Bridge, a command-line debugging app included with the
SDK. adb provides tools to browse the device, copy tools on the device, and
forward ports for debugging. If you're developing in Android Studio,
adb is integrated into your development environment. The acronym is written in all lower
case in plain text. When referring specifically to the command, it's written
as adb. See Verify that you have fastboot and
adb for more information.
Android project
A Git repository on an Android Gerrit host. See
Git source editor for more
information on how Git works.
Related: Git repository
build fingerprint
A unique, human-readable string containing manufacturer information issued to each build.
See Build OTA packages for more information.
Git branch - canonical
Distinct versions for each Git repository, such as android-11.0.0_r1, found
at cs.android.com/android/platform/superproject/+/android-11.0.0_r1.
See Git
Branching - Branches in a Nutshell for more information.
Git branch - local
A temporary branch in the current Repo client to make code changes, started with the
repo start branch-name . command. This is an active line of development. The
most recent commit on a branch is called the tip of that branch.
Git repository
Sometimes called a project, this is a portion of the codebase representing  a
particular component or type of device, such as frameworks/base or
platform/packages/apps/Car/Media.
Related: Android project
manifest file
An XML file that describes a grouping of Git repositories per branch, the Git revisions at
which to check out those repositories, and their layout on a file system. This XML file,
typically named default.xml, is associated with a Repo branch and describes the
Git repositories and Git branches checked out when you initialize and sync the Repo branch.
This file defines the various Git repositories the Repo tool should fetch into a Repo client
checkout to build a product (such as Android Automotive OS).
See all manifests at
android.googlesource.com/platform/manifest/+refs. See the default
manifest included in manifest files to pull in Android
platform (AOSP) files at
android.googlesource.com/platform/manifest/+/refs/heads/android17-release/default.xml.
See
App
manifest overview for app information and
repo
Manifest Format for platform development.
over-the-air (OTA) update
Android devices in the field can receive and install over-the-air (OTA) updates to the
system, app software, and time zone rules. See
OTA updates for more information.
Repo branch
A collection of Git repositories captured in a manifest file
that represents a version (build) of the Android codebase, such as
android11-gsi
or aosp-android-games-sdk,
downloaded with repo init and repo sync commands.
See the manifest file description for links to all manifest files
and use Android Code Search to search for their
builds.
uprev
In general, uprev updates a constituent subproject of a larger project to a newer version.
An uprev changes a revision level to either the next incremented version or to the latest
available version. In the case of a HIDL package, to maintain the
package-level
backwards-compatible extensibility, a minor-version uprev updates the new package to a
higher minor version while keeping the same name and major version as the old package.
In the case of the
Bootloader
configuration,
an uprev updates the boot header version support to the latest version.
Platform
Android Runtime (ART) and Dalvik
Android Runtime (ART) is the managed runtime used by apps and some system
services on Android. ART is the default runtime for devices running
Android 5.0 (API level 21) and higher. ART and its predecessor Dalvik were originally created
specifically for the Android Open Source Project. ART as the runtime executes the Dalvik
Executable format and Dex bytecode specification. ART and Dalvik are compatible runtimes
running Dex bytecode, so apps developed for Dalvik should work when running with ART.
DEX (.dex) file
Compiled Android app code file. Android programs are compiled into Dalvik Executable (DEX)
files with the extension .dex, which are in turn zipped into a single APK file
on the device. DEX files can be created by automatically translating compiled apps written in
the Java programming language.
Content and code samples on this page are subject to the licenses described in the Content License. Java and OpenJDK are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2026-07-14 UTC.
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