Boost Your Debugging Game with Chrome DevTools

I open-sourced something I've been working on — LazyContainerCompose If you've built settings screens or grouped lists in Jetpack Compose, you know the pain. Option A: Wrap your rows in a Card with a Column inside. Looks great. But now the entire group is one giant lazy slot — so if you have 100+ rows, they all get composed at once. That's not a lazy list anymore. Option B: Emit each row as a separate item and draw a "slice" of the rounded background on each one. You get virtualisation back, but now there are visible seams between rows on certain screen densities. Looks broken. I kept running into this on production apps and finally decided to solve it properly. LazyContainerCompose keeps every row as its own independent lazy slot — fully virtualised, prefetched, reused by contentType — while drawing the container background as a single continuous shape that spans all visible rows. No seams, no compromises on performance. It's built directly on top of LazyLayout, the same internal primitive that powers LazyColumn. So it's not a wrapper or a hack — it plugs into the same composition, measurement, and recycling pipeline. The repo also ships with instrumented tests that actually prove the internal optimisations are working (virtualisation bounds, prefetch window, contentType reuse pool). Because seeing rows render on screen doesn't tell you whether the lazy behaviour is real. GitHub: https://lnkd.in/gJEFuQZT Would love feedback from anyone who's built custom lazy layouts or dealt with grouped list patterns in Compose. #AndroidDev #JetpackCompose #OpenSource #Kotlin #Android #LazyColumn #ComposeUI #MobileDev #AndroidDevelopment #UIEngineering

🚀 I built a one-click YouTube Downloader for Windows I wanted to make it easy to download high-quality YouTube videos without relying on YouTube Premium. So I built a desktop app that wraps yt-dlp into a clean GUI using PySide6, and packaged everything into a single .exe with PyInstaller. 💡 What makes it useful: • Download high-quality videos (1080p) locally • Extract audio (MP3) or thumbnails easily • No installation, no environment setup • Built-in auto installer for dependencies (yt-dlp, FFmpeg, Node.js) • Clean UX — no terminal popups 📦 The goal: Turn a powerful but technical tool into something anyone can use — fast, simple, and with no advertisement. 🔗 Repo: https://lnkd.in/g99ZgnM7 EXE download: https://lnkd.in/guewuHFh #Python #SoftwareEngineering #DesktopApp #OpenSource #DevTools #Automation

Jetpack Compose 1.11.0 is now stable — here's everything that shipped in the April '26 release. 🧵 📦 BOM: androidx.compose:compose-bom:2026.04.01 ───────────────────────── 🧪 Testing v2 is now DEFAULT The test dispatcher has shifted from UnconfinedTestDispatcher → StandardTestDispatcher. Coroutines no longer run eagerly — they queue and execute only when the virtual clock advances. If your tests break on upgrade, start here. 🔍 Shared Element Debug Tools Visual debugging for shared element transitions and animateBounds() is now built in. Inspecting cross-screen animations just got a lot easier. 🖱️ Trackpad APIs — Stable performTrackpadInput and the full MultiModalInjectionScope trackpad APIs are graduated to stable. Essential for Chromebook and large-screen test coverage. 💬 Custom Bullet Lists AnnotatedString now supports custom bullet list creation natively. No more workarounds. 🪟 Dialog & Popup Upgrades • Custom windowToken support in Dialog • Custom windowToken + windowType in Popup • Edge-to-edge fix: clippingEnabled = false now uses full window bounds correctly 📝 PreviewWrapper API Wrap @Preview composables with custom behavior — DI scopes, themes, mock providers — all directly from the annotation. ♿ Semantic Autofill ON by default isSemanticAutofillEnabled flag removed. Autofill is now enabled for all apps automatically. ───────────────────────── ⚠️ Looking ahead — Compose 1.12.0 will bump compileSdk to 37 with AGP 9. Plan your migration early. The testing v2 default is the change that will catch most teams off guard. Audit your test suites before upgrading. What feature is making the biggest difference in your projects? 👇 #JetpackCompose #AndroidDev #Kotlin #MobileDevelopment #Android

A lot of people are shipping faster than ever, but when something breaks, most reach for AI instead of looking at what the browser is actually telling them. I wrote 5 DevTools features that most developers miss and never really used: → $0 and $_ console shortcuts → Network request blocking → Local Overrides → Rendering panel → Memory profiling Full breakdown is on my blog 👇 https://lnkd.in/g3w2GnDv #frontend #webdevelopment #devtools #javascript #programming

This weeks' VSCode release was a special one for me - we have been focusing quite a lot on token efficiency in VSCode chat and I was fortunate enough to be able to partner with the great folks in VSCode engineering to identify prompt caching inefficiencies, conduct experiments to validate and finally ship these improvements in our 1.118 stable release. Importantly, these efficiencies don't compromise on quality, which is a key principle for us in this work. With the upcoming move to usage-based billing in June, these efficiency gains will be directly passed onto our customers. Read more about the improvements here: https://lnkd.in/e36S5PPT

Building browser extensions has been one of those experiences that looks simple from the outside… but feels completely different once you get into it. At first, it’s not the coding that challenges you — it’s the architecture. You’re suddenly dealing with: • Multiple environments (popup, background, content scripts) • Messaging between different layers • Strict permissions and manifest rules • Debugging across separate consoles And honestly, that’s where most of the friction comes from. But here’s the interesting part — once the mental model clicks, everything starts to feel structured and predictable. It shifts from “Why is nothing working?” → to → “Okay, I know exactly where this belongs.” That’s when real progress happens. One thing that helped me: Break the system into layers and build step by step instead of trying to solve everything at once. Still learning, still building — but definitely understanding things at a much deeper level now. #webdevelopment #chromeextensions #buildinpublic #softwareengineering #learning

**Stop switching tabs just to see what’s playing🎵** I’ve always found it distracting to break my workflow just to check a song title or pause a track. YouTube Music's mini-player is okay, but I wanted something truly minimal—a piece of "digital glass" that sits on my desktop without borders, buttons, or clutter. So, I built GlassMusic. 🖥️✨ The Problem: Standard Windows widgets often feel heavy, come with unwanted borders, or lack intuitive controls. I wanted a 150x150 floating album cover that felt like a native part of my OS, but getting there wasn't easy. The Engineering Challenges & Solutions: The "Invisible" Data: Fetching real-time media thumbnails from Windows isn't as simple as reading a file. I had to implement an asynchronous winsdk worker to bridge the Windows Media Control API with a Python/PyQt6 interface. The "Punchhole" Handle: I wanted to move the widget without adding a bulky title bar. My solution? A "Punchhole" handle—a 100% transparent circle created using DestinationOut composition modes. It’s a functional void that lets you drag the widget while looking through it to your wallpaper. Smart Interaction: To prevent accidental music pauses while dragging, I built a movement-detection buffer that distinguishes between a "repositioning drag" and a "control click." Pixel Clarity: To avoid "burst" pixels on high-res monitors, I implemented SmoothPixmapTransform and subpixel antialiasing to keep album art crisp at every size. Features: ✅ Real-time sync with Spotify, YouTube, and Windows Media. ✅ Single click to Play/Pause | Double-click to Skip. ✅ Right-click "Shatter" animation to close. ✅ Zero-border, ultra-minimalist aesthetic. This project was a deep dive into PyQt6 GUI threading, Windows API integration, and UX design. 👇 I’ve dropped the GitHub link (Source + EXE) in the first comment below! #Python #PyQt6 #OpenSource #SoftwareEngineering #WindowsAPI #Productivity #UXDesign #Coding

The UI toolkit for Android changes how coroutines are handled, revises trackpad support, and brings new possibilities for visual debugging.

The UI toolkit for Android changes how coroutines are handled, revises trackpad support, and brings new possibilities for visual debugging.