Manifest Android Interview

The ultimate guide to cracking Android technical interviews

To ace your next Android job interview, focus on truly understanding the concepts, not just memorizing answers, and practicing how to apply them. With 108 interview questions, 162 additional practical questions, and 50+ pro tips, this book helps you sharpen skills, understand the why, and prepare for real-world technical challenges.

Hardcover edition | Paperback edition ISBN: 979-8285926436

Jaewoong

Hardcover edition | Paperback edition ISBN: 979-8285926436

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About

About the Book

Manifest Android Interview presents practical challenges framed as questions and offers a structured roadmap for learning and refreshing Android and Jetpack Compose knowledge. It’s designed to benefit developers at every level, from juniors building a foundation to seniors exploring internal APIs and advanced concepts.

The content spans the core Android framework, UI architecture, Jetpack libraries, and business logic, while also giving significant attention to Jetpack Compose, from fundamentals and runtime behavior to UI composition and design practices. This balance ensures that you strengthen your knowledge of both classic Android and modern declarative development.

Every question is followed by a step-by-step walkthrough that not only explains how to solve it but also explores why the solution works. To simulate real hiring conditions, many sections end with follow-up challenges that mirror on-site interview tasks, helping you practice deeper problem-solving and technical reasoning.

To support continuous growth, the book includes curated references and additional resources so you can keep exploring beyond its pages. Complex or less common terms are explained with accessible footnotes, making advanced material approachable for newcomers while offering fresh insights to seasoned developers.

The "Pro Tips for Mastery" chapters go beneath the surface, covering internal API design, performance trade-offs, and architectural decisions that matter in real-world projects. Senior engineers will find thought-provoking details to sharpen their expertise, while mid-level developers gain a toolkit for leveling up their Android skills and building a stronger analytical mindset.

Whether you’re preparing for an interview, transitioning to Compose, or simply deepening your Android expertise, this book challenges you to go beyond memorizing APIs. Learn to reason about design choices, experiment with different solutions, and approach Android development with clarity, curiosity, and confidence.

— Jaewoong Eum (skydoves)

For fun facts, who it's for, what it covers, and what it doesn’t, check out the Manifest Android Interview: The Ultimate Guide to Cracking Android Technical Interviews blog post.

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Author

About the Author

Jaewoong

The author of this book, Jaewoong Eum (known as skydoves), is a Google Developer Expert (GDE) for Android, Kotlin, and Firebase, an open-source developer created over 80+ open-source libraries and projects, collectively amassing 15+ million downloads annually. The author is also the founder of Dove Letter—a subscription-based repository dedicated to sharing, learning, and discussing Android and Kotlin development.

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Testimonials

Reader Testimonials

Manifest Android Interview stands as an essential guide for Android developers tackling theory-heavy technical interviews. It seamlessly blends deep technical insights, practical examples, and thoughtful 'Pro Tips for Mastery' sections. The knowledge in this book makes it an invaluable resource for confidently navigating and succeeding in Android interviews.
Manuel Vivo
Staff Android Engineer at Bumble, Ex Android DevRel at Google
Manifest Android Interview is perfect for brushing up on fundamentals, preparing for interviews, and revisiting best practices. Its clear structure, searchable format, and thoughtful questions make it a go-to resource for both learning and revisiting core Android concepts.
Matt McKenna
Senior Android Engineer at Block, Android GDE
Guided by thoughtfully crafted questions, insightful tips, and clear code samples, Manifest Android Interview helps you not only reinforce core Android concepts (e.g. manifest file, lifecycle, intent, service, content providers, broadcast receivers, deep links) but also explore every aspect of building software for Android, from ViewModel to the View system to Jetpack Compose and all in between. No matter your level of expertise, this book offers something for everyone. If you're preparing for your dream role or simply expanding your expertise in the platform we all love, this resource will be an invaluable companion on your journey.
Alejandra Stamato
Lead Android Engineer at HubSpot, Ex Android DevRel at Google
Jaewoong (known to many of us in the Android community as skydoves), and his new book "Manifest Android Interview," are a must-have for anyone getting ready for an interview, or just wanting to brush up on their Android skills. It’s an extensive, detailed, and well-structured resource that contains everything from the basics to the nitty-gritty of the Compose runtime and UI. Being biased, I was especially focused on the Jetpack Compose part and found it to be super helpful, particularly for interview prep. It consistently answers the tough and practical “whys” and “hows” to help you learn and improve your problem-solving, in a way that is very similar to content in real interviews. Whether you're new to Compose or getting ready for an interview, this book will certainly boost your Android knowledge and interview confidence.
Simona Milanovic
Senior Android Developer Relations Engineer

Table of Contents

- Preface
- Testimonial
  - - Manuel Vivo (Staff Android Engineer at Bumble, Ex Android DevRel at Google)
    - Matt McKenna (Senior Android Engineer at Block, Android GDE)
    - Alejandra Stamato (Lead Android Engineer at HubSpot, Ex Android DevRel at Google)
    - Simona Milanovic (Senior Android Developer Relations Engineer)
- About This Book
  - To. Interviewees
  - To. Interviewers
- Sponsors
  - - Stream
- Issue Reports & Discussion
- 0. Android Interview Questions
  - Category 0: The Android Framework
    - Q) 0. What is Android?
    - Q) 1. What is Intent?
    - Q) 2. What is the purpose of Pending Intent?
    - Q) 3. What are the differences between Serializable and Parcelable
    - Q) 4. What is Context and what types of Context exist?
    - Q) 5. What is Application class?
    - Q) 6. What is the purpose of the AndroidManifest file?
    - Q) 7. Describe the Activity lifecycle
    - Q) 8. Describe the Fragment lifecycle
    - Q) 9. What is Service?
    - Q) 10. What is BroadcastReceiver?
    - Q) 11. What is the purpose of a ContentProvider, and how does it facilitate secure data sharing between applications?
    - Q) 12. How to handle configuration changes?
    - Q) 13. How Android handles memory management, and how do you avoid memory leaks?
    - Q) 14. What are the main causes of ANR errors, and how can you prevent them from occurring?
    - Q) 15. How do you handle deep links?
    - Q) 16. What are tasks and back stack?
    - Q) 17. What’s the purpose of Bundle?
    - Q) 18. How do you pass data between Activities or Fragments
    - Q) 19. What happens to an Activity during configuration changes?
    - Q) 20. What is ActivityManager?
    - Q) 21. What are the advantages of using SparseArray
    - Q) 22. How do you handle runtime permissions?
    - Q) 23. What are the roles of Looper, Handler, and HandlerThread?
    - Q) 24. How do you trace exceptions?
    - Q) 25. What are build variants and flavors?
    - Q) 26. How do you ensure accessibility?
    - Q) 27. What is the Android file system?
    - Q) 28. What are Android Runtime (ART), Dalvik, and Dex Compiler?
    - Q) 29. What are the differences between the APK file and the AAB file?
    - Q) 30. What is R8 optimization?
    - Q) 31. How do you reduce application sizes?
    - Q) 32. What is a process in Android applications, and how does the Android operating system manage it?
  - Category 1: Android UI - Views
    - Q) 33. Describe the View lifecycle
    - Q) 34. What’s the difference between View and ViewGroup?
    - Q) 35. Have you ever used ViewStub and how do you optimize UI performance using it?
    - Q) 36. How to implement custom views?
    - Q) 37. What is Canvas and how to utilize it?
    - Q) 38. What is the invalidation in the View system?
    - Q) 39. What is ConstraintLayout?
    - Q) 40. When should you use SurfaceView instead of TextureView?
    - Q) 41. How does RecyclerView work internally?
    - Q) 42. What’s the difference between Dp and Sp?
    - Q) 43. What is the use of a nine-patch image?
    - Q) 44. What is a Drawable, and how is it used in UI development?
    - Q) 45. What is Bitmap on Android, and how would you handle large Bitmaps efficiently?
    - Q) 46. How do you implement animations?
    - Q) 47. What is the Window?
    - Q) 48. How do you render a web page?
  - Category 2: Jetpack Library
    - Q) 49. What is the AppCompat library?
    - Q) 50. What is the Material Design Components (MDC)?
    - Q) 51. What is the advantages of using ViewBinding?
    - Q) 52. How DataBinding works?
    - Q) 53. What is LiveData?
    - Q) 54. What is Jetpack ViewModel?
    - Q) 55. What is the Jetpack Navigation Library?
    - Q) 56: What are Dagger 2 and Hilt?
    - Q) 57. What is the Jetpack Paging library?
    - Q) 58. What is Baseline Profile?
  - Category 3: Business Logic
    - Q) 59. How would you manage long-running background tasks?
    - Q) 60. How do you serialize Json format to object
    - Q) 61. How do you handle network requests to fetch data, and which libraries or techniques do you use for efficiency and reliability?
    - Q) 62. Why is a paging system essential for loading large datasets, and how can it be implemented with RecyclerView?
    - Q) 63. How do you fetch and render images from the network?
    - Q) 64. How do you store and persist data locally?
    - Q) 65. How do you handle offline-first features?
    - Q) 66. Where do you launch tasks for loading the initial data? LaunchedEffect vs. ViewModel.init()
- 1. Jetpack Compose Interview Questions
  - Category 0: Compose Fundamentals
    - Q) 0. What is the structure of Jetpack Compose?
    - Q) 1. What are the Compose phases?
    - Q) 2. Why is Jetpack Compose a declarative UI framework?
    - Q) 3. What is recomposition, and when does it occur? Also, how does it relate to the app performance?
    - Q) 4. How does the composable function work internally?
    - Q) 5. What is stability in Jetpack Compose, and how does it relate to performance?
    - Q) 6. Have you ever had experience optimizing Compose performance by improving stabilities?
    - Q) 7. What is composition and how to create it?
    - Q) 8. What strategies are available for migrating the XML-based project to Jetpack Compose?
    - Q) 9. Why should you always test Compose performance in release mode?
    - Q) 10. What Kotlin idioms are frequently used in Jetpack Compose?
  - Category 1: Compose Runtime
    - Q) 11. What is State and which APIs are used to manage it?
    - Q) 12. What are the advantages you can take from the state hoisting?
    - Q) 13. What are the differences between remember and rememberSaveable?
    - Q) 14. How do you safely create a coroutine scope within composable functions?
    - Q) 15. How do you handle side effects inside composable functions?
    - Q) 16. What is the purpose of rememberUpdatedState, and how does it work?
    - Q) 17. What is the purpose of produceState, and how does it work?
    - Q) 18. What is snapshotFlow and how does it work?
    - Q) 19. What is the purpose of derivedStateOf, and how does it help optimize recomposition?
    - Q) 20. What’s the lifecycle of composable functions or Composition?
    - Q) 21. What is SaveableStateHolder?
    - Q) 22. What’s the purpose of the snapshot system?
    - Q) 23. What are the mutableStateListOf and mutableStateMapOf?
    - Q) 24. How can you safely collect Kotlin’s Flow in composable functions while preventing memory leaks?
    - Q) 25. What’s the role of the CompositionLocals?
  - Category 2: Compose UI
    - Q) 26. What’s Modifier?
    - Q) 27. What is Layout?
    - Q) 28. What is Box?
    - Q) 29. What are the differences between Arrangement and Alignment?
    - Q) 30. What is Painter?
    - Q) 31. How do you load images from the network?
    - Q) 32. How can you efficiently render hundreds of items as a list in while avoiding UI jank?
    - Q) 33. How do you implement pagination with lazy lists?
    - Q) 34. What is Canvas?
    - Q) 35. Have you ever utilized graphicsLayer Modifier?
    - Q) 36. How do you implement visual animations in Jetpack Compose?
    - Q) 37. How do you navigate between screens?
    - Q) 38. How preview works and how do you handle them?
    - Q) 39. How do you write unit tests for Compose UI components or screens?
    - Q) 40. What is screenshot testing, and how does it help ensure UI consistency during development?
    - Q) 41. How do you ensure accessibility in Jetpack Compose?
- Final Words
  - - Reflecting on Your Learning Journey
    - Beyond the Interview
    - A Few Parting Thoughts
    - Thank You

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