Google Unveils AppFunctions to Connect AI Agents and Android Apps

InfoQ Homepage News Google Unveils AppFunctions to Connect AI Agents and Android Apps Mobile Designing Data Layers for Agentic AI: Patterns for State, Memory, and Coordination at Scale (Webinar May 12th) Google Unveils AppFunctions to Connect AI Agents and Android Apps Mar 29, 2026 1 min read by Sergio De Simone Write for InfoQ Feed your curiosity. Help 550k+ global senior developers each month stay ahead.Get in touch Listen to this article -  0:00 Audio ready to play Your browser does not support the audio element. 0:00 0:00 Normal1.25x1.5x Like Reading list In a move to transform Android into an "agent-first" OS, Google has introduced new early beta features to support a task-centric model in which apps provide functional building blocks users leverage through AI agents or assistants to fulfill their goals. The foundation for this new model is provided by AppFunctions, a Jetpack API that allows developers to expose self-describing capabilities within their apps for seamless integration with AI agents. By running on-device, these interactions offer improved privacy and faster performance by minimizing network latency. Mirroring how backend capabilities are declared via MCP cloud servers, AppFunctions provides an on-device solution for Android apps. Much like WebMCP, it executes these functions locally on the device rather than on a server. For example, a user might ask Gemini Assistant to "Show me pictures of my cat from Samsung Gallery". The assistant would interpret the...