Google revealed today that the official name for Android M will be Marshmallow. To go along with the offical name, the company has released the Final M preview and the official Android 6.0 Marshmallow SDK.
With the Android 6.0 SDK you have access to the final Android APIs and the latest build tools so that you can target API 23. Once you have downloaded the Android 6.0 SDK into Android Studio, update your app project compileSdkVersion to 23 and you are ready to test your app with the new platform. You can also update your app to targetSdkVersion to 23 test out API 23 specific features like auto-backup and app permissions.
Along with the Android 6.0 SDK, Google has also updated the Android Support Library to v23. The new Android Support library makes it easier to integrate many of the new platform APIs, such as permissions and fingerprint support, in a backwards-compatible manner. This release contains a number of new support libraries including: customtabs, percent, recommendation, preference-v7, preference-v14, and preference-leanback-v17.
Google Play is now ready to accept your API 23 apps via the Google Play Developer Console on all release channels (Alpha, Beta & Production). At the consumer launch this fall, the Google Play store will also be updated so that the app install and update process supports the new permissions model for apps using API 23.
The final M preview will come OTA (Over The Air) if you’ve installed the previous version of the Android M preview, or you can grab the factory image from the Android developer site. Images have been posted for the Nexus 6, the Nexus 9, the Nexus 5 and the Nexus Player.
The Android 6.0 SDK can be installed directly from your existing Android SDK manager, or you can grab a new copy and install fresh.
