Polish and Ship
Adaptive icons, empty states, accessibility, dark theme, debug versus release, signing, and an honest look at what publishing actually involves.
App icons that look real (adaptive, vector)
Your icon is the only part of your app that everyone sees, including people who never open it. This lesson takes apart the real adaptive vector icon shipped with Dice Duel — two layers, one 108-unit grid, a safe zone, and not a single picture file.
6.2Empty states, loading and error states
Every screen you write has four faces, and most beginners only design one. This lesson uses the real state handling in Pocket Notes and Focus Flow to cover the other three — nothing yet, still fetching, and something broke.
6.3Accessibility basics
Turn on TalkBack and try to play your own Dice Duel. You will not be able to. This lesson audits the real accessibility of all three apps — the labels that are right, the ones that are wrong, and the die that says nothing at all.
6.4Dark theme and contrast
All three apps already switch to dark automatically, and none of them do it by inverting anything. This lesson opens the two real colour schemes, explains what a contrast ratio actually measures, and shows the numbers your apps score.
6.5Debug vs release builds
Every app you have built so far was a debug build. There is a second kind, and it is a different app in almost every way that matters — smaller, faster, harder to inspect, and impossible to install until you have signed it. Here is exactly what changes.
6.6Signing — what it means and why
Android refuses to install an app that nothing has signed, and refuses to update one unless the new version carries the same signature as the old. Here is what a signature actually proves, how to make a key of your own, and why the file holding it is the one thing in your project you can never replace.
6.7What the Play Store process looks like
An honest, unglamorous walk through everything that stands between a signed build and a page on Google Play — the account, the one-off fee, the identity check, the graphics, the four forms, the testing period and the wait. Nothing here is instant and nothing here is free.
6.8Where to go next
The last lesson. What you can actually do now, five small apps worth building next, how to keep learning once a course stops teaching you, and an honest note about how much of this you already know.