Migration overview

The Places SDK for Android (New) provides improved performance and a new pricing model, making it worthwhile to update apps that use Places SDK for Android. For more details on comparing features, see Choose your SDK.

Use this guide to understand key differences in Places SDK for Android (New) compared to Places SDK for Android, along with how to handle necessary changes.

Billing best practices for migration

This guidance applies if your API usage is high enough to move into second-tier pricing. When migrating to a newer version of an API, you're also being billed for a different SKU. To avoid increased costs during the month of your transition, we recommend switching to the new APIs in production as close to the beginning of the month as possible. This will ensure that you reach the most cost-effective monthly pricing tiers during the migration month. For information about pricing tiers, see the pricing page and the pricing FAQ.

Enable Places SDK for Android (New)

Places SDK for Android relies on the Places API service. To use the features of Places SDK for Android (New), you must first enable Places API (New) in your Google Cloud project. For more information, see Set up your Google Cloud project.

You then must ensure that you have added Places API (New) to the API key used by your app. For more information, see Use API Keys.

General changes

Some general changes that apply to multiple APIs include:

  • Uses a new pricing model. For pricing information for all APIs, see Places SDK for Android (New).

  • Field masking is required by Place Details (New), Nearby Search (New), and Text Search (New) to specify which fields you want returned in the response.

  • New classes have been added to define the requests or to add new fields to the response.

  • The response Place object contains the new getReviews() method that returns a List of Review objects. When your app displays information obtained from the Place object, such as photos and reviews, the app must also display the required attributions.

    For more information, see the documentation on attributions.

API-specific changes

This section includes the following migration guides for each API: