Google Cloud has announced Developer Device Platform (DDP), a managed cloud platform for developing, debugging, and testing mobile applications on physical devices and virtual emulators. The service expands on Firebase Test Lab capabilities and is designed to work with AI agents for programming.
Public preview of DDP for Google Cloud users begins August 12.
Remote debugging and parallel tests
DDP is built around two core capabilities.
Device Streaming provides remote interactive access to a selected physical device or emulator via API. Developers can launch an app, interact with the interface, find bugs, and monitor its performance on specific hardware in real time.
This allows testing app behavior on a real device without maintaining a personal fleet of smartphones.
Device Run is designed for automated testing. The API can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines to run tests in parallel on hundreds of devices with different hardware configurations. Results can be used to identify issues that only appear on specific models or device classes.
DDP will work with AI agents
Google places special emphasis on integrating DDP with AI agents for programming. Here, access to real devices is needed by the agent itself: it can launch the app and verify the results of changes directly on target hardware.
For this purpose, a DDP agent skill is provided. With it, agents can independently execute multi-step user scenarios, find visual artifacts, analyze CPU and other component performance, and modify code to fix hardware-dependent bugs.
For example, an agent can account for foldable screen specifics or differences between CPU and GPU on a particular device.
Google also plans to add direct access to DDP physical devices from Android Studio and Android CLI via Device Streaming API.
Automatic test sharding and reruns
For large test suites, DDP supports automatic test sharding — smart sharding. This distributes tests across multiple devices and obtains results in parallel.
If an individual test within such a group fails, the service can automatically rerun only that test, without restarting the entire suite.
According to Google, this approach yields test results for an app on hundreds of devices within minutes.
Availability
Developer Device Platform becomes available to all Google Cloud users in public preview starting August 12, 2026.
At this stage, per-minute billing applies: you pay for the actual time devices are used for testing. Costs differ for physical devices and emulators.
Thus, Google is gradually transforming Firebase Test Lab from a cloud testing service into a more versatile environment where physical devices can be used not only by automated tests and developers but also by AI agents directly in the development process.
